Life after Clicksilver ?

jonski

Right my contract went live on the 14th of august so I presume it is from the 1st of august that it started .
If memory serves me right it is a rolling contract so I would need to contact them 30 days before it expires if I wish to cancel ( in the process of making sure of this ) .

This isn't a rant about UTV , I got BB mainly for playing games online and this seems to be an area that UTV have no control over , they have promised time and time again to fix the ping issues but don't seem to be able to . Other than this I really don't have that much of a problem with them , I didn't like the idea of being asked to sign up to a new contract when the new products came out , but thats just a personal thing . Also now with the cap inforcement , even though I never go near my limit I think it shows bad timing . But the last two issues are small in comparison to the fact that they are the cheapest provider . They have added to my decision to quit though .

What I'm looking for here is an idea from others who have maybe done the same or moved from any other provider . I am thinking of going with IOL or eircom but leaning towards IOL .

What about this "Bitstream Port Transfer " thingy ? . Does anyone avail of it ? Could it mean less downtime ? If i understand it correctly ( probably not ) it means that my a/c could be passed directly accross to another provider with no downtime .

Any advice or stories welcome .

John.

PS: might continue posting my progress here for others to follow and maybe learn with me .

PcP

I didn't think the port transfer thing was live yet tbh, so really I was/am expecting some downtime while changing over (hope I'm wrong though).
Would really appreciate it if you did keep this updated though, I won't be too far behind ye changing over.

ps. eircom? Boo, hiss, source of all evil etc. (i too was tempted by their pings until one of their winback reps called in and lied to my face last week, got a little upset when I called him a liar too. Single billing available since 1997 my arse)

Wanton

from what i have read, when it come's to cancelling, it is a rolling contract. but once your year is up your not obliged to stay and can give them 30 days notice at anytime once your contract runs out.

Ripwave

Originally posted by PcP
(re eircom) (i too was tempted by their pings until one of their winback reps called in and lied to my face last week, got a little upset when I called him a liar too. Single billing available since 1997 my arse)

I'm telling you - the next time an eircom rep comes to your door, go and get your videocam, and tape everything he says!

kin9pin

I was getting weekly phone calls from Eircon winback reps, until I politely told them to take me off their list. Haven't heard from them in 2 months now

jonski

update:

e-mail back from utv admin

>>You just need to send us an email at admin@u.tv with your account number and address information on the email, requesting that you wish to cancel the account. The notice period is 30 days therefore I would suggest you email us on Saturday 10th July, this means when we return to work on Wednesday 14th your cancellation email will be waiting and this also means we can cancel the account at the end of the minimum contract date which is the 13th August.

You can reply to this email and I will action the account for cancellation at that time if you wish
<<

John.

PS : I thought the contracts were from calander month to calender month , no ?

dub45

While its a nice helpful email they dont appear too concerned about losing a customer! Seems a bit odd that they would not go through the motions of asking you to stay etc etc.

Da Man

Most customer friendly organisations have a "no questions asked" policy.

jonski

Update : guy from eircom says port transfer is a non runner so expect alot of downtime .

jonski

next update :

e-mail back from IOL today

>>Many thanks for your email. We would require you to complete a DSL Transfer form along with your application in order for us to transfer your service from UTV. This should ensure that you have no downtime. <<

Might get back onto my guy in eircom.

kin9pin

Keep us posted Jonski, the last email from IOL was very promising.

jonski

phoned my guy in eircom back again to tell him this , he made another phone call and was told that UTV would have to switch me over to eircom wholesale

says he is going to look into it further .

jonski

Update :

Well Saturday has come and gone , left it till the last minute on saturday night to send of the cancelation request . So now it's done it's time to figure out the next step .

Seen as how I'm always bitchin about the pings I suppose I should really go with eircom , but the lack of port transfer from them means alot of down time , then there's IOL , don't really hear too many bad things about them and there pings , + they seem to be willing to do the port transfer .

OfflerCrocGod

jonski go with IOL - they are far better value then eircon.

jonski

Update again :

e-mail from IOL today

>>I have sent the form along with an application out to you today. Also, I have been advised today that it is possible the transfer form may not be accepted once you have a cancellation request in with UTV. If this is the case we would have to submit a new broadband order which may result in some downtime. However we will submit the DSL Transfer form and advise once we are notified.
<<

make of that what you will .

John

jonski

New piece of advice just came to hand , don't cancel as such , let UTV know that you wish to transfer . I think you will still need to e-mail officially to cease your contract .

John.

jonski

Time for an update methinks .

All should be happening by the end of this week , port transfer is set up at both ends , UTV have my a/c marked for transfer , and eircom are in the "five working days " stage for transferring it . I have been given a preliminary username and password and told that the same modem I got from UTV will work with eircoms product .

So now it's just sit and wait , and see what happens .

John

MarVeL

I thought the modem remained the property of UTV? Are they letting you keep it as a gesture of goodwill or can they not be bothered getting it shipped back?

jonski

Not sure about that one myself tbh , I'll just have to wait and see .
if they do want it back then I'll have to go get one somewhere .

jonski

I expect this to come to an end tomorrow and will post a full update then , but for now I can say my time as a guinnea pig has not been overly rosy . Tomorrow will be day 3 of downtime and would have been more if not for a most helpful harriett in UTV .

jonski

OK then , off we go ,

First off this will be a straight copy and paste to the 'bitstream ' thread for other following that .


Kicked this off in earnest with an e-mail to Phil Nolan ( thanks to Muck ) at the start of July .His PA kicked it over to Head of Broadband to follow up . She in turn sent me on a transfer form to complete and kicked it on to the Order Management Unit to organize .

Between the start of July and the 13th of August ( contract end date ) I followed this up with e-mails to all the relevant people to make sure that everyone knew what was supposed to happen , including me . I have copies of all the e-mails if any one is interested in reading through them .

As the date ( 13th of August drew near ) I started to get the feeling that all was not rosy but I had been assured by all the relevant people that it would work out . Eircom said that UTV did not have to do anything , but UTv felt this was not right and in the end it turned out that UTV had received no contact from Eircom by the 13th at which point they had no choice but to send a 'cease order ' ( although marked for transfer ) onto their supplier to forward to Eircom .

This is where Eircom messed up most , they , and I will get to my theory on why shortly , had not marked the incoming cease order with my a/c details as being for transfer . So I was cut off , previous to this I had been cut off by UTV through my a/c activation but still had a green light on my modem , now I had nothing , hence I know it was deactivated .

Between the a/c cancellation by utv and the deactivation of dsl on my line a super girl in UTV called Harriett ( stand up please and take a bow ) reactivated my a/c so that I could at least connect to the internet and mail the relevant people . During this time I also started to make frantic calls to anyone that would listen and maybe help .

The Girl in Order Management Unit that was looking after ( and I use the term loosely ) was out sick , so I rang the sales team to ask there , the initial girl wasn't able to help much so I asked to speak to her supervisor , Emily (the new supergirl , yes , stand up and take a bow aswell , you deserve it ) . This girl was most apologetic and promised to look into it and get back to me , which she did and admitted that it had not been handled properly but she would do what she could and get back to me . Although , strictly speaking this was outside Emily's jurisdiction she contacted the right people and made it happen .

I am here now on Friday morning connected to Eircom , after two days downtime , could have been more had it not been for the heroic actions of Harriett and Emily .

So , how to go about it and why it happened the way it did .

It happened the way it did because I believe I am one of the first , if not the first , to do this in the south , I am certainly the first to go from UTV to anyone in the south . I know through dropped pieces of info that Eircom do have a 'Transfer Team ' , but they were away on a course this week . but Eircom were learning as they went with me also , Emily has promised to pass all the info on and says I will get a call shortly from management to explain what exactly went wrong and how , I will post that when I get it .

How do you go about it ? , very carefully , with loads of mails and phone calls to make sure everything is in place , don't except the "I'm not sure " answers , ask to speak to supervisors and always escalate it higher if you are not satisfied , DON'T come across hot and heavy , it will get you nowhere , remember these people , although they are supposed to know in our eyes , don't . In twelve months time this will probably be easier as by then everyone will know the procedure .

Enough for now , questions ? , anyone ? , ok then off to play games as this was the reason for changing over in the first place .

John

dub45

John,

It might be useful to forward a copy of this post to Phil Nolan and Comreg. Good luck with your new isp!

LookingFor

jonski - can I ask if you availed of the new pricing that became available back around March/April of this year? We signed up to UTV late last year, and when the new pricing became available (the €30/month with the 8GB cap etc.) we took that. Now, in talking to UTV about how to cancel etc., they tell us that the contract term was reset when we took advantage of the new pricing, thus our contract won't expire until May next year (would have expired around October otherwise). I'm gonna assume you stuck with the package you signed up with back in August, despite the better offerings that became available in Mar/Apr? In hindsight, that would have been the smart thing to do (I have NTL's 1.5Mb cable available to me now, but can't sign up until I get out of UTV's contract :mad: )

kin9pin

So it all went smoothly then
Seriously, could you post some pings to Jolt/Boards so that we can see the difference?

jonski

LookingFor wrote:

jonski - can I ask if you availed of the new pricing that became available back around March/April of this year?

No , I continued with my old contract , because I knew by that stage that I wanted out for gaming reasons

jonski

kin9pin wrote:

So it all went smoothly then
Seriously, could you post some pings to Jolt/Boards so that we can see the difference?

Did these @ about 10 last night . but will keep an honest check on them and post back

Pinging clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11] with 32 bytes of data:



Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=58

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=58

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=58

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=58

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=58

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=58

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=58

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=58

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=58

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=58



Ping statistics for 195.149.21.11:

Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 40ms, Maximum = 46ms, Average = 45ms


Tracing route to clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



1 25 ms 31 ms 31 ms 213-94-176-1.bas1.lmk.limerick.eircom.net [213.94.176.1]

2 30 ms 31 ms 31 ms 159.134.123.129

3 62 ms 46 ms 46 ms pos0-0.corea.thn.london.eircom.net [159.134.191.234]

4 46 ms 46 ms 46 ms lon1-9.nildram.net [195.66.224.59]

5 46 ms 46 ms 46 ms jolt-gw.nildram.net [195.149.20.126]

6 46 ms 46 ms 46 ms clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11]



Trace complete.

Couch Potato

anybody know if there is a way out of the 1 year contract ..?

Did I read somewhere else on board a figure of 150 euro or something ...

Have the option of going with NTL in a "couple of months" and will probably get rid of the land line altogether ...

pings gone again tonite :


C:\>ping -n 10 www.boards.ie

Pinging www.boards.ie [82.195.131.128] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=701ms TTL=53
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=591ms TTL=53
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=581ms TTL=53
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=561ms TTL=53
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=580ms TTL=53
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=561ms TTL=53
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=571ms TTL=53
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=591ms TTL=53
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=571ms TTL=53
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=561ms TTL=53

Ping statistics for 82.195.131.128:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 561ms, Maximum = 701ms, Average = 586ms

Moriarty

They're fine here as usual..

PING clarity.jolt.co.uk (195.149.21.11): 56 octets data
64 octets from 195.149.21.11: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=41.4 ms
64 octets from 195.149.21.11: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=42.0 ms
64 octets from 195.149.21.11: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=41.5 ms
64 octets from 195.149.21.11: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=40.9 ms
64 octets from 195.149.21.11: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=38.0 ms

--- clarity.jolt.co.uk ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 38.0/40.7/42.0 ms

Couch Potato

Maybe Spoke too soon !!!! :rolleyes:

C:\>ping -n 10 clarity.jolt.co.uk

Pinging clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=80ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 195.149.21.11:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 30ms, Maximum = 80ms, Average = 43ms

C:\>ping -n 10 www.boards.ie

Pinging www.boards.ie [82.195.131.128] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=90ms TTL=52
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=52
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=52
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=52
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=52
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=52
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=52
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=52
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=52
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=52

Ping statistics for 82.195.131.128:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 50ms, Maximum = 90ms, Average = 55ms