Irish Broadband .What a Nightmare

51bman

This is a recent letter i wrote to Irish broad band .I am at my wits end now with this company .Comreg seem not to care and are totally disinterested in helping .I have learned from the office of consumer affairs that we can pursue them through the small claims court for refunds and other such costs and have cases under the sale of goods act 1980

( See below .Email from consumers affairs )

Are we really going to let this company get away with this or are we going to demand proper service from what is a dreadful company .

Dear 51b man

Thank you for your recent email concerning the problems you have been
experiencing with your broadband provider.

The matter you raise for consideration is more appropriate for the
Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg). ComReg is the statutory
body responsible for the regulation of the electronic communications sector
(telecommunications, radio communications and broadcasting transmission)
and the postal sector. Contact details as follows:

Commission for Communications Regulation
Block DEF, Abbey Court
Irish Life Centre
Lower Abbey Street
Dublin 1
Tel: 01/8049600 Lo-call: 1890 229 668
E-mail: consumerline@comreg.ie

If you have exhausted an operator's complaint handling procedures and you
are dissatisfied with the way an operator has managed the complaint, then
you can bring your issue to the attention of ComReg.

I also wish to advise you that the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services
Act, 1980 gives various rights to consumers, in particular, that:

· In the case of services, the supplier should have the necessary skill
to provide the service, provide it with proper care and diligence, and
where goods are used as part of the service they should be of merchantable
quality.

Where these conditions are not met, you may be entitled to redress from the
trader. It would appear in this case that satisfactory service has not been
provided.

I would point out that disputes involving the quality of goods and services
are matters of civil law, and, as such, must be resolved by the parties
themselves, if necessary by recourse to the courts.

In this regard, the small claims procedure is a special mechanism for
dealing with small claims within the District Court structure and is
designed to handle consumer claims cheaply and informally without involving
a solicitor. Claims involving amounts up to ?1,269.74 may be dealt with
through this procedure.

Thank you again for contacting this Office and I hope you find this
information helpful.

Yours sincerely


Communications Unit

Letter to Head Of Customer Support

Dear Mr. O XXXXXX

I write to you this evening in relation to a dreadfully poor and utterly unprofessional way in which I and I presume many others are being treated by your company.

I signed up to your breeze service in late September and had my equipment installed in early October by your engineers. I asked them on the day was there any issues with the line of site and the reception of a signal and I was informed that all was well and there would not be a problem.

Subsequent to the installation of the equipment I started to have severe reception difficulties with the product .The speed was slower than my old dial up and working on the net was impossibility so slow was the connection. I contacted your “customer support “at once and from the word go this process descended into a nightmare .I was initially asked to carry out a battery of tests on my end to establish the Ping and trace test and finally take screen shots of the results and email them back .This I did and then nothing .Not a single contact. I had to ring again to try and talk to some one .It has to be said that when you ring your help line it is a complete waste of a phone call .For a start they will not answer the phone .I have rang continuously for over an hour at times and all I get is the usual “your call is important to us “guff. When they do answer they do nothing .They promise to check it out and get back but this never happens .I have had this promise a number of times.


Email is even worse .I have emailed a number of times and have requested a “read receipt” with my sent mails .The majority of emails come back to me deleted without being read .This means your support@irishbroand.ie is a complete waste of time . What is the point of emailing your company if you do not read your mail .I have kept all the mails if you wish to see them. I have also emailed your parent company NTR and received no replies.

I was eventually told that there was a problem with the high site in Clonsilla and that this was the cause of the problem .This was after many phone calls and emails .I was promised that this would be fixed without fail by 16/17th November. This promise was broken immediately and still I have a chronically poor broadband connection .It is hit and miss to say the least .It speeds up during the day but falls right back to sub dial up speeds after six pm.

I am now on the verge of getting the service removed .What makes me really annoyed is that your company cold called me and convinced me to go with your service. I am paying € 35 a month for the privilege of using your truly dreadful service .Your company takes the cash but does not deliver the service. I have even contacted my bank to cancel the direct debit and am unable to .I need it in writing from your company that the debit is cancelled .So you see you seem to have me every way

I ask you is this the way to treat your customers? Is this how bad service has become in Ireland that phone calls and other correspondence are routinely ignored and nothing done to help a customer with service difficulties? I am totally exasperated and frustrated with your company .This has caused me a lot of stress and real annoyance.

On this performance I would absolutely not be recommending your company to any of my friends or associates.


I look forward to your response on these issues.



Regards 51b man:mad:

watty

My friend 200meters from Limerick Clarion base station is getting 4k download today on IBB. (He has line of sight).

I'm 12km from Digiweb's Wireless Base in Limerick and getting 3000k download. I don't quite have LOS, a tree branch 300meters away is providing about 6dB attenuation. It needs trimmed before the Spring!

I think anyone that has studied Wireless BB knows that National Troll Road's Company IBB, does for Wireless BB what the pay booths do for the M50.

P.S. The Eircom "trigger level" here in this village is the same as or more than number of Eircom accounts as it is 1/2 the total population.

Xennon

Watty, where is digiwebs base in Limerick?..and how do you find them?

Dave_W

Sponge Bob

Xennon wrote:

Watty, where is digiwebs base in Limerick?

Watty has LOS to Woodcock Hill.

molinaalexis

51bman, open a new bank account, and do not deposit any more money in the old one, then the company will contact you, I am sure they will when the money is gone.

Maskhadov

is net1 part of irish broadband ?

Sponge Bob

net1 unfortunately for themselves run some of their backhaul thru IBB and will therefore have problems when IBB do ....regularly or frequently in other words.

Maskhadov

Net 1 are meant to put in wireless broadband for me but its going on so long i nearly gave up. maybe i should. they are expensive anyways and i dont want to pay for 4k down load speeds

cgarvey

I had assumed that the problems with IBB were more with base congestion, rather than backhaul congestion. I didn't realise it was backhaul which seems a remarkably easy & cheap thing to fix.

.cg

Cryos

cgarvey wrote:

I had assumed that the problems with IBB were more with base congestion, rather than backhaul congestion. I didn't realise it was backhaul which seems a remarkably easy & cheap thing to fix.

.cg

Just my input into this, if it was backhaul it would effect the entire ibb network; i think its more simply a routing problem most likely the nodes that are getting bad download speeds are conjested.

If this was a baseconfiguration problem you would see flatline service 24/7 rather than at off peak times (which is why im sugesting conjestion). IBB's network supports 2 other isps afaik.

It would be like if you had your network card configured wrong; untill you sorted it you would get really bad transfere speeds or no service.

Its probably all related to ibbs network topology not having full redundancy for routing. i.e theres only one path to send data instead of say 3 or four.

cgarvey

Aye, that was what I was saying .. It was me being polite in indirectly asking Sponge Bob was he sure?

watty

Xennon wrote:

Watty, where is digiwebs base in Limerick?..and how do you find them?

Dave_W

I only got connected last Thursday night.
Friday vandal / Goth / Hun /etc threw rock at "aerial" box and cracked cover. I moved it. It has been working well since Saturday.

Limerick base station is RTE transmitter at Woodcock Hill (the other two masts disappear behind hill as you go out the Rahen bypass.

They said that phone would take 2 days. Then on moday they say phone link may take two weeks. As soon as phone is up I will transfer my Eircom line number and cancel Eircom.

Ther is option for 2nd phone line and also video later. It is really a Cable aDSL adaptor with a wireless convertor in the "aerial box". The "real" speed of the 10GHz link and cable connection to the box with USB, Ethernet and phone ports seems to be 5.120Mbps each way.

Sponge Bob

cgarvey wrote:

Aye, that was what I was saying .. It was me being polite in indirectly asking Sponge Bob was he sure?

I am sure that the biggest problem is with their backhaul/core more than their base stations but some of those may also be cack .

chessed

I have had the extact same issues with this company - I have been trying to get them to collect the ripwave for the last few months and they won't, meanwhile they debitted my credit card without my permission - it's got to the stage where I have to cancel the credit card because I don't want to see these b*st*rds get a penny more - hewre is an email I sent to comreg abouyt them - I want to see these f**kers be struck off (or whatver the equivalent communications is!!) -

Hi,
I wish to make a complaint about the Irish Broadband service, the offering they are touting is the RipWave product for 18.95 a month.
I availed of this service after ringing the companyand being assured that my home in ******** would get service. After receiving the product I found that it would not work even trying all the things that the company suggested. I wasted 20 minutes on their technical support line a few times before getting an answer.
Eventually I got through and decided to cut my losses and return the product. This was 2 months ago and I have been trying ever since to get them to pick up the product, meanwhile I have been debitted 2 times on my Credit Card, even though I never authorised a repeat payment and I have never used the product.
I work in IT and I have never seen such shoddy service and downright dishonesty from a company. The whole thing has ruined my perception of broadband and I will not bother with it for years again. I truly hope you do something about this company as it is ruining any chance you have of increasing broadband services in Ireland if you allow such Charlatan Companies to operate in the market.
Thanks,

Anarchist

51bman wrote:

I have even contacted my bank to cancel the direct debit and am unable to .I need it in writing from your company that the debit is cancelled .So you see you seem to have me every way

I emptied my bank account out of cash when I had a similar problem to this a few years back and opened anotehr one.:v:

JohnC.

Anarchist wrote:

I emptied my bank account out of cash when I had a similar problem to this a few years back and opened anotehr one.:v:

Won't that just lead to extra charges for insufficient finds? Or did you close the account completely?

PowerHouseDan

The Head of Cust Support is "Aoife Ahern".

MrShadow

Anyone tried going to there head office in person?

liko

Hi,

I have IB fixed wireless network for half a year now and didn't have a single problem with it so far.... The only thing I'm concerned is that Rapidshare is unreachable often from this provider while others are doing just fine. I'm not sure if it is beginning of censorship in Iris Internet but it really pisses me off recently. Any does of you guys experience similar problems with rapidshare using Irish Broadband services?

Jumpy

*crackle of lightning*

HAHAHAAAAAA ITS ALIIIIIIIIIVE

PogMoThoin

Jumpy wrote: »

*crackle of lightning*

HAHAHAAAAAA ITS ALIIIIIIIIIVE

ROFL

Now this is what I call a Zombie Thread

liko

Weelll...Using search and then replying does the thing I guess :P