Irish BroadBand Still taking the MICK

IBB_User

We are a large IT company who blissfully have been using IBB for the past two years. However, recently we have been down for days without any explanation - Like the other threads posted earlier this year, the service is a joke. I write to all the directors individually and asked them to contact me and explain why we should continue to spend €12,000 a year for the service. No one called me. If you are thinking about IBB - dont. they dont care and even their staff say so. If anyone wants to talk - I'll be glad to.

Dummy

IBB User - I completely agree with you. I work with an IT company too and like you, our internet connectivity was down for some time. When I went looking to speak to senior management and even the managing director, no-one was available to talk to me.

Promises of return phone calls were broken. Requests for phone calls from a senior manager obviously fell on deaf ears.

When it comes to customer service, these guys have lost the plot.

It's not really a joke but rather a very serious matter.

vinks

un-interestingly, my ibb connection is still fubared, even though they appeared to fix somethings last week

spooky donkey

Yeah im still getting packet loss after last weeks fix, but speeds have improved.

Im really suprised that many companies actually use IBB. I would have thought busniess users would have gone for a more stable service.

Phaictan

We are a small company (6 PC's) who have a 4MB business connection with IBB. Last month we lost connectivity totally and the engineer had to come out and look at the aerial. For some reason they couldn't get a signal from 3 Rock, even though it had worked for the last year. They said that they had to point us towards a new high site. Being in the Docks we were pointed towards Odlums.

The Odlums connection worked but meant we had to change our IP address and this had major DNS issues for us for a few days. Fair enough. The new connection to Odlums now daily drops out for 15 minutes at a time and slows down to a crawl at other times. Numerous calls to IBB has not got a solution and one time I was on hold to get through to support for 40 minutes.

Myself and a collegue at the office have consumer connections at home and when we started last year we were told that our 1MB connection would be automatically upgraded to a 2MB connection when their new packages came out. Needless to say we are still on 1MB even though we are paying the same rate as a 2MB customer. IBB cannot seem to sort this simple issue out either.

I am extremely frustrated at their lack of customer support. The key account manager that was assigned to our business has since left and no one has been active on our account since that time.

IBB's mission statement is "To deliver broadband services that are consistently simple and value for money for customers who seek no limitations on when and where they use them. We will do this by listening to and anticipating our customer's needs and responding with reliable and effective solutions provided by our committed and responsive team."

They need to start by returning phone calls when they say they will.

Stuart Lawn

Dummy

Spooky - Like IBB User we were very happy with IBB for the past number of years. We never had any issues with the service. We used to call their support department about once a year. In fact we went so far as to recommend them to other companies. We found the service very reliable. In fact you will find posts from me here in Boards recommending them.

I never lose my cool - at work or at home. But over the past 4 months, I have lost my cool a number of times and on each occasion it was because of the frustration of dealing with these guys. The quality of service that we got from them dropped very dramatically from very good to very bad very quickly.

Naturally, we have stopped recommending IBB. But I find it amazing to find this thread on the same day that I had a heated discussion with IBB.

Dummy

Apart from their obvious lack of customer service I cannot help but notice a very clear consistency in the comments from other business users - phone calls are not being returned.

spooky donkey

There problems seem to have started when they uped every one from 1 meg to 2 meg. Smart made a bug deal about 2meg BB and IBB had to compete, in the end very few people were able to get smart and IBB`s net work took a hammering. I dont think they have recovered from that but it might happen some day if they dont loose all their customers in the mean time.

Cuddlesworth

Have you ever considered taking up CSS spooky. I cant play on any bf2 or bfv servers but source seems ok to me. I think it has something to do with those games being unable to handle any large amount of packet loss

seamus

Aye, I work in a gigantic multinational, and we've had several outages of IBB circuits in the last couple of weeks.

If this is the service they give their corporate customers, I shudder to think how they treat their residential ones.

Macker1

:mad:

I got away from IBB after 2 months of ****e service & non-existent support. I knew that they didn't care about the little guys but it really goes to show just how much of a joke company they are when they treat business customers poorly as well.:eek:

A shower of useless bastards that need to be taken to the cleaners by legal means. If comreg had any balls they would have acted by now.

Nevyn

Well it took 3 minutes to from hitting reply on this thread to the page loading,
and it is with nothing else connected to our susposed 2meg symetical IBB connection.

6 weeks of crud,
less then a week of a reasonible connection which was still not the 2 meg connection that it was ment to be.
And then it went tits up this evening Again.

jesus_thats_gre

Haha this all makes for good reading..

God we should start some campaign warning customers of their porr service record.

kazoo106

Here Here - This company is a Joke. They should have their ComWreck authorisation removed

Sesshoumaru

I am on an IBB 2megabit connection at the moment. But using www.irishisptest.com to measure my speed I am only getting 300kilobits both ways last few weeks. When I sent an email to support@irishbroadband.ie on Wednesday morning of this week, the only reply I got so far was a receipt(I turned on read receipt) saying my email had been deleted without being read. I am giving NTL a call later to order their product. I am so sick and tired of IBB. If anyone is thinking of using this company for their internet connection, don't!!!

MackQ

I'm "supposed" to be on their 2MB package but I seriously doubt it as my speed is never more than 500k in either direction.

I waited 11 weeks before getting the service installed last October and despite getting an apology from their Customer Services Manager along with a promise of improved levels of service things have never got better.

As many people will remember around the turn of the year the service went to pot completely and it took them ages to admit that there was a serious problem. I kept getting the line "Your radio has been reset - should be OK now".

They only billed me about 6 months ago for the installation blaming an "administrative error" for the delay. I told them to DD the charge from my bank account which to date they still haven't done.

When all the 1MB users were upgraded to 2MB a while ago I had to phone them and ask them not to forget about me! They said everyone else had been upgraded and couldn't understand why I hadn't been done.

A few months ago they suddenly stopped taking any DDs from my bank account and then started sending me letters and emails telling me that my account is in arrears. Despite repeated requests from me to just take the bloody money from my account the arrears are just piling up.

It's just one problem after another. I have had it completely with IBB. Fortunately, my contract with them is now up so I'm off!

aaf

Macker1 wrote:

:mad:

I got away from IBB after 2 months of ****e service & non-existent support. I knew that they didn't care about the little guys but it really goes to show just how much of a joke company they are when they treat business customers poorly as well.:eek:

A shower of useless bastards that need to be taken to the cleaners by legal means. If comreg had any balls they would have acted by now.

How did you get out of your contract? Was there a cancellation fee? My cousin, who shall be hence known as "The Dope", got IBB installed without my consultation about 2 months ago and has only had it working 100% for 1 week. :eek: I'm trying to get him to cancel and switch to Esat BT or somebody else. NTL might even be in the area.

vibe666

aaf wrote:

How did you get out of your contract? Was there a cancellation fee?

sounds to me like everyone should be writing them a letter telling them they have failed to provide the product OR service levels they have promised, and as such you will be taking your business elsewhere.

cancel any DD's and send their equipment back with the letter and get something else from another provider.

don't stand for it, seriously.

to some extent i can see it from a residential customer, but not from business customers, no way. if your own products were that bad would you expect anything other than your clients throwing them back in your faces and telling you to bugger off?

come on people, take a stand.

personally, i think they must be going down the pan, i can't see them keeping this up for much longer.
[align=right]13.16.137.10[/align]

Sponge Bob

IBB_User wrote:

We are a large IT company who blissfully have been using IBB for the past two years.

Better not tell us who you are seeing as you seem confused about the meaning of Service Level Agreement .

I had IBB sales (in the West) on to me pimping their warez one day and the Sales Manager fella SWORE that he would give me an SLA from IBB . How I laughed ! . I shoulda got the SLA emailed out to me so I could paste it in here for all the IBB business customer to have a good laugh ...as long as the packet loss was not as bad as usual that day.

I said to him shoo sort your own customers out first and talk to me next year (maybe) when things quieten down.

ballooba

I sent an email to the CEO of NTR last week regarding this. I couldn't get emails for the CEO or CTO of IBB. I received no response. I will have Eircom in the next week. At that point I will be repackaging my Ripwave modem and i will call out to IBB's offices on my lunch break with it.

I will make sure they cancel my contract and also call the bank to cancel the DD at my end. my ripwave modem has the antenna broken off from falling off my window. If they ask me to pay for this or anything else then i will tell them to try and sue me.

A work colleague has just got Clearwire and it is fantastic. It took roughly 30 seconds to pick up a signal versus IBB's couple of hours. The pings are great and little or no packet loss.

Wookie

If you can move then do.

I think it is a little like the banking situation, don’t have any loyalty at all as they don’t deserve it! They don't look like they are going to respond to their customers needs anytime soon so get out if you can (in some cases I would be tempted to cancel the DD and send the equipment back, they don't seem to care about retention so they probably won't come looking for anything).

Maybe on the way fill out the complaint form here

Drapper

Wookie wrote:

If you can move then do.

I think it is a little like the banking situation, don’t have any loyalty at all as they don’t deserve it! They don't look like they are going to respond to their customers needs anytime soon so get out if you can (in some cases I would be tempted to cancel the DD and send the equipment back, they don't seem to care about retention so they probably won't come looking for anything).

Maybe on the way fill out the complaint form here

good post wookie, more complaints will pee Comreg off!! should be made a sticky imho

spooky donkey

krazy_8s wrote:

Have you ever considered taking up CSS spooky. I cant play on any bf2 or bfv servers but source seems ok to me. I think it has something to do with those games being unable to handle any large amount of packet loss

Well im not really mad about CSS but I supose I could give HL2 death match a go and see how it is. But I really shouldet have to change the game I play cause IBB are muck. Why are they good on the RTE mast and bad every else is beyond me.

mikemac

About 2 months ago I came on this board defending IBB. How wrong I was
Tuesday night, I spent two hours trying to get a signal and couldn't. Same thing Wednesday. On Thursay and Friday it took over 20 minutes to get a signal and it kept dropping every couple of minutes.

Tried to call customer support but gave up after 15minutes on hold. I sending back the modem on monday and cancelling the contract. Srew the one months notice. If they set debt collectors after me, then I'll just explain that I spent the last two months paying for a service that barely and infrquently worked so theyt actually owe me money.

Sad thing is that I recommended IBB to three mates who have got it installed recently.

What other wireless options are there? I'm in north Dublin so not covered by clearwire

Dummy

Since this thread started I see that it has been read 565 people.

Good news travels but I hope IBB realise that bad news travels much faster.

They deserve every bit of criticism they get here and much more again.

sisyphus

"The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones!"

Worth considering............

Macker1

aaf wrote:

How did you get out of your contract? Was there a cancellation fee? My cousin, who shall be hence known as "The Dope", got IBB installed without my consultation about 2 months ago and has only had it working 100% for 1 week. :eek: I'm trying to get him to cancel and switch to Esat BT or somebody else. NTL might even be in the area.

In order to get out of the contract, I hassled one of the customer service leads on a continual basis regarding the diabolical service. I sent in a regular email of screenshots proving the service was rubbish. Eventually it got to the point of me losing the plot and threatening to take the equipment off my house and pay them a visit to fling the equipment at them. After a few weeks the contact in IBB accepted that I was not going to be fobbed off and so he arranged for the equipment to be un-installed. This happened within a few days. I have never seen a bill for cancellation and if I ever do I know what will be the next step ( they can fu*k off and swing for it )

PS... even though I cancelled the account which was back in early Sept I have still received by email invoice remittance for Oct & Nov. No monies have been taken but I still keep a regular eye on my banking because you just can't trust bastards like IBB.

Bottom Line..... Prove the service is ****e and not meeting the advertised levels, take no rubbish from them and demand that your contract be cancelled. It is a great help if you get a direct email address for someone in IBB that is dealing with your complaints, at least then you can hassle them directly

Best of luck, let me know how you get on.:)

spooky donkey

Ive come across another way they may well be taking the mick.

My brother got a 2 meg connection in only to discover it was a 1 meg. Him having decent PC know how and expierence of BB knew how to check his speeds and what he should be getting and got on to IBB straight away. It took him 3 weeks go get them to change it to a 2 meg line. It is working fine for him though but he is in the RTE mast and still in the honneymoon period with IBB so only time will tell there.
The thing is what happens to the poor punter who cant tell the front of his PC from the back, the mom and dad outfit with 3 kids and dog who think that BB is just cool to have and know nothing about it. If they got 1 meg and paid for 2 they would not know the difference. I know when you ring tech support they are hoping you are one of these people who know very little. I had a guy onece try to tell me in was on a 512 connection on their tech support. What If i had believed him? These guys are chancing their arm!

Peanut

ballooba wrote:

I sent an email to the CEO of NTR last week regarding this. I couldn't get emails for the CEO or CTO of IBB. I received no response. I will have Eircom in the next week. At that point I will be repackaging my Ripwave modem and i will call out to IBB's offices on my lunch break with it.
....

If you look at the legacy of where IBB came from, then their operating style may not be so surprising.

This speaks for itself..
http://www.rte.ie/news/2000/1214/flood.html

Possibly honest mistake..?
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2005/09/11/story7866.asp

Drapper

Peanut wrote:

If you look at the legacy of where IBB came from, then their operating style may not be so surprising.

This speaks for itself..
http://www.rte.ie/news/2000/1214/flood.html

Possibly honest mistake..?
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2005/09/11/story7866.asp

buddy we've seen it all before, we are just punters looking for the little ray of sunshine, we are not IBM/DELL/AIB, we are just joe soaps paying for something that is not being recieved. I can assure you that IBB do not treat thier "corporate customers" in the same way as the public, but what I don't think they realise is that "joe soap" is an IT Director / Manager in some of these companies, the person who makes decisions! NOT A GOOD ADVERT

They will pay for thier poor efforts!

Talisman

Is the service still screwed up? I'm not bothered with it as I'm waiting on BT to hook me up, but just before lunchtime I received the following email:

"According to our records, your request has been resolved. If you have
any further questions or concerns, please respond to this message."

I have little doubt that the service is still crap but I won't be home until late tonight so I won't be able to check it until then. I suspect they have just tagged the job as resolved because it is a day or two short of 4 weeks since I opened it.

Cuddlesworth

Funnily enought during the day it seems all 24 other people must be going gung ho but my latency is fine now and packet loss seems to be a steady 6% and always in the same place.

Its still unusable during the day but last night at 2am I got the full 2mb up and down for the first time ever

barrymac

I left them about 6 months ago not for bad service just because I moved house out of coverage.

I actually liked their uncapped uncontracted service to be honest although I did have several dropouts and real dunces on the phone.

The other thing was that my ping times were usually around minimum 150ms. That's crap for anything interactive like voip, vnc remote desktop (working from home) remote ssh sessions or gaming to name but a few. Jesus, dial up modems can do better ping times than that sometimes. I did ask them abour their ping times before I signed up (seen as it's wirelss) for the service and of course they said that they were great for gaming. I saw it really as a bulk downloading service, which suits me as I run Gentoo Linux which I like to keep up to date with regular updates.

Trouble is though that they are still billing me for my closed account! Apparently one of their accounts people left with a big mess behind them and it took them ages to sort it out. At least that's what they told me about 2 months ago!

It's a pity that they are so badly organised because otherwise I like their service. I'm now moving to digiwebs new 10GHz wireless service which is pretty cool by the look of it.

Dummy

OK I have had enough of this crowd IBB.

I want to gather a 7 day log which I want to submit to Comreg. This will include phone calls made, unreturned phone calls, responses to date etc etc etc.

One of the things I also want to supply them with is a log of upload / download stats. What I am considering is gathering stats on an hourly basis for these 7 days using www.irishisptest.com and submitting the whole thing to comreg.

Is the above test suitable do you think? Can you suggest any others?

A letter was sent to IBB last week and so far not a phone call, fax or letter has been returned. To boot we are connecting at speeds nowehere near what we are paying for, and have experienced considerable downtime. High time for us to go to Comreg.

tonyj

Drapper wrote:

good post wookie, more complaints will pee Comreg off!! should be made a sticky imho

I complained to comreg in the past, and cc'd the company I was having the problem with.

It was sorted out pretty quickly.

I'd recommend this line of approach. As Drapper said, if enough people contact them, they'll start to take notice.

Red Alert

how about sending them registered post, so that they have to acknowledge (and legally as such 'read' the letter) it.

and also how about just continuously sending the same e-mail 20 times a day - they'll start wondering if everyone did it and crashed their server.

tonyj

Absolutely - persistance is the only thing that works with these companies. In fact, not just persistance, but total obsessiveness.

If a company (be it a bank, NTL, Eircom, Dell whoever) has messed me about, I just know that their customer service is going to be rubbish. My action plan normally consists of multiple phone calls every day to as many departments as I can think of, an immediate lodgement of a complaint to their complaints dept., and letters/emails to the ombudsman.

And keep a detail log of all the phonecalls you've made, faxes, emails, and letters you've sent.

Often an old fashioned letter works much better than an email. And threat of an ombudsman works wonders.

One day maybe these companies will do something about their customer service departments.

Dummy

Thought you all might be interested in reading this article I found. Sound Familiar????

http://www.techcentral.ie/trade_chan...ech_homes/view

I posted this into the "Collating Complaints Against IBB" sticky.