Aquiss

[Rainmaker]

I did post this above but in their listing on Companies House, Aquiss only have one employee. That’s why the MD is answering the queries, he is the ONLY employee. He also makes the coffee for the whole office. Because he is the whole office.

It’s not a bad thing to be a growing business but if he gets sick response times could drop off a cliff. I am looking really hard at Aquiss because I manage a few connections for co-workers and currently they are mainly Zen, who appear to be going downhill at a canter. So Aquiss are a possibility, as are A&A.

It's a small family business, so I assume there's some 'ad-hoc' stuff going on. For 2023 there was 1 employee, for 2022 there were 0 employees; so I assume above and beyond Martin and the secretary respectively. I had a ticket reply the other day from one staff member, and a follow up from Martin later that day apologising for being in meetings and actually answering the query, so i don't know. Either way they've been going years and seem decent to me.

 

[WJA96]

He's doing a bang-up job. Will be employee of the month soon!!

Absolutely. He’s built a brand based on quality of supply and customer service. I’m sure he has some form of backup if anything goes wrong with him personally. It’s fundamentally an Openreach reseller. There’s nothing to go wrong really that won’t actually be resolved by an Openreach engineer anyway.

 

[Avalon]

There’s quite a few people on here who are in effect flying solo either as consultancy or contractors/resellers. It can be both a strength and a weakness, there just comes a point where it doesn’t scale that well as a single key person can only do so much. Is it a concern? Of course, but in this case probably less so, there’s a high degree of automation likely in place and the heavy lifting is done by the providers whose services are being re-sold and I assume some form of contingency exists in the event he is unable to work for some reason.

 

[Caged]

I think the key is setting prices that ensure the irritating people who buy only on price while complaining about adding 2ms to their games and taking up an hour a day of your time don't ever come near you. No One seem to have fallen into the trap of trying to offer a great service at prices undercutting people like TalkTalk which means as soon as you need to employ staff you look at your accounts and how much decent people cost and can't make it work.

 

[ash888]

just a heads up if you haven't seen the WhatsApp status, there are some planned maintenance this week for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night while they do some updates.

 

[Rainmaker]

just a heads up if you haven't seen the WhatsApp status, there are some planned maintenance this week for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night while they do some updates.

Thanks, I hadn't actually seen that (I use Signal on the daily, and have WhatsApp for when really needed). Hopefully once this round of updates is complete they won't need doing for some time. I notice they've had quite a few of them lately, London, Cardiff etc. I wonder what routers they actually use? I'll ask Martin next time we speak, if I remember. I imagine something closer to a Juniper MX304 than a Mikrotik hEx, but who knows? I've seen some resellers/carriers using OpenBSD on x86 and all sorts of weird and wonderful things in between. If it works, it works!

 

[Simon42]

Their network status details are also on their web site at: https://ebilling.aquiss.net/serverstatus.php

There has been a lot of planned maintenance over a number of months and we used to be able to scroll back but it only shows upcoming now. Maintenance is fine but its a shame most of it starts late evening rather than the early hours.

 

[wizard]

You can't use your own router if you want to keep your Digital Voice service, that's possibly where some confusion comes from.

Sure if I use BT Digital Voice service. However, if you use, say A & A, you only need an Ethernet connection to use any router.

 

[ash888]

Thanks, I hadn't actually seen that (I use Signal on the daily, and have WhatsApp for when really needed). Hopefully once this round of updates is complete they won't need doing for some time. I notice they've had quite a few of them lately, London, Cardiff etc. I wonder what routers they actually use? I'll ask Martin next time we speak, if I remember. I imagine something closer to a Juniper MX304 than a Mikrotik hEx, but who knows? I've seen some resellers/carriers using OpenBSD on x86 and all sorts of weird and wonderful things in between. If it works, it works!

yeah would be good to know, i have seen they are quite frequent lately compared to never having an outage for years, and its during the time of the evening that i would be using internet.

 

[Rainmaker]

yeah would be good to know, i have seen they are quite frequent lately compared to never having an outage for years, and its during the time of the evening that i would be using internet.

Quite. We'll soon find out, but I hope it's not too disruptive. I'm assuming the quoted times are worst-case scenario in case something goes bork. In theory a core or edge router upgrade shouldn't take more than a few minutes, at least of actual downtime. Fingers crossed...

 

[Simon42]

I'm assuming the quoted times are worst-case scenario in case something goes bork.

Indeed, but they (Martin) does seem to start on the beginning time for the last couple of maintenance periods which is not ideal for domestic users. I've got VM as secondary/failover WAN so I barely notice other than notifications, but if it was my only WAN I wouldn't be happy especially for the quality service price.

I am thinking of posting about this on their forum to ask if Martin can try some Pro Plus or sleeping in, but also so I could be the second forum thread

 

[Rainmaker]

Indeed, but they (Martin) does seem to start on the beginning time for the last couple of maintenance periods which is not ideal for domestic users. I've got VM as secondary/failover WAN so I barely notice other than notifications, but if it was my only WAN I wouldn't be happy especially for the quality service price.

I am thinking of posting about this on their forum to ask if Martin can try some Pro Plus or sleeping in, but also so I could be the second forum thread

I'm a night owl (practically nocturnal tbh). Maybe I should offer to do it for him at 3am-5am.

 

[WJA96]

There’s quite a few people on here who are in effect flying solo either as consultancy or contractors/resellers. It can be both a strength and a weakness, there just comes a point where it doesn’t scale that well as a single key person can only do so much. Is it a concern? Of course, but in this case probably less so, there’s a high degree of automation likely in place and the heavy lifting is done by the providers whose services are being re-sold and I assume some form of contingency exists in the event he is unable to work for some reason.

Absolutely - it’s effectively how I operate myself. And I’m not knocking the guy or Aquiss, it’s literally when folks say “my support ticket was answered by the MD”. Well, yes, because he answers all the support tickets.

 

[Rainmaker]

Absolutely - it’s effectively how I operate myself. And I’m not knocking the guy or Aquiss, it’s literally when folks say “my support ticket was answered by the MD”. Well, yes, because he answers all the support tickets.

As I said earlier, to put it another way - I no longer have to navigate a seven-layer-deep menu, wait on hold for an hour and a half to speak to someone offshore, so they can tell me to reboot the modem (again) and then randomly cut me off 15 mins in after having me re-do the most basic of troubleshooting (after I told them I already did it). With an outfit like Aquiss, it's literally just answered within 2 rings and 'Afternoon... The PPPoE session isn't authenticating' (or whatever), and someone who knows what they're on about says 'Oh try this... Fixed? Have a good one!' and you're off the phone in 2 minutes (well, not counting random chat about networks/ISPs/OcUK).

 

[no_1_dave]

Hopefully only effects London and not me over in Gloucester

 

[ChrisD.]

Jeez, this should give you all a laugh... I forgot I had smokeping running on the NAS. This is 10 days, before and after the switch from VM to Aquiss, and it speaks for itself.

Can you tell when I went from Aquiss to VM?

Truth be told, apart from ping numbers on a terminal, I rarely notice the difference. I'm really, really lucky in that VM in my area is pretty solid, helped no doubt by having RFoG vs HFC.

 

[ash888]

Can you tell when I went from Aquiss to VM?

Truth be told, apart from ping numbers on a terminal, I rarely notice the difference. I'm really, really lucky in that VM in my area is pretty solid, helped no doubt by having RFoG vs HFC.

damn!

 

[ash888]

Quite. We'll soon find out, but I hope it's not too disruptive. I'm assuming the quoted times are worst-case scenario in case something goes bork. In theory a core or edge router upgrade shouldn't take more than a few minutes, at least of actual downtime. Fingers crossed...

absolutely you are probably right, its just not a good look when i'm telling my mates about this great isp they have never heard of, and i'm the only one who cant get online for a period of time .

 

[Rainmaker]

absolutely you are probably right, its just not a good look when i'm telling my mates about this great isp they have never heard of, and i'm the only one who cant get online for a period of time .

It's OK, if they're on Virgin they won't be online to notice Aquiss' router rebooting anyway.

 

[GregI]

When you guys say evening what kind of time are we talking like 9pm?