Ripplecom - My experience

witnessmenow · 30-07-2013 5:34pm #1

Nearly every post I see of Ripplecom is negative, so I thought I would post up my experience with them

I have their 8mb package and Im on the Lugboy mast in south Roscommon (near Athlone). It costs me €45 a month and installation was €150

Initially they came out to install and the installer informed us the mast was not updated yet and they were not adding new customers to the old system, so it was a wasted journey for him, but Ripplecom agreed to refund me for the failed install.

About a month later they rang me to say the upgrade was complete and to organise an install.

So I have had it for the last few months and I have to say it has been absolutely fantastic. It has never once been down, I have never seen any delays on it and the speed has always been up near its max (for example I was downloading a game off steam recently and I was getting 1Mb/s)

The cap @70gb is not the highest, but it is manageable. They also send you an email when you go over 75% listing out the costs of going over the allowance. You can add 30gb for €5 a month. each 1gb over the allowance is a €1.

I reliase I probably one of the first people on the upgraded mast, so that probably helps a lot, but honestly I couldn't be happier with it.

Im using my own mikrotik router, so i have no idea how good their router is (i didnt even get one, i asked not too)

If anyone has any questions or wants me to run any tests let me know

BeerWolf · 31-07-2013 9:45am

They are fecking useless...

Go to RateMyISP and search "Kieran" - that's my feedback entry from 8/9/2012... and it's still the same crap almost a year later...

Can't even watch a bloody 360p video without it buffering every so often!

Sent an email almost 2 weeks ago, and again last week, to change my password [yeah, they won't allow me access to it even though I BOUGHT the router off them], and they still haven't changed it...

So to hell with them - unfortunately, I can't get any other ISP unless I go with mobile (Them dongles...) which I would absolutely outright refuse to get.

But knowing the Government here, I probably won't be seeing another ISP with proper broadband til like 2050.

P.S. - My connection was 'great' at the start too... they just won't give a **** about you once your connection starts to deteriorate.

witnessmenow · 31-07-2013 9:54am

I have seen all the bad reviews they get here and elsewhere, and im sure its true, but I am just giving you my experience with them, which is excellent.

BeerWolf · 31-07-2013 9:56am

witnessmenow wrote: »

I have seen all the bad reviews they get here and elsewhere, and im sure its true, but I am just giving you my experience with them, which is excellent.

Calm before the [sh!t]storm.

martinn123 · 31-07-2013 10:15am

My tuppence worth,

I was originally with Ice Broadband and found the service pretty good.
I am in north co dublin, and on a mast near Naul, which is pretty elevated above where I am.

When Ice went bust I had 4 months free service from Ripplecom, as I had cancelled the D/D to Ice, and it took that long to send me a new D/D which was not back-dated.
I pay 39.99 a month and with two laptops, Ipad, desktops, etc all going at the same time family is happy with the speeds

Couple of months ago, the eldest was working from home for a few weeks, and I got e-mails warning we were approaching download limits, in plenty of time to take evasive action.

last year I had a problem with the router, originally supplied by Ice, I rang up to get it sorted, and when I suggested I might change supplier, I got a new one by post a few days later, FOC, plus a call, from a Techie, to help me configure the thing.

I am happy with the service, occasionally if the mast is being maintained and service is down, I get a text message, outlining the time service might be down.

henrylarson · 01-08-2013 12:40pm

I have to agree with the initial poster here. My experience has been outstanding with Ripplecom.

Living out in the sticks where I do my only option to get broadband is to go wireless. Luckily for me when I moved in about six months ago Ripplecom had just upgraded the local mast. I did have some line of sight issues when I went to get installed first but the friendly installation engineer told me I would have to take the tops off some trees in order to get a stable connection. After I did this he called back a few days later and hooked me up. In the six months I've been connected with Ripplecom it has only gone down once for about 2 hours. This was due to an ESB outage in the area which wasn't actually Ripplecom's fault.

What people need to realise is that without companies like Ripplecom investing time and money in bringing broadband out to rural areas we would be left high and dry with our only option being those crappy 3g dongles.

Beerwolf:

When I signed up I was given the option of purchasing the router from them also. It was clearly explained to me that the router I would purchase from them was a managed one that I would not have access to, so I went out and got my own. Why didn't you just do that?

Strawberry HillBilly · 02-08-2013 9:02pm

Just like OP I just seemed to see negative feedback about Ripplecom, but as another person out in the sticks with no hope of fibre anytime in the 10 years Ripplecom have been a life saver.

We run laptops, iPad, phone and PS4 concurrently without any issues.

So far after almost a year of service, everything is as good as the install day. So fair play, the service has its limitation but given its about 50 times faster than the download speeds we were getting from a dongle I have to say I count myself as one of their happy customers

degsie · 02-08-2013 10:36pm

witnessmenow wrote: »

I have their 8mb package and Im on the Lugboy mast in south Roscommon (near Athlone).

I was downloading a game off steam recently and I was getting 1Mb/s)

That doesn't sound right, your download is only 1/8th of your advertised speed!

henrylarson · 03-08-2013 12:44am

degsie wrote: »

That doesn't sound right, your download is only 1/8th of your advertised speed!

I think you are getting confused there degsie.. 1MB/s is not the same as 1Mb

No company advertises their broadband in MB/s. It's Mbit/s

MB=Megabyte
Mb=Megabit

1MB=8Mbit

degsie · 03-08-2013 8:59am

henrylarson wrote: »

I think you are getting confused there degsie.. 1MB/s is not the same as 1Mb

No company advertises their broadband in MB/s. It's Mbit/s

MB=Megabyte
Mb=Megabit

1MB=8Mbit

fair enough but you did use lower case 'b' in your original statement.

BeerWolf · 13-08-2013 9:49pm

Piece of tripe...

Seriously despise this fecking company.

Richard Dower · 14-08-2013 12:10am

BeerWolf wrote: »

Piece of tripe...

Seriously despise this fecking company.

:eek:

witnessmenow · 14-08-2013 2:48am

This is on my phone just now over WiFi, not very near my router

Reamer Fanny · 14-08-2013 2:51am

Strawberry HillBilly wrote: »

Just like OP I just seemed to see negative feedback about Ripplecom, but as another person out in the sticks with no hope of fibre anytime in the 10 years Ripplecom have been a life saver.

We run laptops, iPad, phone and PS4 concurrently without any issues.

So far after almost a year of service, everything is as good as the install day. So fair play, the service has its limitation but given its about 50 times faster than the download speeds we were getting from a dongle I have to say I count myself as one of their happy customers

You've got a PS4??

BeerWolf · 15-08-2013 10:06pm

Seriously, **** Ripplecom - paying €45/m for this ****!?

Contacted them countless times, they say they're looking into it but I bet you they're doing feck all past answering the call!

Slower than 98% of Ireland... /yay.

irishfeen · 15-08-2013 10:14pm

Honestly have to agree with the OP, they are far from perfect but without them we would be stuck with dongles as Eircom won't bother with us, always found them good to deal with and honestly over the last year if we lost internet for 2 days over that time then it would be a lot.

Dr. Nick · 03-11-2013 7:06pm

Not sure if Tara has been upgraded but the last couple of days have been fantastic!

VenomIreland · 18-11-2013 4:11pm

Had some troubles with them in the past, but for the last few months it's been perfect, just wish they had unlimited DL as standard, we pay for the business package simply because we download so much(at least 200GB a month thanks to Netflix and the likes):

Dr. Nick · 18-11-2013 9:11pm

Still going strong two weeks later.....

VladToBeHere · 20-10-2014 5:12pm

VenomIreland wrote: »

Had some troubles with them in the past, but for the last few months it's been perfect, just wish they had unlimited DL as standard, we pay for the business package simply because we download so much(at least 200GB a month thanks to Netflix and the likes):

How did you get the business package setup? Are the prices inclusive of VAT on their site? There doesn't seem to be much in the way of details.

VenomIreland · 21-10-2014 8:33pm

VladToBeHere wrote: »

How did you get the business package setup? Are the prices inclusive of VAT on their site? There doesn't seem to be much in the way of details.

They are not VAT inclusive and we have actually just left them due to ongoing issues that were never resolved. We are currently with Wicklow Broadband for almost a month now and so far it's been much better.

VladToBeHere · 21-10-2014 8:37pm

VenomIreland wrote: »

They are not VAT inclusive and we have actually just left them due to ongoing issues that were never resolved. We are currently with Wicklow Broadband for almost a month now and so far it's been much better.

Would you be able to share more details, or maybe pm me more details? I'm waiting on a call back from them at lunch tomorrow to discuss installation but if you've had a negative experience I would really like to take that on board.

Thanks in advance!

azzeretti · 22-10-2014 6:22pm

VenomIreland wrote: »

. We are currently with Wicklow Broadband for almost a month now and so far it's been much better.

Give them time - they are without doubt the worst company for support. I was with them for a year and the annoying thing was that when the service was working (90% of the time) it was great - solid speeds. My problem was when they had dropouts (and also tended to perform kit upgrades during daytime, working hours) you either couldn't get anyone on the phone or when you did they were particularly rude. Maybe they've improved but I wouldn't recommend them.

limnam · 23-10-2014 11:32am

azzeretti wrote: »

Give them time - they are without doubt the worst company for support. I was with them for a year and the annoying thing was that when the service was working (90% of the time) it was great - solid speeds. My problem was when they had dropouts (and also tended to perform kit upgrades during daytime, working hours) you either couldn't get anyone on the phone or when you did they were particularly rude. Maybe they've improved but I wouldn't recommend them.

Pretty much sums up my experience also. I worked from home a lot and they seemed to have a huge amount of problems during "peak" hours.

Things started to get better from a customer support perspective for me also over the last 6 months.

Possibly because in a lot of rural areas they're no longer the only option which they seemed to play on at the start

Ripplecom - My experience

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