If you want a proper broadband service use Esat BT

Fighting Irish

I've had Esat BT+ for about 2 years(probably more) and its always great, its never went down(not that i've noticed) and the speeds never drop.

Anyone else agree?

Teamhair

Go for BT if you want to

a) if you're a renter, pay a deposit up front which you'll never get back
b) pay for another three months after you've requested disconnection.

Shower of bastards who I'm happy to say I've never dealt with- these are situation which a few friends of mine have found themselves in.

www.btirelandsucks.com

Sponge Bob

his point was uptimes and service is good.

he is correct, its what happens to your wallet that got BT into trouble.

Teamhair

Speeds and uptimes are good, I won't deny. Be that as it may, the frustration of dealing with disconnection fallout is what leaves the bad taste in the mouth.

Fighting Irish

I've never had to deal with BT customer service...........but from what i can tell most other broadband services fall well short in terms of speed and staying connected

bk

Fighting Irish wrote:

I've never had to deal with BT customer service...........but from what i can tell most other broadband services fall well short in terms of speed and staying connected

That simply is not true. Eircom have about 80% of all BB connections and their service is excellent and stable.

Digiweb DSL and Netource are also excellent. UTV is really the only dodgy bistream DSL provider in terms of performance.

Others like Smart, NTL, Magnet are also excellent.

IBB is really the company with the major disconnect and stability problems.

Sponge Bob

Fighting Irish wrote:

.but from what i can tell most other broadband services fall well short in terms of speed and staying connected

Thats bull****, NTL and Chorus rarely get stick from their BB customers and have had BB services for years and years .

They also have rather dismal CS

Fighting Irish

bk wrote:

That simply is not true. Eircom have about 80% of all BB connections and their service is excellent and stable.

Digiweb DSL and Netource are also excellent. UTV is really the only dodgy bistream DSL provider in terms of performance.

Others like Smart, NTL, Magnet are also excellent.

IBB is really the company with the major disconnect and stability problems.

Yes eircom are also good, but the rest?

I've known people with chorus, NTL, digiweb and clearwire and they all seem shyte, they either drop the connections or the speed slows at certain times

Fighting Irish

Sponge Bob wrote:

Thats bull****, NTL and Chorus rarely get stick from their BB customers and have had BB services for years and years .

They also have rather dismal CS

don't make me laugh, my GF has chorus the past 2 years, im not really sure but i presume its the 512kb(download) package, but when she uses newsgroups with chorus it rarely goes over 30kb/s

ghostdancer

Fighting Irish wrote:

Yes eircom are also good, but the rest?

I've known people with chorus, NTL, digiweb and clearwire and they all seem shyte, they either drop the connections or the speed slows at certain times

digiweb offer 4 different types of broadband, so perhaps you should clarify before making such ridiculous generalisations.


i'm with digiweb dsl and never had any speed or performance issues, nor have i heard any major ones here, no more than the odd one here and there from every other provider including Esat BT.

and considering what a complete shambles Esat's billing dept. is, i'll gladly keep well away from their "proper" broadband service.

Sponge Bob

so ye havent moved in together yet have yiz

WizZard

Until this week I'd have agreed with the OP, but my line has been dropping all week

hitbit

Different views here with various people claiming good / bad BB from providers. Personally I have had UTV for many years without connection / speed problems. I do however have a major bone to pick with them because they failed to support me when Eircom knackered my service for 3 weeks as a result of their pole fitters reversing the wiring to my home. Since then I have lost service again as a result of Eircoms hole diggers breaking some cables. Osama Bin Liner needs people like this. I am looking around for another provider but the options seem depressing. Now back to the issue, many companies are capable of providing reasonable BB, the question is how will they respond when something goes wrong, what will their customer support people do to help the customer. Reading this and other forums it seems that Eircom are a waste of space leaving people without service at their leisure. UTV want their customers to resolve issues themselves. BT have a crazy billing system and absent customer support in times of crisis. The rest I won't comment on because I have not had personal experience of them. I would point to the fact that download speeds are often relevant to the number of customers on board and the proximity of a digital exchange. Many services drop off as more customers come on stream.

Hitbit

There BB service is ok but for billing and the rest they are useless, i got a letter from them last week saying that my home phone service was now with them :eek: . Basically they went and stole me from Eircom :mad:

paulm17781

I have had two seperate addresses with awful BT connections. Frequent disconnects and downtime. Then when I cancelled it took ages for me to get the extra money they decided to take back.

Great company, highly recommended. :rolleyes:

Sponge Bob

hellboy99 wrote:

There BB service is ok but for billing and the rest they are useless, i got a letter from them last week saying that my home phone service was now with them :eek: . Basically they went and stole me from Eircom :mad:

Did you not sign up for a bundle or upgrade to a bundle ?

Should you be eircom for line rental and calls and BT for BB ?

How long have you been BT BB only ??

Did you originally sign up direct with BT for BT BB or thru an Agent ??

Sponge Bob

Sponge Bob wrote:

Did you not sign up for a bundle or upgrade to a bundle ?

I signed up for the bundle but cancelled the order the following day after been told some horror stories about BT (also that same day I rang Eircom to let them know, so there's a record with them.). A week later I got a letter from them saying my phone service was now switching to BT and that Direct Debit was been set up :eek: , I rang them up to find out what the hell was going on, none of them were very helpful or polite/apologetic about it, nor would they stop the order.
Had to ring BT back then after speaking to Comreg about it to get a complaint reference number and was told it was my fault and not their problem :mad: . Basically they stole me from Eircom and I have to wait now to go back to Eircom. In the meantime that I'm with BT for my calls I'm not paying them.

Sponge Bob wrote:

Should you be eircom for line rental and calls and BT for BB ?

Yes.

Sponge Bob wrote:

How long have you been BT BB only ??

Since they launched their BB service.

Sponge Bob wrote:

Did you originally sign up direct with BT for BT BB or thru an Agent ??

Direct.

Sponge Bob

Well in fairness you indicated to BT you would move from BB only to the all in bundle. Once the order was accepted by BT it was pretty hard to stop , I accept that, but I don't think they did anything criminal here.

My oul dear (pensioner) pays them a bit under €25 a month for all her calls and 1 mbit BB and is pretty happy with them (touches a giant plank under his table here ) so far.

Had BT changed the service Unbekownst to you or because some agent of theirs was on the make I would be a lot harder on them of course but they did not. You told them to.

Your get out is that BT normally apply a 5 day or 10 day cooling off (do nothing about it) period for orders including upgrade orders from their existing customers . You should have been able to cancel your order because it was still within that 5 or 10 day cooling off period so why did they not let you ????

Contact complaints@btireland.ie

Tell us how it goes.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Fighting Irish wrote:

Anyone else agree?

No.
There have been times where the connection quality was rubbish for weeks on end... spiking pings, packetloss... for the most part the connection was stable and nice, but I have experienced the bad patches.
For me a 'proper broadband service' would have a good customer support and billing infrastructure, which, in my experience, EsatBT did not during my time with them.
In fact, customer service ignoring me during one of these bad patches was my number 1 reason for cancelling.
Number 2 came some months after cancelation (only recently) when I got the infamous ghost bills from months where I wasn't even on their service... which took several phone calls to get sorted out. :rolleyes:

The search for a proper broadband service continues.

Sponge Bob

Sponge Bob wrote:

Well in fairness you indicated to BT you would move from BB only to the all in bundle. Once the order was accepted by BT it was pretty hard to stop , I accept that, but I don't think they did anything criminal here

I cancelled the order well within the 10 day cooling off period I was told by BT (I cancelled the order the following day from when I put it in :mad: )Comreg want to know why they didn't cancel it and according to them this isn't a first from BT. They must all be useless in BT !
As for criminal, well they went ahead and switched me over without my permission, in my book that’s criminal.

Sponge Bob wrote:

Your get out is that BT normally apply a 5 day or 10 day cooling off (do nothing about it) period for orders including upgrade orders from their existing customers . You should have been able to cancel your order because it was still within that 5 or 10 day cooling off period so why did they not let you ????

When I made the order I was told 10 days, I rang the following day to cancel and was told at the end of my conversation with the BT customer service agent that it would be cancelled, so you tell me what happened , cause BT won't tell me or even apologies for what they have done :mad:

shoegirl

I do think that the service itself is good, but you cannot rely on the billing dept to get things correct most of the time, they continued to debit me the month after cancelling the account, I cancelled the direct debit as a precaution, but still worried as I've heard horror stories about them reviving the direct debit as a new debit.

The billing alone put me off BT for life, even though I was very happy with the service itself.

Gurgle

shoegirl wrote:

I do think that the service itself is good, but you cannot rely on the billing dept to get things correct most of the time

True, but in fairness to them - a couple of dozen phone-calls and several hours spent listening to their on-hold music over a month or two and they will sort it out for you. Just don't ever try to change your package or provider again and its fine.

[/sarcasm]

SwampThing

gurgle's hit the nail on the head, as far as I've experienced.

Once you've got a stable service, don't touch a f@ckin thing!!! It's when you start messin with upgrade this, bundle me in for that, cancel the other - it all goes down the toilet.

When I moved house a while ago, I was in the middle of a 12 month contact. I as happy enough to continue with BT and asked them to transfer the service to the new house. Oh dear! long, long story cut short - 16 weeks later, a visit from some terribly helpful (no sarcasm, really) eircom engineers, a second and third line delivered to the house, I finally ended up with a stable connection, a weird setup and very weird billing.

I now have BB on one phone line, BT voice on another and being billed for both on a single BT bill. I get a separate eircom bill fior the second line.

My heart was in me mouth when they upgraded the BB to 3MB, but that actually went OK. I'm afraid for me life to do anything with it.