ESAT Broadband and EIRCON = Frustrated Me!

Kone

I signed up for an ESAT boardband trial early last month and was told my live date was 13/08 (oooh Friday the 13th!)

On Friday I called Esat as I hadn't received my modem or heard anything from them at all. Their lovely sales person told me there was a 'QN Frame' error on my exchange, not being very boardband savvy I accepted her answer and asked if she had any idea when I would be ready to go, she said she would call me back on Monday morning, she even gave me her direct line in case she forgot, I thought to myself "fair play to her!", obviously she 'forgot' to call me so I called her back and got her voicemail which told me she would be unavailable for the month of september as she was on a training course! :rolleyes:

I call Eircom to see if they could tell me if my line is ready yet, I call 1901, they say they cannot help, I call broadband support, they say they cannot help and that I must contact ESAT, even though they own the fecking exchanges!

so I called ESAT sales desk again and got talking to 2 highly intelligent sales people, who gave me various reasons as to why my order was being delayed, they said they would call me back, they didn't! (Ok I have worked on helpdesks / customer support desks in the past and I know it can be stressful, I understand someone forgetting to call back)

So once again I call back and get put onto their 'Q-buster' system, which takes my name and number and say I will be contacted.

about 30 minutes later I receive a phone call, the girl on the phone say the following 'Oh I got a q buster call, oh it's "INSERT MY NAME", I talked to him earlier, Bóllóx' and hangs up!

Obviously at this stage I am ready to explode so I call again eventually manage to get hold of a supervisor and tell him what has just happened, he apologises on behalf of ESAT and promise to find out who was rude and hung up on me. I then explain my broadband problem and he thinks it's just Eircom being lazy (surprise surprise) and says so in those words. He says he will call me back the next day and give me an update, he cannot understand why it's gone over so long.

So today I wait until lunchtime to see if he will actually call me back, he doesn't so I call looking for him, surprise surprise, he's out at lunch and they don't know when he'll be back. The guy I talk to says it's Eircom and there is nothing he can do at all (fine I understand it's down to Eircom as they own the exchanges etc etc), he can't even give me a rough estimate.

I've been thrown around from dept to dept, been told a pack of lies, been promised multiple callback which never happen and to top it all off I was insulted and hung up on and I am still none the wiser!

Eircon run the show, COMREG won't do anything, we live in a joke of a country where you cannot get anything done!

sorry for the rant I just needed to get it off my chest!

/Kone

query

It's a QM Frame, adds two days to the process (at the front end) to verify some stuff. I'd get back to Esat - it's a fairly standard cxheck

Kone

This is the thing Query, the first lady told me it was QM Frame (sorry wasn't sure of exact error), then yesterday I was told it wasn't anything to do with the exchange at all, this is the root of my frustration, I have been told some many lies now I don't know what to believe.

damien

Angela.Keegan@esat.com is head of customer service. Email her, or better ring Esat HQ and demand to speak to her.

AdMMM

Never ring sales staff when something has gone wrong... they will smell a hot potato and will keep passing it around. You'd be better off to ring 1904 which is Esat Customer Support... its still free and the people who you will deal with are more tech savvy than your average Sales rep working on commission!

Kone

Thanks a million for the advice everyone, I have registered a complaint with ESAT and in fairness to them a member of their complaints department has already called me. She did apologise profusely and promised to keep me updated. If she doesn't I shall contact Angela Keegan. We shall see............

query

What exchange is it?

Kone

I'm on the Santry exchange

<EDIT> Got an email from Angela Keegan, going to have a chat with her tomorrow </EDIT>

oakers

I myself had a few issues with ESAT and eventually got talking to Bill Murphy and Angela Keegan.

They then instructed a member of staff to go through everything and through a lot of leg work and phone calls on by them, they sorted it for me!

The one thing I would say is that if you do get someone running around like a blue ars*d fly on your behalf to get something sorted it's always worth sending a mail to one of the above showing your appreciation and thanking them for their hard work!

It makes them feel better and will guarantee a good response if you ever have to phone them back with another problem!

Just my 2 cents!

Kone

I totally agree Oakers, if I do find someone to sort this out for me I will, of course drop them a great big thank you email and phonecall, now all I need is to find a person willing to run around for me!

stevejazzx

Hi kone,

had identical problem and finally after all the messing found out that eircom wholesale deal with organising the lines releasing to people like esat etc but heres the great joke eircom wholesale do not have any direct contact with any other part of eircom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! no direct lines in no shared database so the only way to speed the incredibly slow process up is to get the guys at esat send bucket loads of emails on your behalf telling them that you're irate

uaobrien

Kone wrote:

I'm on the Santry exchange

Eeep, talk about Deja Vu!!! Okay, here's the epitome of patience (namely moi). I've had the same issue for 3 MONTHS!!! Yup, been waiting that long for broadband.

I'm on the same exchange - Santry. The story I've been told (as coming hot off the Eircom email presses according to ESAT) is that Santry, Beggar's Bush and Sandyford are all experiencing infrastructure issues and Eircom will send an engineer out in <INSERT FAR DISTANT DATE HERE> to fix it.

Comm Regs just got back to me yesterday after I refused to leave anymore voicemails and demanded to speak to a person. So we'll see how that goes.

Kone

uaobrien, I can really identify with what you are saying, after 3 month I would have lost the plot and gone to Eircom HQ with a shotgun!

After nearly 3 weeks of complaining and daily phone calls, Esat have called to say I 'SHOULD' have broadband today, Eircom have said they have fixed the problem, I'll have to wait until I get home to find out......

vibe666

had same thing. been trying yto get online with iol since 6th march. it's all in the 'time taken to recieve braodband' thread anyway. the good news is i got it on today, so woohoo for me, and fingers crossed for you.

stick with it, it's well worth it when you get it going properly.

Kone

Guess what?

They lied to me! I still do not have any DSL activity on my line.

I have mailed Esat yet again.

Further to lieing to me, they still haven't told me whether they have found the sales rep who was rude to me.

Kone

Esat just called to ask me if I had Phonewatch or ISDN on the line, of course I already told them that I don't 2 months ago and then ago 2 weeks ago but it seems to have slipped their minds.

Then they wanted me to call Eircom myself and get them to run a fault test on the line, despite the fact I already did this last week and got the all clear on the line.

Out of interest I called and got another test done, and guess what it's all clear again!

So now a 2nd level technican has to log a call with Eircom to get Eircom to "PROVE" that they enabled DSL. So I am going to be waiting at least another 2 to 3 working days

Does anyone know any media types that might be interested in one man's struggle to get broadband?

Diabolus

Kone,

As it happens there is a gigantic lack of communcation between ESAT and Eircom. When a situation like this occurs ESAT have to get the customer to call Eircom and get a line check. You pay your line rental to eircom (soon to be ridden of ) and they manage and maintain your line. If you are not getting a DSL signal on your router then it stands to reason that you are not DSL enabled.

This can be because your line has a fault on it or you are not DSL enabled.
When ESAT can confirm your line is fine they get onto eircom and get them to prove that there is DSL on the line.

I hope you can see the problem being that Esat "HAVE" to go through Eircom when a problem arrises in relation to lines.

Diab.

Kone

Diab,

Trust me, I am well aware of the situation, after the 2 months I have had I have absolutely no need for someone to explain the ins and outs of Eircom and Esat...

The reason for my problem is simply that Eircom run the show, they own everything and can check out faults/complaints with as little or as much speed and competence as they like.

I do find one thing strange though, I changed my home phone to Esat a few months ago (line rental still goes to Ericom of course!) and this month directly after Esat first notified Eircom of my line issue I had an Eircom salesperson call to my house offering me Eircom broadband and a new Eircom callsave package. Odd that, don't you think?

/Kone

Kone

UPDATE!

Line should be ok now according to Eircom...

Diabolus

Well single billing is coming in soon due to the deregulation of the lines.
So you will in the near future have to pay your line rental to ESAT.
The sooner Eircom open the lines up the sooner we find out their all ****ed.

Ripwave

Diabolus wrote:

So you will in the near future have to pay your line rental to ESAT.

And ESAT must immediately turn around and hand that money over to eircom.

WLR is simply a fig leaf that has the advantage, for the customer, of making it somewhat more convenient to pay a single, all inclusive bill, rather than 2 seperate bills. It might make it harder for eircom to win users back. But it will increase the alternative providers costs (they currently get a discount of something like 8% to cover these increased costs), and actually lower eircoms costs in the long run.

We'll still all be paying the highest line rental in Europe.

Diabolus

True we do live in a gay country.

Kone

Diabolus wrote:

True we do live in a gay country.

Aye, I concur.

On the upside I got BB this weekend, Yes Eircom finally fixed the exchange! Yahoo!

Now I'm off to call Esat and say thanx.

/Kone