Chorus UPC/NTL - Broadband outage in Waterford

Johnick

Their technical support team on their 1908 number is a f***ing joke, they don't know their arse from their elbow.Anybody else having trouble with these idiots ?.

PS - Not expecting a lot of replies to this as most of their users in Waterford have either no or a very intermittent connection (I'm writing this from work).

old gregg

well, I'm using them at the moment and did have a few days of intermittent problems round about the time they were mucking around with the box on the street where I live presumably at the time they were shutting down the dodgy boxes a few weeks ago. It's been OK since though.

When dealing with any technical support encounter the trick is to start each sentence with 'please can you help me' and end it with 'I know where you live'

Johnick

old gregg wrote: »

well, I'm using them at the moment and did have a few days of intermittent problems round about the time they were mucking around with the box on the street where I live presumably at the time they were shutting down the dodgy boxes a few weeks ago. It's been OK since though.

When dealing with any technical support encounter the trick is to start each sentence with 'please can you help me' and end it with 'I know where you live'

They thought I lived in Maypark were their experiencing an outage, but I live in the middle of town (2 minute walk away from Geoff's). They said they'd send an engineer around for THE 16TH ! :eek:, I work for an ISP in technical support myself and told them "excuse my language, but that's f***ing ridiculous". I then got put through to a 2nd level agent who barely spoke English and who's tech knowledge consisted of getting me to turn their modem off for 30 seconds then back on which I already tried before calling but did it again just to please him.

When I started asking questions similar to the role in my own job he seemed out of his depth and put me onto a supervisor. They told me they'd move the appointment to the 15 (whoopdeedoo, a whole day sooner :rolleyes:) and that they would call me this morning (still nothing btw) about getting an appointment sooner, possibly the 11th but I dont have high hopes :mad:.

Waynecarr

Did you really expect anymore dealing with those incompetents

south

i got a letter from them today saying i download nearly 300GB last month and saying that other people in the area had complained of bad speeds.. I did download a bit but nowhere near as much as that or anymore then any other month..is there anyway of keeping a eye on what you’ve downloaded/uploaded? i'm on a ten gb line and this is the speed i get most of the time below

KingLoser

I've been having intermittent connection problems over the last week or so, where the modem would at random just drop out of synch for an hour or two.

Up around the Tycor area.

Aquos76

Mine is fine here all morning, Rockshire Road area in Ferrybank

old gregg

9.34MB/s down
0.90MB/s up
52ms ping

on John's Hill

using the same speed test doo-hickey

Paddy@CIRL

Fine here too, Ferrybank area ...

old gregg

maybe with all the heavy downloading that goes on over in Ferrybank there's hardly any Internet left when it crosses the quay river :P

sorrywhat

Mine is fine out on the dunmore road. Never had any problems with it before tbh.. Any time i call as well they are usually help ful. Ive never had to have a tech out so I dunno what waiting for that is like . I have had my service for 4 years in 3 different locations never once had an issue with it.

Johnick

sorrywhat wrote: »

Mine is fine out on the dunmore road. Never had any problems with it before tbh.. Any time i call as well they are usually help ful. Ive never had to have a tech out so I dunno what waiting for that is like . I have had my service for 4 years in 3 different locations never once had an issue with it.

had em 3 times in 3 different locations, had to ring once in each place only this time Im the billing contact.

They finally rang, said my line cant handle the Broadband and the TV so there lettin me cancel one and sending an engineer tuesday. Sky+ here I come.

chrism2007

south wrote: »

i got a letter from them today saying i download nearly 300GB last month and saying that other people in the area had complained of bad speeds.. I did download a bit but nowhere near as much as that or anymore then any other month..is there anyway of keeping a eye on what you’ve downloaded/uploaded? i'm on a ten gb line and this is the speed i get most of the time below

are you on wireless?

when someone downloads 300gb its usually fairly obvious

i.e 300 films appeared on your hard drive all of a sudden :pac:

south

chrism2007 wrote: »

are you on wireless?

when someone downloads 300gb its usually fairly obvious

i.e 300 films appeared on your hard drive all of a sudden :pac:

yes i am on wireless alright. i was thinking the same myself and while i might of downloaded a good few film size files but nowhere near 300. i've emailed them to see if they can send me my usage from the few months running up to last month.

daftdave

south wrote: »

yes i am on wireless alright. i was thinking the same myself and while i might of downloaded a good few film size files but nowhere near 300. i've emailed them to see if they can send me my usage from the few months running up to last month.

you need to consider this , every piece of data you access contributes to the amount that you have downloaded,

i.e , every web site ( including all the pictures/text/flash media etc.) , video sites i.e youtube etc. , facebook pictures,bebo pictures , skype , msn , google chat , , every little piece adds up , also throw in your windows updates and program updates for good measure.

get this !

im in australia at the moment staying in a short term apartment for 6 nights , they have internet here 7 nights for $60 with a 500mb download limit (which is a half of 1 gigabyte for those not sure !!) which is crazy i know but i needed internet access to find work so i accepted.

all i did was browse web sites for about 8 hours looking up jobs, companies , basic stuff , no downloads ,no utorrent, no programs , no you tube or any of that kinda stuff and my 500mb limit was shot in one day ,

so i can see if your pc gets a decent bit of use then there is a possibility that you can exceed your limit quite easily imo.

honeybadger

ntl are ment to be fooked anyway.courus are so much in dept the future is not orange

Mossy Monk

If I have understood what you have said can you provide a link to show that UPC are fooked. Thanking you.

JPA

honeybadger wrote: »

ntl are ment to be fooked anyway.courus are so much in dept the future is not orange

I seriously doubt that. chorus and Ntl are basically the same company now, owned by UPC, one of the biggest internet companies in the world.

Chochese

What I find really frustrating is that every night at around 12 or 1am my internet just stops! No amount of resettiung the modem or router will fix it. Every night. Stops working. Dead!

rogue-entity

Last time (and the only time) UPC broadband failed on me, the whole service went out.. turned out the problem was a corroded connector on the main trunk line right across from the house which does all the houses including ours up the road.. about 5 or so. I called them and I gave them the management code for the area.. which I have because the engineers left their worksheets behind.. they never came to setup the broadband as such.. they installed the modem and told me they would fix the line-amp to enable return path.. and then setup the modem.. but I ended up doing the setup myself and kept the work-sheets as a reference.

It was out since 4pm that day, and fixed at midday teh following morning amid a bunch of other complains of service outage. Asside from that, the service has been rock-solid.. albeit with erratic download speeds variying from 10 to the full 20.

Their customer service is getting better, they used to be far worse.. but I wouldnt rely on their technical support at all.. unless more than one person complains, they are hesitant to do anything.

TheFlatulator

I have had similar problems with them yesterday, its seems a weekly occurance like maintenance or something, but after I while if you try the following it can help: (picked it up from a few guys working in NTL in the uk before)

1. Power you cable modem
2. Disconnect the coxial cable from the back of it
3. Power back up the cable modem for a minute
4. Power it off again and reattach the cable
5. power back up the cable
6. Restart PC or router if thats connected to the router

That forces a refresh of the profile in the NTL server as it modem cannot get any signal and then forces the modem to releash and renew it address.

Works for me

christophicus

I'm in Ardkeen and have not had any problem for quite some time now ( touch wood ).

honeybadger

Mossy Monk wrote: »

If I have understood what you have said can you provide a link to show that UPC are fooked. Thanking you.

sorry mossy i have no link for the above as this was years back but according to my knowledge when upc took over ntl a few year back im sure upc had to service a massive dept left by ntl so as to make it profitable again and the dodgey box hasnt helped things either since then

Trotter

Did anyone else lose their UPC broadband connection last night? Im in work at the moment and Im not sure if its back or not.

I hope its not just my connection, I'll have to go through the ordeal of waiting for a technician between the hours of May and September.

Aquos76

Well mine was fine last night, well it was after 10pm when I was online and its fine today also.

Onyx_1

south wrote: »

i got a letter from them today saying i download nearly 300GB last month and saying that other people in the area had complained of bad speeds.. I did download a bit but nowhere near as much as that or anymore then any other month..is there anyway of keeping a eye on what you’ve downloaded/uploaded? i'm on a ten gb line and this is the speed i get most of the time below

This happened to me too. I received a letter to say that for the month of April I had downloaded over 700gb. Obviously this is a crazy figure! So I mailed the address they provided at the bottom of the letter and got this reply back

from	Mia Manek
to	xxxxxxxxxx
date	Tue, May 12, 2009 at 2:31 PM
subject	RE: Bandwidth Usage
	
Thank you for your mail
I have checked your usage and indeed you only had a very low amount of Usage in April.
I apologies for the error in sending you the letter there was an issue with my report at the end of the month and I sent out a handful of incorrect letters.

I would like to say that judging by your usage I don't think you will ever get any warnings letters especially one like the one I sent you.
I have left a note on your account to void the letter and have updated my records

apologies again
 
regards
Mia
 
Mia Manek
upc Broadband Usage CoOrdinator
Upc
Building P2
Eastpoint Business Park
Dublin 3

Following this reply I noticed that the evening time rate limiting (from 17:00 - 00:00) was no longer happening either ~ I'm now getting the full 2400k download speed at all times during the day (aside from the hiccups that happen every now and then anyway).

I would suggest that anyone that received a letter advising their usage was very high should contact the address provided to query it - it looked to me like the person above may have amended something affecting my account (to remove the evening time limit?) and left a history on my account - so it seems they are actively working this policy.

Trotter

My connection is gone again. It was working fine all evening and it just gave up the ghost. I'm reduced to the 3g on the mobile to get my fix. Time to ring the customer 'support' methinks.

JPA

Trotter wrote: »

My connection is gone again. It was working fine all evening and it just gave up the ghost. I'm reduced to the 3g on the mobile to get my fix. Time to ring the customer 'support' methinks.

My connection is rock solid. It may be that the connection to your house needs to be boosted.
Not sure on the technical details of it but I was getting disconnections soon after signing up, a technician came out, boosted the signal or whatever and it has been fine ever since.