Broadband Horror Stories - We want them

damien

I'm looking for everyones horror stories about getting Broadband or not getting it. I'm looking for as much detail as possible from anyone that's had a bad experience getting broadband.

Things like delays(12 weeks to get it), various faults and obstacles, who you had to communicate with before it got resolved. Many of you have posted your experiences here already and I'd appreciate it if you linked me to those posts.

I may also need your name and email address for proof that we are not making these stories up. If you want to send us on copies of email communications ad letters etc, please do so.

What IOFFL wants to do is to compile a report of the horror stories and distribute this report to the various Telcos, the press, Comreg and the Government.

jwt

Last year a client of mine who makes his living on the internet moved business premises from Dublin city centre to new offices quarter of a mile away.
He rang Eircom and explained that he wanted to leave the old ADSL line live while the new one was switched on , reasoning that leaving his old line on would allow him to leave a server in the old premises to collect mail etc while the new one was enabled.

Client moves in and surprisingly Eircom enable the new broadband line straight away. I move all his comms gear to the new premises get it all running smoothly and he’s a happy camper. He rings Eircom to kill his old line and they immediately i.e. there and then, kill his new line. He rings back, explains what happened and is told that Eircom is very sorry about that, but he is in a queue to enable lines and will have to wait his turn. Again he explains that this is due to an Eircom error, and once more is told that there is nothing that can be done. But he is promised that it will be rectified quickly. :rolleyes:

Next week he still has no line and rings again to be told that the engineer who was going to enable his line (again) had looked at the job sheet, recognised the number and assumed that it was a clerical error as he had already enabled the line, the first time and promptly closed the call. :mad:

Once more to the back of the list. This time he threatened to contact the press. Lo and behold the line is enabled within the hour.
When asked about damages this mess caused to their customer both direct revenue, clients emails not being responded to etc he was told that Eircom make no warranty regarding the suitability of the line for business purposes. The line and the ADSL was never at fault, Eircom incompetence was at fault but as is their way, they ignored their customer.

John

gothakane

You may have already noticed my recent horror story

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=179773

I see no point in typing it all out again, however feel free to edit it at your discression before distributing to the press.

Sooner NTL start ripping Dublin's roads to shreds the better

Illkillya

Same here, I don't want to type out my whole thing again, but basically, had to wait 3 months for a line test to find out whether or not I'm even elgible for DSL. Just today, that has been resolved. I haven't got DSL yet but at last I will be able to order it today. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=1832864&posted=1

damien

Illkillya wrote:

Same here, I don't want to type out my whole thing again, but basically, had to wait 3 months for a line test to find out whether or not I'm even elgible for DSL. Just today, that has been resolved. I haven't got DSL yet but at last I will be able to order it today.

Can you link me to where you posted this before ?

Illkillya

Noticed I had forgot to link and edited my post, but not before you spotted the omission. The URL is http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=1832864 and it also links to an earlier thread dealing with it.

Scruff

not typing it again but the thread is here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=172158

continued venting my agner and frustration here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=1830392#post1830392
where you find other in a similar and worse boat

still dont have broadband.
:mad:

query

Just to be practical - the original post did state that names and email addresses should be given, so simply linking to threads is unlikely to be helpful. Also somebody will have to go through all the threads and this is time consuming!

Tellox

..where to begin.
September 2002: Ring for a line test to be done on my number
December 2002: After asking esat and eircom 4 different times and not receiving a reply, I rang esat about 3 times a day until they did one. It passed, and now I can order dsl.

I would really really like to say that that was the worst of it..
April 2003: No DSL from esat despite me calling them once a week after the 6weeks period passed. I file a complaint with COMREG, And ring esat and ask what the hell is going on.

June 2003: I get DSL. Over the course of the past few months, I had to mail off the same info 3 different times, until someone could finally confirm that they got it all. After another 6 weeks,no-one arrived. When I rang esat, none of my info was on file, and they didnt have me down as a customer to get DSL. I sent an email to Una Mcgirr(sp) , and an engineer arrived in 3 days.

May 2004: I ring up and ask why I havent been upgraded to 512k along with the rest of the 256k customers. Im told 10 or so people have been left on it,and he'll upgrade me straight away.

Its been 5 phone calls and about 10 emails to esat now (I was at one point told "everything will be sorted over the weekend), and I'm still on 256k. I've stopped bothering.

damien

Great work guys, keep it up. Some of the threads that were linked above are superb. When I have a few hours I'll go through them all and message those that were fcked around by the providers.

If you can say what exchange you are on and your geographic location, then it will be even better.

Also if you have friends that don't use boards but are in the same boat tell them about this thread. Make them post. Even though you guys have experienced it first hand I'm sure you wouldn't like others to suffer as you have so the more people we get to tell the real story of the Broadband mess the better chance we can stop this from happening again.

Damien.

shinzon

Hmm thats strange since the switch over my threads on my horror story ongoing i might add is no longer on here

Dont suppose anyone can dig it up or is the old board not archived, if not be prepared for long thread tomorrow lol

Shin

Moriarty

All the old threads are there, the search function just isn't searching through them yet.

Illkillya

query wrote:

Just to be practical - the original post did state that names and email addresses should be given, so simply linking to threads is unlikely to be helpful. Also somebody will have to go through all the threads and this is time consuming!

It wouldn't be as time consuming as typing the whole lot out again. But if you think my 3 month wait for a line test is worth clicking on a link for, then my email address is jamesgalvin@esatclear.ie and my name is James Galvin.

Scruff

omg! dont tell anyone your real name!!!! "They" may be watching!! :eek: :eek: :eek:

eth0_

Tellox wrote:

Its been 5 phone calls and about 10 emails to esat now (I was at one point told "everything will be sorted over the weekend), and I'm still on 256k. I've stopped bothering.

STILL on 256k???? :eek:
Have you mailed Bill Murphy? He usually sorts things out quickly. If you've no joy...why don't you just stop paying them? After all, you're paying the same as the people on 512k for half the service!

neilm247

It is funny my story incoporates a few of the past gripes. I live in the 'tarf where of course my line was one of the two which could not receive broadband in the entire area. *yarg*
This was the scenario for a while (6 months). I rang and got line tests and fools on the other end of the phone. The result of shouting down the phone to try to get them to understand the situation was to pay €150.....
Then funnily and luckily enough, my phone went dead for a week. (BTW this was a phone line installed by eircom a year earlier). What happened??? After spending nearly €150 for the phone calls to report it to a telephone rep., an Eircom engineer was dispatched to the house and said the line was not working at that time (duh!?) it had in fact ripped or had torn or something so that the phone didn't work, and the reason we managed to make calls for an hour during that fiasco was that water conducted the calls from the two ends of the wires filling the apparent gap in my connection!? After a bit of wire tweaking my phone was restored.
Finally to broadband - Being quick to realise that it would cost €150 to get the same engineer to my house again to look at the broadband problem, i asked him to fix my broadband there and then. He told me to call again later on in the week. I called again. The B@stard took a week of himming and hawing saying he would take another week to fix the problem. Then 3 days into the week of waiting, i did a line test and what happened????? IT WORKED!!!!!!!!
I don't know why it took 6 months to get something like that done. Now that I have a working phone line i can finally not avail of that cr@ppy eircom broadband and give my money to someone who gives a $hit about their customers.

daymobrew

Riverwood, Dublin 15

Basic DSL issue:
House built 1999. Connected to Blanchardstown Centre exchange via cabinet 57. This has 'S' cable which is unsuitable for DSL unless you are very close to exchange. db loss on line is too high (about 63db).
Houses across the road, same address just built about a year earlier, are connected via cabinet 64 which has 'M' cable which is perfect for DSL.

Full story:
When DSL rolled out to Blanchardstown exchange I asked for line check. "Failed" but given no reason. I fought to get a reason e.g. if it was internal to my house I could work on fixing it. I rang ComReg and complained (very helpful I must say) and some guy at eircom left me a voice mail the next day. This guy didn't respond to my return voicemails until I found my way to his boss.
I was told that there was no way to find out why line failed, something like 'there is a tester box that gives results but no other info'. I said that there must be someone who maintains this 'box' but apparently not. I bit my tongue and decided that this person was never going to divulge anything so I had to hang up.

I contacted a friend who used to work in eircom and he tested our line and told us the db loss. We got the phone number of a neighbour across the road and found that they could get DSL. My friend suggested we order a new phone line and hope it works. We did but it didn't. Again we were very lucky that our friend was able to test the new line when the eircom engineer came to the house, and before he actually connected the new line to our house. When the engineer heard about those across the road passing, he was able to find out from a coworker in the exchange that we were on different cabinets, and they had different cable. Again, we were very lucky to have an inside guy.
The engineer said that there could be underground cable running between our side of the road and the opposite but that we'd have to know someone high up in eircom to get someone to even look into this.

A family friend met Dermot Ahern and submitted a summary of our 'story' to him in April. We submitted cabinet details shortly after. First response from the Minister's office was unhelpful, simply directing us to other broadband providers in our area (some which weren't actually available). We wrote again, using simpler language, and are awaiting a reply.

Another family friend knows someone senior enough in eircom but he (in eircom) doesn't appear to be doing anything at all.

I recently wrote to Mr Nolan explaining the cabinet/cable issues. No response yet.

ntl are rolling out broadband (released today, Aug 18) but I found out that it is not available in Riverwood - the thrunk cable is unsuitable and would have to be replaced. No chance of this happening in the near future according to someone in ntl.

Irish Broadband took months to respond to a site survey request. We are not interested in dealing with a company with service that is that slow. Also, the ping times with IBB are very slow, so prohibitive for ssh/telnet work where there is as much info going up as down.

We have considered asking a neighbour to get DSL and we would set up a wireless LAN across the road but this is too much to ask someone you don't know really, really well (and have a key to the house to reboot the hub and DSL modem as necessary).

Damien
PS Sent me a PM to get full address and email.

damien

More stories on Dublin.ie

http://www.dublin.ie/forums/showthread.php?t=158

shinzon

April/may 2003

Enquired about getting broadband, rep on the line saud yes my line was suitable, decided i had to wait to get my wages into the bank before ordering, went to the live broadband help 9 days later spoke to 2 reps to confirm a few things before ordering it, 1st rep answered my questions and said line was passed all ok, second rep I talked to about ordering the broadband and this is where it went downhill rapidly checked the line again and said it failed, first person out of 3 reps to say it failed

Throughout 2003/ Start 2004

I will list in no particular order what I did next as regards getting BB

1) ESATBT offered to setup business broadband on my line to test to see if it worked, but I had to sign the 12 month contract agreement first before theyd do so, I had to decline basically because of the costs involved which were astronomical at the time, ESAT were the only company to say they would test broadband by actually setting up a product.

2) I contacted Phil Nolan, Philomena Lonergan and another person whose name escapes me in eircom to try and get this sorted, after 6 months of arguments phone calls and e-mails they suddenly found a fault on my line, October 2003 an engineer came out to the house to basically fix the line, and I told him several times that this was so i could get Broadband, he spent 2 days working on my line and at the street cabinet where my line was connected 2, he finally said the line was fixed, I called Philomena Lonergan who had the line tested again and it still failed, so she asked me to go around to all sockets in my house unscrew the front plates and disconnect the wiring from the back of these and just leave the Eircom socket connected, I duly did this and it still failed, at this stage she washed her hands of the affair and told me the line was to noisy because of the internal wiring arrangement in my house, which conveniently got Eircom off the hook cause they dont deal with internal wiring.

3) I contacted COMREG on no fewer than 11 different occasions only to be told that there was nothing they could do, as per usual as useless as a fart in a wind tunnel

4) I contacted the government, i got a lot of letters saying that theyd look into this for me and fair dues a lot of them actually bought it up with dermot aherne, who wrote a personal letter saying that in his constituency he had heard similar horror stories including the fact he himself couldnt get broadband at his own home (which i presume he has now), the most useful letters i got was from Tommy Broughan, he kept in contact with me to see what progress had been made and made some personal enquiries as to my status.

5) last thing i did before giving up altogether was on the advice of several boardsters i contacted the Waterford area supervisor by phone, and this intrigued me the most, I rang him and explained my story to him and he said hed make some enquiries and ring me back, he rang back and talked to my mother and these were his exact words "I cant get involved in this", like it was some big conspiracy.

So thats basically it, I was tired of banging my head against a brick wall so gave up, im looking into wireless solutions now as it seems the only option other than paying for a new line to be installed, which has at best a 50:50 chance of passing, im sure ive left out a load of stuff as regards what id done, pity the search function on boards isnt working yet cause i could drag up my old threads on the subject which details in painstaking detail the whole debacle

But the main points are listed above, hope this helps

Shin

^pt^

Not sure if mine would be much use, but http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=113496

dahamsta

shinzon wrote:

dermot aherne, who wrote a personal letter saying that in his constituency he had heard similar horror stories including the fact he himself couldnt get broadband at his own home

Anyone got a copy of this letter?

adam

Moriarty

Eircom upgraded the exchange ahern was on a few weeks after he began saying that. Who says politicans don't know how to get things done in this country

shinzon

dahamsta wrote:

Anyone got a copy of this letter?

adam

wished i had of saved all the government letters and dermos in particular but im afraid i didnt, i threw them out when i gave up on bb on my line

sorry bout that

shin

The Clown Man

Moriarty wrote:

Eircom upgraded the exchange ahern was on a few weeks after he began saying that. Who says politicans don't know how to get things done in this country

I'm on his exchange so I'm certainly not complaining!

Go dermo!

shinzon

just to add to this as i was going down to the shop this morning and an eircom van was parked accross the road, so i said to myself will i or wont i, so i said what the hell.

Went over got chatting to him, told him about my BB woes, he was a nice chap and he said hed test the line there and then, got out his laptop and did the test and showed me the results

He explained that 11 tests were done on your line and every single test came up perfect, he said the 11 tests was actually an overview of 99 tests done, he said that my line was about as perfect as you could get lol

Yet my line still fails for BB, hows that for a pisser

Shin

De Rebel

dahamsta wrote:

Anyone got a copy of this letter?

adam

Reference to it .........
http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=9540137
and also
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1202101&issue_id=11031 - free registration required, the text is....

"Eircom 'embarrassed' into providing broadband"

MINISTER for Communications Dermot Ahern (left) has revealed how he "embarrassed" Eircom into providing his whole village with broadband, writes Senan Molony.

The Minister said he was unhappy that Eircom was failing to upgrade telephone exchanges to allow customers to received broadband, when they were receiving the money anyway through dial-up connections.

"I mentioned it so often in speeches that I was the Minister for Communications and yet I couldn't get broadband at home, that they eventually called me up," he told the Irish Independent.

"They said they were going to carry out the necessary work at my local exchange."

Mr Ahern lives in Blackrock, Co Louth.

He now enjoys broadband connection, whereas many parts of the country remain unable to sign up.

He is quite careful of course to let it be known that he didn't actually ask for it !!!!

eth0_

shinzon wrote:

just to add to this as i was going down to the shop this morning and an eircom van was parked accross the road, so i said to myself will i or wont i, so i said what the hell.

Went over got chatting to him, told him about my BB woes, he was a nice chap and he said hed test the line there and then, got out his laptop and did the test and showed me the results

He explained that 11 tests were done on your line and every single test came up perfect, he said the 11 tests was actually an overview of 99 tests done, he said that my line was about as perfect as you could get lol

Yet my line still fails for BB, hows that for a pisser

Shin

Same thing happened me. Did you call eircom and give them his name and inform them that your line is PERFECT? I did, got nowhere of course. MORONS.

shinzon

yep i did etho got on the phone after i was finished with the engineer, still failed after i explained what the engineer had done, and i said even with what the engineer said your still telling me it failed

God what she said next nearly had me telling her where to stick her BB

" Our Records are More upto date then the engineers"

A polite way of telling me to **** off and dont call again if ever i heard one

Shin

eth0_

What? How could she say that? Must have no brain whatsoever....argh.

dub45

shinzon wrote:

yep i did etho got on the phone after i was finished with the engineer, still failed after i explained what the engineer had done, and i said even with what the engineer said your still telling me it failed

God what she said next nearly had me telling her where to stick her BB

" Our Records are More upto date then the engineers"

A polite way of telling me to **** off and dont call again if ever i heard one

Shin

Shin,

Why not get methodical on this. (And in fairness to the guy who helped you out it may not be the best of ideas to actually include his name thats if you do know it)

Email Phil Nolan CEO Eircom giving the details you gave in your first post here. He seems to act on such emails. Point out that you will be submitting your case for inclusion in 'broadband horror stories' that is being accumulated for publication but also state that you will be forwarding full details of your case to Comreg.

Copy the details to Comreg and point out to them that you will be including any action or non action on thier part in helping you in 'broadband horror stories'. Be nice:) but assertive!

damien

His email is phil.nolan@eircom.ie

I have to say the Eircom engineers are really great people. It is a pity that not all of Eircoms staff are like that.

Illkillya

shinzon wrote:

yep i did etho got on the phone after i was finished with the engineer, still failed after i explained what the engineer had done, and i said even with what the engineer said your still telling me it failed

God what she said next nearly had me telling her where to stick her BB

" Our Records are More upto date then the engineers"

A polite way of telling me to **** off and dont call again if ever i heard one

Shin

Shin - my guess is you have a similar problem to what I had, when I was getting "no tests results available" when I rang eircom, my line actually had been tested, and passed, but for some reason was not entered into the database that Eircom query when checking if your line passes or not. No matter how many times they sent a request to the exchange for my line to be tested, and no matter how many times it was tested, it would still come back with no test results. A letter to Phil Nolan fixed it for me.

De Rebel

If everything you say is accurate and true then it sounds as though there is an interesting test case here.

Ericom's test database says that your line has failed, eircom's engineer says that your line is OK. This apparant conflict needs to be resolved. It would be a really good case for a full audit. I strongly recommend that you write a letter asking that this conflict be fully investigated and send it to Phil Nolan in eircom, with copies to both John Doherty in Comreg and Dermot Ahern in DCMNR asking that they investigate this case. Letters, not e-mails.

The engineer will probably be disciplined, which is unfortunate, but this leaves a question mark hanging over the accuracy of the results database. This is the first time that I know of where we have a cut and dry case to proceed with.

spongebob

As Shinz is on one of the 40 ESAT exchanges IIRC has he ever asked ESAT to unbundle the line and test it with their gear which is a possibility I believe ? Just a thought !

a nice email to Bill Murphy in ESAT could be a help here, let me stress that ESAT are victims of this crappy database system even more than Shin is, what with Eircom stealing their customers and blocking the ports on the DSL gear to stop people going to IOL and that ESAT are only being suggested by me because they may be able to run a separate test to the Eircom one given they already have the gear in 2 exchanges in Waterford City for the past 2 years .........

That means Shin (and all his mates) will apply for IOL BB won't ya Shin

M

shinzon

just as an update to this, once the parents found out about the engineers results and my subsequent call to eircom and continual line failure they went spare, especially after the engineers commment that they line was about as good as you could get

The mother got onto Eircom straight away and demanded why an engineer passed the line and yere failing it still, well apparently somebody is going to call us back on monday with an update, so im just wondering is this the fabled 72 hour test.

As for getting on the bandwagon with phil nolan, Comreg and dermot aherne, i feel as if ive been there done that got the t-shirt (which incidentally i have lol).

Strange thing the operator said to my mother when she was talking to her, she said the whole of viewmount can get broadband but it just seems its only your line is failing :rolleyes:

Anyhoo im going to wait till monday and see what happens, if not ill consider going through it all one more time and see what becomes of it

Shin

damien

shinzon wrote:

As for getting on the bandwagon with phil nolan, Comreg and dermot aherne, i feel as if ive been there done that got the t-shirt (which incidentally i have lol).

Shinzon, I urge you to write those letters. You'll be doing it not just for yourself but for everybody else who this happens to. You could be the person that prevents this from happening again.

Zombrex

Arrraghhhh

EsatBT customer service and sales is sooo bad I just want to rip out my tounge and bash them to death with it.

I have been trying to sign up my family for broadband with them for 2 months. Firstly they lost 2 of our applications! Then they told us (after me ringing up) that because I had a previous account under the home phone number (from a while ago, and account that has been cancelled) my dad couldn't sign up for broadband if he is living at that address!

What kinda lame ass accounts system only lets you have one account under a telephone number. That is just stupid database design.

After a few weeks they sent us out a "change of name" form that had incorrect instructions on it of how to fill it out! FFS! We only found this out when they had the cheek to ring up later saying we had filled it out wrong. When then sent them another, correct one, they then proceeded to lose it.

Twice we were rang up by bitchie sales staff saying the account was in the application was in the wrong name, but who new nothing about the forms they had sent out to us and then that they had lost ("thats nothing to do with me").

And to top it all off someone at Esat sent us back the very first "lost" broadband application, weeks after we sent it in, saying we would have to change the name on the account with a copy of the incorrect change of name form!!!!

OH MY GOD!!!!!! :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

What the hell can you do with a company like this! Eircom are just as bad with a crappier service and Clicksilver make you change your phone over to them, so my family can't really go anywhere else.

I remember someone posted the name of the sales manger at Esat and said that if you write to him directly he will gets things sorted for you... anyone remember who that was.

viking

Wicknight wrote:

I remember someone posted the name of the sales manger at Esat and said that if you write to him directly he will gets things sorted for you... anyone remember who that was.

Bill.Murphy@esat.com
CEO of EsatBT

AndrewMc

My horror story is quite simple and ongoing: I can't even get a phone line. I applied in early March this year, and was told "two weeks", then "end April", then "end July", then "end November", and finally this afternoon I was told I might have a phone line "sometime in early 2005".

They say they have to install a new exchange in my area (since nobody on my street can get a phone, and two more streets have been built since, and more houses are under construction). Despite all Eircom's boasts that they've been working on this for 18 months and it'll cost E500,000 apparently the plan for this megaproject doesn't include things like "when".

From what I understand from the builder, they were told back in 2001 that these houses would be built, so they've actually had over three years (so far) to get it done.

lucernarian

Thats interesting, I didnt read this thread ever yet I independently sent Dermot an email complaining about the sham of telecoms in this country. I had an idea so I took out my phone book, looked up his home number and when I asked someone what his address was, it matched the one in the phone book almost exactly. I promptly entered his number into eircom's online database and it showed in bold large red lettering: FAIL. I then sent him an email pointing this out to him (I also told him the no. I used for confirmation).

I also pointed out to him innaccuracies in the broadband.gov.ie website regarding Louth.

I even congratulated him on the introduction of FRIACO to Ireland to sweeten him up but as of yet I got no reply to my email.

I sent it on 26-8-04 and I copied and saved the email on my pc. I explicitly pointed out to him that I was a constituent and I "would appreciate a personal reply".

One other thing, am I allowed to ask for Ministers' phonenumbers here and can they be posted?

From my experience I think I have a good quality line (at least 45kbps speed). Does that guarantee that I'm not on a splitter or could I be on some kind of "non-intergrated" multigain?

Could anyone tell me if ESAT BT will enable your line for the 3 month trial even if they think it fails the test?
MJT

bealtine

//One other thing, am I allowed to ask for Ministers' phonenumbers here
//and can they be posted?

I'd advise against that particular course of action or that nice Herr Flicks goons would be err coming to blow down your house etc

seamus

To_be_confirmed wrote:

One other thing, am I allowed to ask for Ministers' phonenumbers here and can they be posted?

Feel free to ask, just don't post them. They're quite freely available (*cough* phonebook), but no matter how sedate the cause, there's always one nutcase who'd go too far, so it'd be nice if we didn't allow anyone the chance to point the finger at us.

lucernarian

lol, I got the number freely in a phone book but could anyone tell me the name of his wife as the name "Dermot" also has a wife's name written beside it which I wont post in case it's not the minister who is listed in the phone book.

bealtine

[QUOTE
could anyone tell me the name of his wife as the name "Dermot" also has a [/QUOTE]

err Mrs...<grin>

jd

To_be_confirmed wrote:

could anyone tell me ...

Google it..
I did

lucernarian

Great idea, pity I didn't think of it :rolleyes:
Doing it right after posting this.

Gadgie

AndrewMc wrote:

My horror story is quite simple and ongoing: I can't even get a phone line. I applied in early March this year, and was told "two weeks", then "end April", then "end July", then "end November", and finally this afternoon I was told I might have a phone line "sometime in early 2005".

Have you contacted ComReg about this?

lucernarian

Indeed, isn't it part of Eircom's USO that they install a phone line within 2 working days of it being ordered?

spongebob

2 Days does not apply anymore from the 1st of Sept

Its 10 days if there is full copper on the premises and no guarantee whatsoever if the wiring is not complete on the customer premises.

http://www.eircom.ie/About/Activities/pending.pdf page 18 of 25

Better order tomorrow at the latest

M


M

gaui3d0pnbz86o

Here is mine, not as bad as some. I suppose compared to others ive been lucky.

Area: Lucan, Name: Tom xxxxx

ok, I decided at the start of this year i would like broadband, now been the patient sort that i am, i decided to wait for a good offer, as i figured there had to be one at some time. In June Eircom started thier surf the summer for free offer. With free rental for 3 months, and free modem and no charges, the offer sounded good to me. the fact it had a 4 gb cap i didnt mind, as im not much of a downloader, On 28th of june i ordered broadband, my line passed and all was ordered. so far so good! i was told that due to demand it would take 2-3weeks to get my modem and filters and get the line enabled. didnt seem like much of a problem to me as i expected a small delay.

two weeks pass, and still nothing. decided to wait the 3rd week as i was told there was a small delay. after 3 weeks still nothing, 4 weeks still nothing. i decided to ring to see if i could get any information. so i ring, and get told to ring another number, then another and another(get the picture.. no one wanted to help) eventually, i got through to a really helpful chap, cant for the life of me remember who he is. but he was the business! he checked stuff out, and said my parcel had left on 9th july and my line enabled on the 13th july, was about the 20th when i rang there.so i explained i hadnt recieved anything yet, and he gave me a tracking number for my modem and filters. so i head off to SDS website and i said attempted delivery even though there is always someone at my house, always. so i rang SDS, figured it may be at their warehouse. I ring them, and the package has been returned to eircom, Not eircoms problem i know but still. Slightly peeved i ring eircom back and explain what happened. No problem they say. they resent the package(or so they say) and claim ill get it by friday!. friday comes and goes, so does the weekend, so does monday. tuesday comes. i decided to get a dsl modem myself. hooked it all up and works at 256k const disconnects and i occosenly get 396k. not great i think. but i figure it may just be a crap modem, or a worng setting or something.

later in the week, stil nothing comes so i decided to ring. i get a lady,
no help what so ever. and claimed she couldnt give me a tracking number for my dsl equipment. didnt want to listen and was just , and there is only one phrase for her and anyone who has dedlt with her or her kind will nod in unison when i say biddy from hell.

mad and irate i email phil nolan. here is the email:


Mr Nolan,

I thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope this matter
can be resolved quickly. On the 29th of June this year, i decided to
avail of your current broadband offer. I rang Eircom.net sales and was
told my line was fine and that soon I'd be surfing at 10 times faster
then my current dial up connection - Eircom's flat 25 service.

Eagerly i ordered the service and was told it would take two to three
weeks for my modem, dsl filters and for the line to be enabled. No
problems there. I understood the offer was very popular and that
slight delays were inevitable do to demand.

However i have yet to recieve my modem and filters. The line was dsl
enabled on the 20th of July. At the beginning of this month i rang
enquiring about the status of my order, and was told it was shipped
the first week of July, the gentleman i was speaking to on the phone
gladly gave me the tracking number of my parcel. I contacted SDS to be
informed that the parcel had been returned to Eircom as my address
could not be found. Strange though the bills always arrive. I rang
again that day and the package was reordered. It was only supposed to
take 5 days. It is still not here.

In the end I went out and bought my own modem and filters as I am not
getting value from the free trial. If i had not bought my own I still
would be waiting and not be enjoying the pleasure of the free
broadband offer.

Unfortunately a pleasure it is not. I have not once achieved a 512k
connection. I seem to be stuck at only 256k. 10 times the speed
difference it is not. I believe it is down to the amount of noise on
the line. Could this be checked? The would be no charge i would hope.

Through no fault of my own I have missed out on a large portion of the
free offer. For a good will gesture I would ask that i be given an
extra free month. I would also ask that I receive my dsl filters and
modem promptly as well.

Regards,
Tom xxxxx

i didnt get an email reply, but exactly 40 minutes later i get a call from a gentleman. he says he will get en express courier for me so i will have it the next day. sure enough i get a call from a motorcycle curior firm next day, checking im in and looking for directions. My dsl filters and modem have arrived. all looking good yes....... well in true drama style, theres more!

so i get all the stuff, out of the box, and uninstall my other dsl modem(which was showing no signal, one of the disconnects i figure) i hook all the stuff up, and no signa, surprise surprise! give it while i thought, while turns to a day, turns to two turns to a week turns to 10 days! still no signal! i give up and decide to contact eircom. check net(using dial up) for details for tech support. turns out to be a 15xx number which i cant dial due to a bar we have on the line for those numbers. i notice a email adress under it, its ment to be for tech support for other packages bar the home starter, sure its the same department i thought. i email them anyway and after 2 days i get this reply

Dear Customer,

Unfortunately technical support is not offered by email or web-chat to customers of our Home Starter packages.

If you require support you can; ring our support line on 1530 555 444 (8am-10pm, 7 days; Call cost 33 cent per min)

Kind Regards,
eircom net Broadband Support.

just dandy i thought! i ring the order line in desperation, maybe they can pass a messge on! no joy there however they said they could transfer my call over! great i said! however after 30 mins on hold i get disconnected! i email phil nolan again in desperation as the modem problem was sorted quickly. here is the mail:

Mr Nolan,

Further to my last email, I have now received my broadband modem.
However now my dsl signal has been down for the best part of the last
week. I rang broadband sales and service to be told to ring a 1500
number, which i can not dial, due to a bar we have on those numbers. I
emailed broadband support and to date have heard nothing and the
signal is still down.

I find this level of service frustrating to say the least. Firstly it
takes the best part of two months to get my broadband equipment and
now after getting it, the signal goes down for nearly a week.

I never had any problems with Eircom before and always thought your
service and customer support was a shining example to others but now
with two problems is as many months i start to wonder. I would ask
this to be rectified as soon as possible so that my faith in Eircom be
restored.

Tom xxxxx

(whoops, those mails not in order, but you get the idea! sorry)

i ring the 1890 tech support number (for non home starter packages)and explain my situition about the 1500 number. the guy (another saint in eirom) who answer said hed get an eingeneer to check the exchange. he also ran through a load of checks with me over the phone. nothing worked so he assumed it was an exchange problem, but there would be a call out charge if there was a problem my end!

next day enginer rings, gets me out of bed, he says line is grand, signal is good and strong, am i getting a signal or is it still down. i check it and it works! miricle of miricle! engineer rings back to check on my signal, tell him its working but he said he did nothing his end...(this was last friday by the way)

well its all working now!(but only from main box@512 and extensions@256-probably low quality wiring) and so far no disconnects. so after about 10 weeks of nothing and complaints i have it up and running. that is my horror story. also you notice ive pretty much missed out on the entire summer offer! hows that for timing eircom. thanks for taking the time to read

tom

AndrewMc

Glenn wrote:

Have you contacted ComReg about this?

Indeed I have, and it's ongoing. They made a complaint on my behalf (I've already made two myself directly to Eircom) and the phone call yesterday (after a three week wait) was their followup. Apparently Comreg are also expecting a reply from Eircom themselves, in which Eircom will have to detail the reasons for the delay. Can't wait to see what they come up with...