Your help please! BT -v- UTV -v- Eircom bband ?

eskimo

My parents are now living in a town where the only available broadband seems to be BT Ireland, UTV Clicksilver and Eircom! (I don't want them getting wireless bband for various reasons!)

They're gonna get a 1MB package - but taking reliability, speed and line rental into account, what would be the best broadband package to get??

All advice, opinions, and help greatly appreciated!
Cheers.

bk

BT Ireland including line rental are the best value for money.

However their billing department is pretty shabby, so keep all bills, check bills/bank accounts for mistakes, when talking to them, take down the details of who you talked to, the date, the time and what you talked about. Just in case.

Have you checked with NTL and Chorus? Cable BB is better.

Praetorian

Eircom. Bad = Expensive. Good = Best Latency, Don't charge for going over caps, Best reliability

Esat BT. Bad = Can charge for going over caps. Good = Reasonable latency, and good reliability

UTV. Bad = Worst latency of the 3, can charge for going over caps. Good = Cheap

kaizersoze

Bt

OfflerCrocGod

Praetorian wrote:

Esat BT. Bad = Can charge for going over caps. Good = Reasonable latency, and good reliability

Are you certain they charge for breaking the cap; I always break it and have never been charged......I say go for BT with line rental.

dub45

kaizersoze wrote:

Bt

Given the unreliablility of BT's billing dept I really do feel very strongly that it is unwise to give an unqualified recommendation to them.

Given that the poster is inquiring on behalf of his parents he/she may wish to have a good look at the numerous threads about BT's billing and the lottery that is involved.

And as regards UTV they do charge for even the slightest excess but 'parents' are hardly likely to be breaking caps are they?:)

The absence of negative posts would suggest that UTV are performing well at the moment?

DemonOfTheFall

I'd say get a BT landline with BT broadband, for a pretty cheap and reliable solution. Haven't had any issues with my bt broadband sice february or so.

zippo22

If you can get past the set-up and finally get your first bill I'd recommend BT Broadband+.

kaizersoze

dub45 wrote:

Given the unreliablility of BT's billing dept I really do feel very strongly that it is unwise to give an unqualified recommendation to them.

Given that the poster is inquiring on behalf of his parents he/she may wish to have a good look at the numerous threads about BT's billing and the lottery that is involved.

And as regards UTV they do charge for even the slightest excess but 'parents' are hardly likely to be breaking caps are they?:)

The absence of negative posts would suggest that UTV are performing well at the moment?

The reply was based on the OP's question:

eskimo wrote:

They're gonna get a 1MB package - but taking reliability, speed and line rental into account, what would be the best broadband package to get??

It's not an "unqualified" opinion, it's based on personal experience.
I didn't recommend Eircom because they are overpriced.
I previously had UTV BB and had frequent problems with connection, being charged for going over the cap, abismal customer service and they became less and less value for money. Lets not forget the months subscription they "forgot" to collect but decided to collect it over a year later, so their billing isn't bulletproof either.
I am currently with BT BB plus since last June.
The order was processed quickly and the changeover from UTV was seamless.
I get my bills on time, for the correct ammount and the money is taken from my bank account as agreed.
My connection has been solid since the start.
I only had to contact CS twice with minor issues and they were sorted out quickly.
I have a 24gb cap that I break regularly and have never been charged.
And all that for €50p/m incl. line rental:)
I have no problem reccommending them and have done to anyone I know that asks.

I know people have had problems with billing but I personally haven't.:)

eskimo

Cheers for all the advice! Yeah I checked and they can't get cable down there.

I'm leaning towards BT although I just remembered today that when we first got dial-up about 4 years ago we had major problems with them (or Esat as they were back then) and it resulted in us having to pay over £400 that we didn't owe. They were a ****ing disgrace. Basically we signed up for flat-rate dial-up but they gave us the number for pay-by-the-minute instead so we obviously were paying by the minute thinking we had been given the flat-rate number since that what we signed up to! They claimed it was our fault saying that we must have asked for the wrong number. They didnt seem to realise how bloody dumb that sounds! They were so obnoxious and arrogant about it as well. So thanks to some dumb-ass call-centre asshole who gave us the wrong number we were overcharged £400 since we couldn't prove we didn't ask for the wrong number. :mad: How ****ing ridiculous... just thinking back on it now!!!!

So maybe not BT. I'll prob go with UTV if they give us a decent package deal.

Anyone else got any other ideas??

Nexus

BT are the worst company ever to deal with. Ive been with them 18 months if not longer and have now gone to eircom. BT did nuthin but bull**** and overcharge me for everythin. Some times they wouldnt even send me a bill. Then i would get a letter sayin that i was late with my payments. I finally cracked and left them!. Utter ***** tbh

mike65

With BT service issues and eircoms prices I'd go with UTV, they had problems with DNS and speed but I've not had hassle for a good while now.

Mike.

ghostdancer

eskimo wrote:

My parents are now living in a town where the only available broadband seems to be BT Ireland, UTV Clicksilver and Eircom! (I don't want them getting wireless bband for various reasons!)

They're gonna get a 1MB package - but taking reliability, speed and line rental into account, what would be the best broadband package to get??

All advice, opinions, and help greatly appreciated!
Cheers.

just to let you know they can get digiweb too,i was in the same type of situation (can't avail of wireless apart from local schemes), and i got digiweb 2mb 2 weeks aago, the modem/router arrived out 4 working days later. working perfectly, set up was a breeze, haven't heard of any concerns over their billing dept. on here either, don't understand why they're not mentioned more tbh...