Chorus shows it's true colours

Irish Steve

Chorus have at last shown their true colours to a wider audience.

I gave up on them years ago and went over to Sky, as it was a waste of time trying to get any sort of quality out of what used to be Cable Management's cable system in Ashbourne. The quality is poor, the head end crashes regularly, teletext is a joke, widescreen is not correctly formatted, there's co channel interference, the list is endless, and ongoing. It's a regular source of discussion ( and to me amusement) when we get together with friends.

Some of our neighbours have had no service on cable now for nearly 2 weeks, and it appears that one of the main feeder cables has been deliberately cut at a house near them, and the owner is refusing access to Chorus.

This has been ongoing, and the latest twist in the saga is that Chorus have now written to the 20 or so houses that are off service, and told them that they are no longer in a position to provide service.

It appears that they are unable to find an alternative route for the cable. They haven't tried very hard, and I suspect that the truth is that they no longer have accurate maps of what's actually on and in the ground, due to appalling management in the CMI days, so they don't even know what alternative routes are available.

They have offered no alternative at all, not digital, nothing. Looks to me like there's an open market in our area for Sky or FTA installers to earn some easy money over the next few weeks.

The cable service in Ashbourne has been bad for years, and it's now becoming clear that Chorus have no interest, capability or willingness to do anything to resolve issues that are 100% in their court. Given that they were a monopoly supplier for years, and no alternatives were even allowed, that they can now get away with just abandoning customers is a clear indictment of the rip off policies that successive governments have allowed the cable TV companies to get away with for years.

A sign of the times? Looks that way.

watty

Yet oddly it is not now an monoploy

com7

and what are you worried about if ve you ve sky ?

Irish Steve

com7 wrote:

and what are you worried about if ve you ve sky ?

I had been hoping that they were going to get their act together and offer a reasonable package of TV, phone and broadband, a development of the sort of thing that was once on offer in Swords, which might have put some pressure on the other (Eircon) monopoly to offer a reasonably priced package to it's customers.

From what I'm seeing, a very forlorn hope, I suspect that if Comreg ever get a real LLU package into place, I'm more likely to get a sensible broadband and phone package offered by Sky.

I care because I don't like to see people ripped off having paid good money to a supplier, and then being dumped without any real effort being made to solve a problem that is 100% down to the supplier. That simple.

CMI, then Chorus have been getting a lot of money from a captive audience for years, and now it's suddenly not going quite so smoothly for them, they're turning their backs on people, instead of trying to offer an alternative. That sort of attitude annoys me, in the same way that paying the sort of money I am for a supposed broadband service annoys me.

My ISP is in Salzburg, and pays about the same per month for his broadband as I pay for mine, the difference being that he's on Fibre Optic, and his speeds are about 30 times faster on download, and 200 times faster on upload, as he's got 100 Mbit DSL.

paulm17781

Irish Steve wrote:

I care because I don't like to see people ripped off having paid good money to a supplier, and then being dumped without any real effort being made to solve a problem that is 100% down to the supplier. That simple.

You said someone cut the line and won't let them fix it. I see your point but it isn't 100% their fault.

Jumpy

How do you know no effort has been made?

steveon

If its only a small number of houses effected, maybe it isn't viable for Chorus to find an alternative routing for the cabling. There may in fact be only a small number of legitimate customers on that route, usually when this happens, they offer the customer MMDS, they have had similar problems in Limerick and therefore removed the cabling system to stop countertheft, and new customers only choice would be MMDS or to find an alternative such as sky or magnet.

who is this

Irish Steve wrote:

Some of our neighbours have had no service on cable now for nearly 2 weeks, and it appears that one of the main feeder cables has been deliberately cut at a house near them, and the owner is refusing access to Chorus.

Well at the very least it sounds like UPC have grounds for a lawsuit. Whether or not they allow access or want the feeder in their garden(?) they don't have the right to damage UPC property. I'm surprised that wasn't their first course of action when they were refused access.

I would also suspect that Chorus might have probably had a contract with the owner in question. If they did, there's possible grounds for another lawsuit.

Solair

I feel your pain, but it sounds like you're just living next to some crack pot who hates cable.

Given half a chance he/she will more than likely take a planning objection to your Sky minidish too!

Sometimes you just have neighbours from hell. I really hope that UPC sue them as they will have a contract / right of way established. You can't just go around cutting people's cable service off like that.

I mean what's next, I don't like the look of those eircom poles outside my property. I'll just take a chain saw to them?!?!

The tax man

they will have a contract / right of way established.

Once the householder is no longer a customer they can do what ever they want with the cable going across their property. Right of way only lasts as long as the contract. Most tell/ask company to remove cables but if the company delays due to the reason stated above ie re-routing issues etc they'll just cut the cables. Most times these people don't give a shíte about the neighbours. Some cases like this get resolved when the householder in question is informed what their actions will do to the neighbours but you'll always come across the neighbour from hell.
I'm sure Chorus looked into a re-route but it isn't always possible.
It's a daily issue with NTL and a pain in the arse. Sometimes it just can't be resolved. Sorry but that's the truth.

Solair

Are you 100% sure?

I would have thought the right of way would continue regardless of whether you're a subscriber or not.

watty

Generally the "right of way" continues even if you are not a subscriber. Technically they ought to get a "way leave" or something, but I think even without a document, after X years (5?) you can't remove or object to the cable.

Cutting the cable is always criminal damage, unless you have got a court injunction for them to remove the cable that they have ignored.

Solair

It's not the cable company's fault that one of your neighbours is intent on doing criminal damage to the local cable network and is being completely unreasonable.

Why don't you find out who he is, send a letter to all those impacted upon and call him into a community meeting?

Or, have a local election candidate do the same? they'll be enthusiastic!

The tax man

Solair wrote:

Are you 100% sure?

I would have thought the right of way would continue regardless of whether you're a subscriber or not.

Happens every week. Company will try to offer a sweetener to keep householder on side. If they refuse the offer and still insist in cables been removed then the cables get removed after a re-route has been implemented. If there were right of way laws in place I'm sure the cable companies would be using them.

Irish Steve

I have at last managed to get an update. I popped in to see one of the people affected by this over the weekend, (there are quite a few) and it seems that the original information being given out was less than the full story, and the original aspect of Chorus and true colours is even more applicable.

2 houses share a boundary wall, and since the days of the big flood, or even earlier, the cable on the wall has been a mess, with big loops hanging out of it, and other similar mess.

About 3 months ago, one of the householders gave Chorus notice that they were about to update and change their garden, and that to tidy up the mess, they wanted the cable put in a duct underground. Not unreasonable one would think.

Anyway, nothing happened, and they waited and waited and eventually, as the crew to do the garden update job had arrived and were making a start, the cable was cut. Not unreasonable, given that they had given Chorus 3 months notice.

Now, there's no route one side of the wall.

As a result, there's no service to about 20 houses, and the lies that have been told by Customer services to different customers (who are now all comparing notes) are about as good and varied as the promises that have been peddled around the doors by the multifarious politicians all desperate to get our votes. The original lies about difficult neighbour etc are just that, the bottom line is complete failure of internal communication within Chorus, and engineers that don't know where their own network has cable, in that my friend has already been able to establish an alternative and viable route for a cable, but Chorus seem to be unaware or unwilling to use it.

As far as my friends are concerned, they've taken the line of least resistance, and put up a free to air satellite, shortly to be followed by a better quality external aerial to get a better quality from 3 Rock mast, which restores the RTE's other terrestrial channels.

At one time, Comreg could hassle people like Chorus for non performance, but they no longer have any responsibility, which means that to all intents and purposes, the cable bandits are unregulated again, and can go back to their bad old ways as used to be the case.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm even more relieved that I moved away a long time ago, in that from talking to the people around me, things are as bad as they used to be years ago, with head end lock up several times a day, teletext not working, co channel interference because of the way they scramble the premium channels, incorrect picture sizing with 16:9 and 4:3, and all sorts of other hassles.

How are they allowed to get away with such poor quality of service, and why is it that there is no regulation on the cable providers, when Comreg at one point were able to intervene to force improvements.

Another typical Government screw up, they don't really want to rock the boat, just in case the service providers decide to pull the plug and stop providing the service, which opens the door even wider to Sky.

lucernarian

Did you actually try ComReg, and your local press??

They would simply hate to hear (along with UPC) that you've been in contact with local media.

People have had engineer callouts from eircom to "fix" the line for broadband after such action. It really does work.

Solair

I still think it's completely unacceptable to cut a cable tv line. By all means, fight it out with NTL/Chorus but, it's not fair for that person to have just cut the cable main line! Did he not think it would impact upon his neighbours?!

Seriously, it's as bad as cutting an eircom line that was crossing your property.

I can't imagine how a coax cable could be THAT messy. If the neighbour was so concerned, it could have been camoflagued without damaging it.

Chorus should be more responsive, but that's vandalism in my book.

I would take it up with Comreg, as it's unacceptable that they would leave 20+ customers without service, but I would have a word with that neighbour too!!

Irish Steve

Solair wrote:

I still think it's completely unacceptable to cut a cable tv line.

From what I can get, they didn't do this lightly, they gave 3 months notice that the work was going to be done. If Chorus cared, they would have at least responded before the end of the 3 months, apparently, they turned up a week after the work started, only as a result of the problems caused by the removal of the cable, and by that stage, there was no way that an underground duct could be installed to take the cable, the work was too far advanced.

The house concerned tried to get it sorted by the right means, and Chorus, as usual, did nothing. Builders won't sit waiting to start work because a cable is in the way, not if the service provider has ignored the notification, and 3 months is more than enough for them to have moved the cable.

No, in answer to your thought, I've no time at all for Chorus, they have been the biggest waste of space going in terms of supposedly providing a service to the community in Ashbourne.

As things stand now, their network, such as it is, is at least 10 years out of date, it's unreliable, poor quality, crashes most days, has bad interference on many channels and does not provide the right information for modern equipment. For many years they had a monopoly, and took full advantage of that situation. Now, people have a choice, and (like me) have taken it, the number of Sky dishes in the area around us, which was fully cabled, is now only amazing, and primarily because the quality and reliability of Chorus was and is so poor.

willg

Having read your story "Irish Steve" I still think it was wrong what the neighbour did cutting the cable. He/she must have known it would affect someone further along the line. I agree it was very poor on the part of Chorus not to at least reply to the request to tidy up the cable but it was still wrong to cut the line and and cause willful damage and depriving other paying customers of service.

I totally agree that the level of service from Chorus/NTL is far from acceptable at times but I honestly cannot see how damaging elements of the network is going help improve the level of service. I'm sure they have enough issues with cable quality and bad installations without this. I've seen many eircom line installations running through peoples land and they are far from being the most tidy but that doesn't give the land owner the right to sever the cables because they look untidy. They are infrastructural elements just like roads, water lines, sewage lines and power lines and provide service to paying customers who have the right to that service when they pay for it.

Just for the record I don't work for Chorus/NTL or Eircom, I'm just trying to keep and open mind and a balanced approach as I see it.