Alternatives to eircom??

what_car

currently paying eircom 107 yoyos every 2 months for 1 mb broadband and all local and national calls ( dont make many calls)... its a rip off..


is there any good reliable, cheaper alternatives to my current provider? dont mention BT , had them before never again.


i think i dont have line of sight for metro. and smart are not in my area and dont have plans to either!

i dont want a service that bills only by DD, prefer to manually pay the bill.
( learned from my BT experience)

crawler

what_car wrote: »

currently paying eircom 107 yoyos every 2 months for 1 mb broadband and all local and national calls ( dont make many calls)... its a rip off..


is there any good reliable, cheaper alternatives to my current provider? dont mention BT , had them before never again.


i think i dont have line of sight for metro. and smart are not in my area and dont have plans to either!

i dont want a service that bills only by DD, prefer to manually pay the bill.
( learned from my BT experience)

UPC?

caoimhemo

crawler wrote: »

UPC?

Ill second that , there new speeds are brilliant (12mb for 40 euro a month)and you dont have to pay by DD
They also offer a phone service although its not available in my area yet

barnicles

Where are you based?

Magnet: Rory

For decent residential broadband there really only are 3 choices.

Magnet
UPC
Smart

The others wont supply you with anything above 3mb for residential (that i know of) and for pure speed you really dont want to go wireless.

John Mason

i am with UTV Talk - €16.99, a month unlimited (not really sure what that means).

It work fine for me but i only really use it for boards, ebay etc. so i wouldnt know what the speeds for downloading music and stuff like that. Actually, i havent got a clue how to downloads music

but i think they are good have been with them over a year and have no problems

Cabaal

I've been doing alot of re-search on this the last while and have decided to go with UTV for 2MB incl line rental and talk package and an unlimited broadband option for 55e a month, 6 month contract and first two months free for the broadband side of things.

As far as eircom re-sold packages go its pretty good...see my broadband saga in my sig for more info as time goes by

dub45

Afaik UTV will only do dd. And dont UPC charge extra if you dont pay by dd?

Black Eye Guy

The new Vodafone Landline service is a pretty good offer, €59 a month for 3mb (Which will be upgraded to 7.6 for no extra cost) along with free calls to local and national no.s and 3 Vodafone No.s.

Cabaal

dub45 wrote: »

Afaik UTV will only do dd. And dont UPC charge extra if you dont pay by dd?

nope, they do Credit Card & Laser too, just signed upto them
http://www.cabaal.org/log/labels/broadband.html

Black Eye Guy wrote: »

The new Vodafone Landline service is a pretty good offer, €59 a month for 3mb (Which will be upgraded to 7.6 for no extra cost) along with free calls to local and national no.s and 3 Vodafone No.s.

Its basically Perlico though with a few changes, not bad though

dub45

Cabaal wrote: »

nope, they do Credit Card & Laser too, just signed upto them

Well both present the same dangers as the dd - they have access! In fact based on my own experience with them I can testify that they have absolutely no respect whatsoever for the debiting procedures.

Just before I left them for Smart having cancelled my account I received a bill for the next months rental. I emailed them in plenty of time formally instructing them not to debit my laser card and formally withdrawing permission from them to do so. In spite of this they went ahead and debited the card. I had terrible trouble getting my money back and you would not believe they crappy excuses they gave me in the course of this. On that basis I would never recommend them to anyone again.

Magnet: Rory

My advice here would be always to call up the billing department of the company your buying the services off, good companies should allow you do this. If your really nervous about it ask to talk to billing before the salesperson puts through the order.

Remember if the billing department gets a bit nervous or if they cant give you answers there and then its a very bad sign. Direct debit can be difficult at times and mistakes can be made by careless admin people but its so much easier than any other option i really think its worth while.

dub45

Rorser wrote: »

My advice here would be always to call up the billing department of the company your buying the services off, good companies should allow you do this. If your really nervous about it ask to talk to billing before the salesperson puts through the order.

Remember if the billing department gets a bit nervous or if they cant give you answers there and then its a very bad sign. Direct debit can be difficult at times and mistakes can be made by careless admin people but its so much easier than any other option i really think its worth while.

And what do you expect the billing dept to say? Hello there sign up with us we are wonderfu? They are hardly going to say we make a bags of dds every month and make if very hard for people to get their money back:(

The dd system is an appallingly flawed system with many weaknesses. In general company staff dont Know the rules of the scheme. Bank staff dont know the rules of the scheme. It is very hard to come by a guide to the scheme. there is no proper complaints procedure. There is no sanction for the payer against a company who misbehaves and lots of companies dont honour the notice period. And thats only the beginning:)

There appears to be no special requirement as to how payer data is stored within companies. there is no requirment in the scheme to remove bank information when a dd is cancelled. It has been regularly documented on here that companies have simply ignored instructions to cancel dds.

corkproducers

I just got stung for going over perlicos poxy 10GB download limit, €28 extra it cost me, they never overcharged last year but are since feb at least. :mad:

Ive just being comparing prices,

and Smart Telecom offer a 4Mb broadband service with free calls local/national, with no limits,

cheaper than Eircoms & Perlicos wait for it......

1 Mb package with free local/national calls, which has a 10GB download limit!!!!!

Just shows how much a rip off eircom and perlico are.

Just noticed a smart add up in the top right corner of this page hehe.

heres their price plan:

Magnet: Rory

Im trying to offer people advice from my own experience, right or wrong as a consumer you will have to take the initiative and ensure that you have email records to prove that you requested a cancellation of the service.

On the issue of talking to the billing department i would say that as a customer it may be advisable to talk to the people who are carrying out the process, if nothing else it may give you an insight how to resolve any problems should they arise.

corkproducers

I was looking in smarts faq there and this is the answer for "what is the contention ratio":


"When you are a Smart Telecom customer, you don't have to worry about contention ratios. Because Smart Telecom owns and operates its high-capacity fibre-optic network, it is automatically upgraded as links in the network approach capacity. What this means for you is unrestricted high-speed Internet access all the time. Read more about Smart Telecom's Next Generation Network."


Could anyone in the know confirm this or shed a little more light?

Magnet: Rory

Smart and Magnet both offer contention free services, Smart offer it on ADSL2+ (and a small fibre community) and Magnet offer it on fibre and ADSL2+. To my knowledge these are the only companies offering 1:1 contention to residential users in the Republic of Ireland.

For the uninitiated contention basically means that your line is dedicated and will not slow down regardless of the activity of other users in the area.

It really just means that if you buy 4mb for example, your speed will stay more or less at 4mb and will not drop.

corkproducers

Rorser wrote: »

Smart and Magnet both offer contention free services, Smart offer it on ADSL2+ (and a small fibre community) and Magnet offer it on fibre and ADSL2+. To my knowledge these are the only companies offering 1:1 contention to residential users in the Republic of Ireland.

For the uninitiated contention basically means that your line is dedicated and will not slow down regardless of the activity of other users in the area.

It really just means that if you buy 4mb for example, your speed will stay more or less at 4mb and will not drop.

Thanks for confirming it, seems a much better deal than Vodafones package then.

Cabaal

Its been said before if you can get smart you'd be crazy not to based on the options available as part of the package and price, if you can't get smart (like me) pick and choose a bit-stream re-seller.