UPC Price increase??

lionela wrote: »

I rang UPC and complained that their letter was a contradiction in terms and that as they had my details ie. Name / address/ and account No.I was in fact registered .... but according to the website they wanted my Phone No. my Mobile No. email address and a secret question plus my date of birth. What does my date of birth have to do with my account ??.

.

There is no point in complaining. UPC give a discount for people who get ebills etc, and who do business over the internet, as it costs them less. They want your date of birth so that you can be identified if you lose your password. Now I suppose a menu of secret questions, rather than just DOB might be more flexible, but you could just also pay the €3.50.

As they have ignored my letter I could also ignore their renewal demand...they can disconnect me from the system and perhaps I can charge them the use of my Facia board to relay their signal to the next house. If that is not a runner God help[ them if they want to upgrade the cableing.

You have already agreed to allow them use your facia.

Sorry Boys ...I do not have an agreement signed or verbal with UPC or any previous cable Co.other than the fact that the cable was placed on the property when cable first came on the market and that's going back some years.

I go back to RTE Relays :Phoenix: Cablelink and might I mention the Logo Cablelink was first penned by my younger brother when he was in the Aerial Erection business but he never registered that logo.

The fact that the cable is on my house over those years does not in my book give UPC any legal rights over my ownership of the property other than the consideration for my neighbours

Anyone on.. or at ..my property whether to service / upgrade or any other business would be obliged to firstly have my permission to do so and to say that it is an offence to impede them ..where are you.. coming from.


I bought my house New.... some 54 years ago and I own it lock stock and barrel and bought out the ground rent as well.
So I am king of my castle.

I would have at least expected a reply to my letter from the Customer Care Manager but as I have said he does not have the decency to do that.

Correct me if I am wrong..I also note in the threads that some people are paying €17 per month for basic TV. (€204 per year) why I wonder am I paying at the moment without the increase €330.

Rant over.... I have said my piece

You would lose that bet, I signed nothing Re. wayleave but having said that.

I have been on cable TV since it's inception and have paid my fees when requested by whoever was flavour of the month.

Besides my previous rant it would appear that UPC in this instance also want paperless billing for all , and any customer not complying with their demands will be penalised.

To be compliant one firstly needs a computer /laptop then of coarse there are broadband ./bank charges / printer ink and paper costs and UPC and a lot of other service providers want users to absorb those costs.

A 60p stamp twice yearly is all it costs UPC to bill me outside giving someone employment to fill an envelope. and I give them €330 per year


I have been paying over the years for a basic TV cable package and in all those years there has never been a problem with the cable or any engineers having to call on me.

With the Satelite system that I have installed I am quite content with losing some channels and I will not have to put up with any dictatorial demands from UPC

Five lamps,

Cable Tv was not in existance when my house was built, there were thousands of aerials across the city skyline at the time so that puts to bed any contract or otherwise Re. wayleave for TV cables with the builders.

I have no problem with paperless billing per se. but UPC have concocted a story about "programming and developing as the reason to increase the fees per month and to then say that by " registering" the charge will not apply.

Why the big Lie....
The letter gives a load of "bells and whistles" about controling the account online anytime ....that's tripe.. and if you read it with an intelligent mind there is no sense in it. If you recieved that letter read it again.

UPC is not a bank...that one would log onto to check your balance or see if payments etc. went in or out.

I personally would have no reason whatsoever to log into my UPC account at any time.

So that's it lads....Customer Care does not apply in my case, my letter has remained unanswered and that sums up what I can only describe as indifference and apathy.

KizzyMonster wrote: »

"Our services represent excellent value, however you do have the right to cancel or downgrade your service within 30 days of receipt of this notice without penalty if you choose not to accept these changes."

We decided to downgrade at this point as fees were too high.
Now when we want to cancel our subscription (13 months after opening an account) they are saying we will incur €200 fee as we changed to a new contract 7 months ago.
We didn't WANT to change to a new contract, we were forced into it, it said "without penalty".

Any change in contract/service provided whether up/down or new hardware triggers a new 12 month contract.

Only premium channels can be taken/removed without affecting overall contract I think.

Irish Steve wrote: »

Increase on UPC eh?

Makes me laugh, if you look on their web site, and try to find out what they offer in Ashbourne, there's nothing found.

Might be something to do with the problem that their "cable" system in Ashbourne is now 20 years out of date, it's still the old Ashbourne Relays network, operating on VHF channels that some (most) modern sets can't even tune in accurately, and the quality is dire, there are so many issues with it, but do UPC actually do anything about it? Not a thing.

It's as bad now as it was when we moved to Ashbourne some 20 years ago, the names have changes, Cable Management, then Chorus, then UPC, but the underlying issue is that UPC have ignored their cable systems for years.

Now that Eircom are installing Fibre locally, I can see a time coming when UPC will just abandon the cable network, and good thing too, I will be very happy to tear down the badly installed and untidy cable that was put all over the place at various times.

Gave up on them a long time ago, best thing we've done in a long time, once I'd got rid of the VHF signals, and put a Sky Quattro Multilink system in, the overall quality issues went away, and with Saorview now replacing the UPC signal, the system is watchable again.

http://support.upc.ie/app/answers/print/a_id/320

I hope you can read with what I got by searching from Google.

Here is a little bit of information what I know about UPC analogue formally known as Cablelink.

You can still get the analogue upc service as it acts as a additional or complimentary spectrum to the VHF signal as well as getting Saorview. Saorview is an analogue terrestrial platform, upc analogue is a analogue cable platform. Both platforms operate on seperate signals within the VHF band from your local transmitter that are operated by 2rn formally RTE NL.

The only way you can get UPC analogue channels is still with a valid upc subscription. You have a total of 17 TV channels (all of which in SD) for upc analogue. If you use Saorview, you tune into the Saorview approved box or TV to only get the Irish channels like both RTE1 and RTE2 in HD and TG4 etc.

You are still allowed to have both Saorview and UPC analogue on your TV if you wanted them as one of your TV options for your home. My family had been subscribed to UPC analogue for years and found it good to use. I made a foolish decision to actually get rid of the analogue cable and get onto Saorview/FTA Satellite near the of time of the ASO/DSO. I was noted by many other posters on boards to keep the cable after all after initially not listening to them.

From my point of view the method in which UPC tries to bring new products onto their product line is that they use them as a way to entice customers off the analogue service to give their customers real extra valuable incentives like the BB, UPC Digital and the Horizon service so that the service does not diminish in it's popularity.

The customer base from the analogue cable service was one of the main targets in getting upc to sell their extra products to them. Today it has paid them huge dividends in investing in their products which should have greatly improved them overtime.

Sure we know there is no investment to maintain these cables properly. UPC is currently prioritising their efforts on the BB and Horizon because of gradual improvement of technology in the cable TV market. But their function to provide analogue TV is amazingly still there today. It is still quite a surprise to have a platform like this in the 21st century.

Did it surprise you to hear this news even it comes to you more than two years later?