I use to have a Web site hosted by TPG.
It was for my furniture and collectables business.
The site was large and had hundreds of photos as well as videos that I had embedded in the HTML.
I never had any major technical problems withTPG, but they did'nt bill me?
So I phoned them up several times and asked for thd bill.
Still no bill? A bit odd I thought ,but the site was working and so I was happy enough.
Well 6 years later they send me the bill, hahah.
But, in all the years I ran the website that was the only real issue I ever had.

Pete

There's two slight differences between that and this site. The first is that TPG don't host the site, they just provide the connection. The second is that they don't miss me at all. Every month they take their pound of flesh on the dot.

One day they'll be the largest ISP/Telco in Australia and I guess they'll only get there if their billing system is up to scratch.

Overall I've had a good experience with TPG, despite their chequered reputation. It's always a nuisance when things aren't quite right though.

We had an incident that continued for years: Eventually the phone died & using the "Pulse Echo" method; this was traced to where a tree had fallen. Where the equipment confusion originated is in that whilst stretching the internal wires to breaking point : IT did not break the sheath.

That can be a common problem with many types of wiring. Even a flexible cord on a vacuum cleaner can go the same way. Here, where I work, we have a large housekeeping department and, generally, they are hard on the equipment. I've replaced flexible cords on vacuum cleaners more often than I care to remember due to fractured conductors inside the cord and quite often the location of the fracture cannot be determined as I no longer have my HV transformer (to hook up to each conductor in turn so I can look for where the scorch mark on the sheath develops) so the whole cord is discarded and replaced.

If the fracture is close to the plug top or the appliance then most of the cord can be saved but if it is half way along the cord (and this does happen) then the cord's useless.

Latest update: I've just rebooted the modem after receiving advice from TPG that they have made some adjustments at their end. Hopefully this will sort out the intermittent connection losses experienced last week.

If things go well over the next few days I can then turn attention back to the site itself.

FYI problems connecting to the site this morning at 6.20AM.

Do you remember what error message showed in your browser?

Site response was lethargic around 12.30pm today. Got a 500 error.

For the record: Since around 8.45pm, I have experienced very sluggish response and a number of type 500 errors, plus one “Service Unavailable” message.

Brad, I just could not connect at all, no error message.

I closed out of my browser (Chrome) several times and then I got connected. No problems connecting to other sites at that time.

This is certainly giving you the run around.

Not having any problems connecting from Portugal.
When in Madrid, hotel WiFi wouldn't let me connect to MS Exchange (our new ms hosted email) but this site was just fine.

But all my activity would be while things were quiet your end. 6am your time now.

Taking a long time to connect this morning, but no error message.

I note with Internet Explorer that it quite often "Hangs" on this site: Firefox not so. This could be deliberate as I note since the end of XP that several XP computers suddenly run slower.

It should be noted that since I started fixing, before leaving school in 1969, & going out & getting a proper education, that things like "dry joints" & intermittents' are still popular. Thermal cracking of hot components on printed circuit boards is also common & I have an amp here that has done that & got modified.

One of the greatest disasters for consumers is "Lead free solder". We knew in the forties that Tin was one of several metals that grow "whiskers": 3% plus of lead stopped that. Now we have solder growing whiskers & shorting things. On several occasions I have brushed a circuit board to make it go again. That may not always work due to accessibility and the fact that the short killed something. So in many cases once the thing gets to around 3 years, it can self destruct.

Error 500 at about 10:35

Page stopped responding just after I posted about 10:30
Tried to log back, no response just spinning dots no message.
Log back in ok about 10:40 this post.
Fred.