Our SLA got tested hard after a fiber cut at the Dallas colo last month

We had a backhoe take out a main fiber trunk near our data center in Dallas around 3 AM on a Tuesday. The ISP claimed a 4 hour response time in the SLA but it took them almost 11 hours to get a crew on site. I ended up having to spin up a failover link with a secondary provider we kept around for emergencies. Has anyone else had luck enforcing SLA credits with the big carriers when they miss their window?

2 comments

2 Comments

amyr571mo ago

Heard the big carriers fight SLA claims like their job depends on it.

shane_nguyen23d ago

Pegged that one perfectly. I had nearly the same thing happen with a big carrier in Chicago, they promised a 2 hour response window and it took them over 9. When I sent in the SLA claim they made me jump through hoops for weeks, first they said my monitoring timestamps were off, then they claimed the outage was "force majeure" because of weather when it was literally a construction crew that cut the line. I finally got a credit but it was like 15% of what I actually calculated, and only after I threatened to take the whole thing to our legal team. The trick is to document everything with screenshots and call logs from the second the link drops, and even then they'll still try to lowball you. Honestly I just treat the SLA as a nice bonus now and plan like it doesn't exist, that way anything I get back feels like a win.