F**king UPC

lightspeed

UPC are upgrading our set top boxes today.

Ive the recorder box and two other ones for the parents are standard.

They had to replace mine in the attic room last week which had nothing to do with the upgrade. Although, today though i got the same error as before they replaced the box.Today they were supposed to send out 2 standard boxes.

They sent one standard box without a remote control and one plus box for which the card slot seems to be broke as it will only go in crooked and says smart card error. Also the letter says the activation code is "132"

I phone them and they say they will get someone out to me in a half hour and he will give me call. They also say that "The activation code is "132" but it was changed today and is 131". Word for word that is what the agent advised.

Over an hour later no call received and no sign of anyone. I phone again and they say they will have to call me back as they have system issues. I gave the agent my mobile to call me back.

Of course around 40 minutes later they ring me on the landline meaning the agent has to hang up to phone back on the mobile to talk me through fixing the one in the attic.

She then puts me through to the technical support team dealing with the upgrades. That rings for about 20 seconds and hangs up automatically.

I phone again and get through to the same agent who puts me on hold and comes back to say that her manager has advised her to log a request for the support team to call me. That was about 15-20 minutes ago now.

I work in customer service and know what it is like to deal with d**k head customers but seems like they taking the piss now. Should i be going more apelike at this point or remain patient?

dodderangler

I recently cancelled the movies with them after ringing 3 times t tell them to cancel it.
So I paid for the movies for over a year and some movies I have recorded I want to keep but can't watch now cuz I don't have the movie stations.
So again I paid for movies for over a year and can't watch the recorded ones?
It's a joke

Pawn

In fairness I am sick of them too. First mixed up the parcels with the "upgraded" hardware they got me into ordering, so I had no modem for a week (they asked me to come down to the depo and collect it myself, joke) and now the WiFi keeps disconnecting a number of times a day.

biko

;.;

keith16

dodderangler wrote: »

I recently cancelled the movies with them after ringing 3 times t tell them to cancel it.
So I paid for the movies for over a year and some movies I have recorded I want to keep but can't watch now cuz I don't have the movie stations.
So again I paid for movies for over a year and can't watch the recorded ones?
It's a joke

Have you tried watching the movies?

lightspeed

Pawn wrote: »

In fairness I am sick of them too. First mixed up the parcels with the "upgraded" hardware they got me into ordering, so I had no modem for a week (they asked me to come down to the depo and collect it myself, joke) and now the WiFi keeps disconnecting a number of times a day.

Ive had quite a bit of bother with the wifi dropping as well in recent months. Im from balbriggan and not including the other times when wifi just drops and i have to reset the modem, there have been around 3 "essential maintenance works "carried out in the balbriggan area. Of course i want as good as service as possible so i have to be somewhat understanding but dont see why there are so many essential maintenances. Cant they just do it on one day and leave it at that?

Temptamperu

HA! paying for tv and movies.... n00bs :pac:

Maximus Alexander

Thanks for sharing OP.

Menas

If only there was a UPC rep on boards that you could complain to.....or a consumer issues forum....or a ranting and raving forum....

hitbit

The quality of their service has plummeted to an all time low and they can not fix the problems. They provided an excellent service up to about 3 years ago but everything, tv, broadband and wifi has gone crap. I'm off to Sky despite their much weaker broadband and far more expensive products.


hitbit

Pumpkinseeds

Don't even get me started on UPC. The worst service we have ever had, abysmal customer service, lies and I could go on and on all night. There latest box offering is a piece of sh*t. I thought Sky were bad but after going back to UPC and experiencing their level of sh*t we couldn't get away from UPC fast enough, even had to tell our bank to stop paying the Direct Debit as they were continually debiting us for a service we hadn't had for months and refusing to accept that they were.

lightspeed

I have still not received any phone call from tech support or anybody?

What annoys me aswell is the word sorry is not used. There is an attitude as if somehow the customer is at fault.

Like sending me a letter with the enclosed pin which even advises that i need to use in the instruction letter, even though it is wrong and wont work. They talk to me as if i should know that automatically somehow?

I dont even watch the tv much, but still i assume this upgrade is a big enough operation they prepared for. My father said the delivery guy said he had another 110 to deliver in balbriggan alone.

How can they make so many mistakes and provide such a poor service for something they obviously anticipate and planned for?

Pawn

lightspeed wrote: »

Ive had quite a bit of bother with the wifi dropping as well in recent months. Im from balbriggan and not including the other times when wifi just drops and i have to reset the modem, there have been around 3 "essential maintenance works "carried out in the balbriggan area. Of course i want as good as service as possible so i have to be somewhat understanding but dont see why there are so many essential maintenances. Cant they just do it on one day and leave it at that?

It has al started when I was offered faster broadband for a better price BUT I needed a new device which is a modem and a wifi router combined. Since I have this box at home there is a constant issue with connections on a number of devices and platforms. I've plumbed an Asus wifi router initially but it didnt seem to have helped, as the issue does not only seem to be with the wifi signal, my log is pretty much full of this:

2014-06-05 18:29:10: [Warn] Map Reject - Not Authorized for Requested Downstream Traffic ...
2014-06-04 20:15:11: [Major] Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...
2014-06-04 19:21:57: [Warn] Map Reject - Not Authorized for Requested Downstream Traffic ...
2014-06-04 15:19:32: [Major] Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...
2014-06-04 08:25:27: [Warn] Map Reject - Not Authorized for Requested Downstream Traffic ...
2014-06-03 21:09:37: [Major] Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...
2014-06-03 20:49:37: [Warn] Map Reject - Not Authorized for Requested Downstream Traffic ...
2014-06-03 15:09:23: [Major] Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...
2014-06-03 08:17:57: [Warn] Map Reject - Not Authorized for Requested Downstream Traffic ...
2014-06-03 00:33:03: [Major] Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...
2014-06-03 00:19:40: [Warn] Map Reject - Not Authorized for Requested Downstream Traffic ...
2014-06-02 21:31:16: [Major] Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...
2014-06-02 20:32:08: [Warn] Map Reject - Not Authorized for Requested Downstream Traffic ...
2014-06-02 19:47:25: [Info] TLV-11 - unrecognized OID;CM-MAC=xxxxx0:35:28:2f;CMTS-MAC=0...
--- -- --:--:--: [Warn] DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response ;CM-MAC...
--- -- --:--:--: [Info] Honoring MDD; IP provisioning mode = IPv4
--- -- --:--:--: [Info] WiFi Interface [wl0] set to Channel 1 (Side-Band Channel:N/A)...
2014-06-01 18:27:08: [Major] Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Un...
2014-06-01 18:27:08: [Major] SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire FEC f...
2014-06-01 18:27:06: [Major] Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Un...
2014-06-01 18:27:06: [Major] SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire FEC f...
2014-06-01 18:27:04: [Major] Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Un...
2014-06-01 18:27:04: [Major] SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire FEC f...
2014-06-01 18:27:03: [Major] Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Un...
2014-06-01 18:27:03: [Major] SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire FEC f...
2014-06-01 18:26:56: [Major] SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire FEC f...
2014-06-01 18:26:43: [Major] SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire FEC f...
2014-05-30 16:11:29: [Major] 16 consecutive T3 timeouts while trying to range on upstream ...
2014-05-30 16:11:29: [Major] Unicast Maintenance Ranging attempted - No response - Retries...
2014-05-30 16:11:29: [Major] Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...
2014-05-29 23:51:26: [Major] Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...
2014-05-28 22:32:51: [Major] Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...

Gran Hermano

Trigger Happy wrote: »

If only there was a UPC rep on boards that you could complain to.....or a consumer issues forum....or a ranting and raving forum....

Many thanks for highlighting your concern. Please feel free to PM your name and account details to UPC Reps so we may add it it the list of issues we are ignoring.

y0ssar1an22

I just hate their remote. How hard is it to design a remote that doesn't spaz out 20 times a day?

smellmepower

dodderangler wrote: »

I recently cancelled the movies with them after ringing 3 times t tell them to cancel it.
So I paid for the movies for over a year and some movies I have recorded I want to keep but can't watch now cuz I don't have the movie stations.
So again I paid for movies for over a year and can't watch the recorded ones?
It's a joke

Sky do this too.

If you could still watch programs you've recorded after you've stopped subscribing to the channels, you could take sky movies,record tonnes of movies,cancel the sub and watch them over 2-3 months, then resub to record more movies. it's been done this way to prevent that from happening.

yoyo

hitbit wrote: »

The quality of their service has plummeted to an all time low and they can not fix the problems. They provided an excellent service up to about 3 years ago but everything, tv, broadband and wifi has gone crap. I'm off to Sky despite their much weaker broadband and far more expensive products.


hitbit

Sky "broadand" is rubbish, seriously go for a efibre reseller, Eircom, Vodafone etc. In fairness I don't have much complaints about UPC's broadband, cancelled the TV service a while back (and yes its rubbish!).

Nick

Davarus Walrus

Craig Fúcking Doyle.

Channel 100.

Murderous rage.

Shakespeare's Sister

When he says "extrawdinary"... must... take... deep... breaths.

Lone Stone

The horizon box is abysmal, i was happy with upc till we got that piece of ****e.

mike65

Freesat FTW

suicide_circus

i have upc. tv, internet & phone always work just as theyre meant to. no compaints.

tk123

Talk to Joe ... UPC -> http://www.boards.ie/ttforum/1546

AlanS181824

Sky TV and Vodafone Fibre all the way!

Had UPC before and their customer support is utterly woeful...

lightspeed

We finally got a call back at 9:00pm this evening which was a good 3 hours or more from when i was advised after a lot of dicking around i would get a call back.

The account is in my fathers name but i was dealing with everything and each agent took my name. The guy from support who rang above just said so what's the problem are you not receiving any service?

I said, that's a fair description of the problem. He had no clue or idea of the issues despite me speaking to 4 other people at length who all took note of the issues. I advised of the issues again and he said he would email them across and a technician will be out tomorrow.

I reckon provide all their customers with new boxes, is costing them a fortune but they figure it will be worthwhile and necessary to compete with sky and eircom. However, it looks like they tried to cut back customer services to reduce cost and i reckon it has had the opposite effect.

If everybody got the instruction letter that i got with the wrong code, how many phone calls to tech support did that result in and how much did it cost even in short term, nevermind damage to brand image?

19543261

not enough bread going around in here lads. up the level of bread

nocoverart

Temptamperu wrote: »

HA! paying for tv and movies.... n00bs :pac:

Yup, so true! I started to get Netflix in to make myself feel like I'm giving something back, but then I realised that by using different 3V and emails I could constantly take advantage of their free trials. The Internet, best invention since the vagina.

BonkeyDonker

lightspeed wrote: »

I said, that's a fair description of the problem. He had no clue or idea of the issues despite me speaking to 4 other people at length who all took note of the issues. I advised of the issues again and he said he would email them across and a technician will be out tomorrow.

I had this with them over a period of months - and everytime I rang them I had to go through the initial problem, and then all the solutions they had tried to prevent me having to do it all again.

And like everybody seems to say - their broadband is great, their TV is poor at best. I will be back to Sky for this as soon as I can.

CrazyRabbit

In my last address, we had logged a total of 186 calls over 4 years to them. Various issue...mostly with broadband. They did sort everything out each time (eventually), but the service kept breaking. It finally became stable after the last major upgrade to their networks.

To their credit though, they Customer Care team did arrange for us to get almost 6 months free service (in total) as compensation for the issues.

Word of warning. Do not, under any circumstances allow them to upgrade your modem to the new Horizon boxes. They are incredible bad pieces of hardware and are riddled with issues. Not to mention the fact that they are a pain if your home PC isn't located in the same room as your TV.

hitbit

UPC used to be ok when we had the old small cisco modem ably supported by the magnificent little Netgear router. Had real 30mb download and 3mb upload along with excellent WIFI throughout the house and gardens using 3 x pcs 1 x laptop 2 x xbox and 4 by mobile phones. And I kid you not all were often online at the same time with no difficulty. Then many of UPCs customers worlds came crashing down around them when they upgraded their systems to " CRAP".
Digi boxes, we had four, refused to record as instructed, 200 mb broadband attained only 80mb download. upload good at 10mb. WiFi absolutely deplorable, nearly as bad as the old ISDN. We had to nearly sit on the supposedly super horizon box to get any WiFi at all. Phones, laptop, tablet and pcs would constantly drop connections and loading web pages became retro. ISDN.
We tried everything. Had multiple Digi box changes, losing all our recorded programmers every time, switched to horizon in the hope that new technology would solve our problems. It made them worse. Had numerous visits from engineers, lovely guys who checked every inch of cable inside and outside our home always finding it to be in excellent working order. UPC seemed to be living in hope of finding a problem within our home while we had spent years telling them the problem lay somewhere in the belly of UPC itself.
So to end UPC have failed to provide us with the quality service we pay them for. We have given them more than ample time to resolve the issues. Unfortunately they have failed to do so constantly offering to reduce our charges by way of apology. While this has been appreciated an expensive working package from Sky is far more acceptable than a cheap but useless one from UPC. Sad really as we had an excellent service from them for so long. In their defense I have to say that in all our dealings with UPC customer services reps we have only ever experienced friendly, pleasant helpful people who we believe did everything they possibly could to resolve our issues, but they like us were banging their heads off brick walls. So Sky are coming on Monday to install their tv system which will be followed by broadband and phone services. Hopefully they will provide good working products and I will not have to spend in excess of 100 hours on the phone to them as I have had to do over the last 2 years to UPC. We are D9 residents but my son who lives in Balbriggan dropped similar services from UPC for the same reasons and switched to Sky last week. So far he is delighted with their products, has 10mb but stable broadband and excellent WiFi.

hitbit

Riesen_Meal

Speaking of UPC -

Settle an argument with me and the lady :

I'm convinced the oul wan in the new UPC ad is Michelle Fairly from Game Of Throne's - my missus disagrees - can anyone confirm if it is or not?

Martha UPC advert:

http://youtu.be/ml67xJbe4Js

hitbit

Just to say I feel sorry for their customer services people. Looking at the number of very angry customers I feel the reps are running out of excuses and their responses now seem like blatant lies. I do not think this is the case and firmly believe they are passing on the web of lies being fed to them from on high.

hitbit

Zascar

Horizon is a truly terrible product. Has to go down in my book as one of the biggest failures of a major product launch. All they had to do is the take the old box and improve upon what people did not like - look to the competition (Sky) for inspiration. Instead they made it significantly worse. I sent mine back after a week

There is a huge thread here detialing a lot of peoples frustrations: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057022965

hitbit

Well people that's it.
Goodbye to UPC, sad really as they used to be excellent and a whole lot cheaper than Sky.
Today finds us with Sky tv, broadband and phone.
TV is fabulous, box recording what its told to all the time.
Picture and sound are in sync.
Phone is working fine but Sky simply do not offer the same value for money as UPC.
Broadband (24mb) is in fact 8.74 mb but appears to be working ok. We have 30 days to decide to keep or drop same.
WiFi is better than UPC's recent crap but way below their original Modem + Netgear Router. Why oh why did we ever elect for a UPC upgrade, an upgrade which in effect was a disastrous downgrade and the reason we have had to say goodbye to UPC.
I still believe that a PROPERLY WORKING UPC Tv/broadband/phone/multi-room package offers much better value for money.

Hitbit

UCDVet

I used to like UPC - until they went on a marathon spree of calling my cell phone. In my account preferences I've *ALWAYS* had it set to 'No calls' but I even let them spam me. Whatever.

They called 1-2 times per day over a week. When I answered, they hung up. I call back, I get a generic UPC message saying, 'Don't worry, they'll call back later'.

I went to their website and removed my cell phone number completely.

Next day, same thing.

FINALLY, after like two weeks, I get a call and FINALLY someone is on the line. I'm pissed, and even after taking my cell phone number off, they're still calling it. Even though it's set for no calls. This guy tells me 'Oh, well, there are preferences on your account - implying I didn't set it up correctly - liar!' Then when I tell him I took my phone number off, so why are they still calling?! He tells me it takes 24 hours to update, and that now that it's been updated, they won't call....>EXCEPT, at that point, it'd be like 3-4 days since I'd removed my cell phone. Absolute liar....

I tell him to take me off the calling list, remove my phone number and never call me again. He says, 'Sure, no problem'. Then, he proceeds to give me the sales pitch. I hung up.

awec

dodderangler wrote: »

I recently cancelled the movies with them after ringing 3 times t tell them to cancel it.
So I paid for the movies for over a year and some movies I have recorded I want to keep but can't watch now cuz I don't have the movie stations.
So again I paid for movies for over a year and can't watch the recorded ones?
It's a joke

That's completely normal and Sky do exactly the same.

You haven't bought the movies - you are paying a subscription to have access to them. When you stop paying you no longer have access.

awec

We signed up for the basic TV deal last month cause they offered it to us really cheap. To be honest the TV box itself is absolutely rubbish. Hitting a button on the remote takes a few seconds to register, it takes the guide about 5 or 6 seconds to load and it only has a Scart connection.

You can tell it's a really cheap box. The UI is abysmal - it looks like something that would have looked great 10 years ago.

When our box arrived and I opened it I couldn't believe it only had Scart out. Not really what you expect in 2014 from a company that sells media. I phoned up asking if they would replace it with a box with hdmi but they insisted that the only way to get a box with hdmi-out is to sign up for a HD package. Cheap w**kers. Plenty of people will want HDMI without HD subscriptions, especially with free-to-air HD channels!

Tried to tell them my TV had no scart connection (many new ones don't) but they held firm.

They are still a million miles behind sky for tv services. UPC far better internet, Sky far better TV. Pity for consumers really.

The default router they give is cheap dirt as well.

fleet_admiral

I bought a dodgy box off a proper del boy in peckham last February. I get every channel you can imagine without paying a cent

deco nate

fleet_admiral wrote: »

I bought a dodgy box off a proper del boy in peckham last February. I get every channel you can imagine without paying a cent

Do they still work? Or is it the one that has to be connected to the net, short answer please. So we don't break any boards rules.

beetlebailey

I worked for Upc tech services for a year, worst job i've ever had! and it's common knowledge that their equipment is ****e. Maybe a time I would have loved to have told the irrate customer on the phone that they were right our WiFi does keep dropping and our set top boxes do keep shutting down. Instead I had to waffle on about changing WiFi channels and sending signals down to set top box.:-/

fleet_admiral

deco nate wrote: »

Do they still work? Or is it the one that has to be connected to the net, short answer please. So we don't break any boards rules.

it connects to the broadband

ben.schlomo

4 years with them, never any major issues, got changed to a cheaper bundle last week too after they tried to sign me up for a phone that we dont need, now saving 15 a month with more broadband and the same channels.

renegademaster

ben.schlomo wrote: »

4 years with them, never any major issues, got changed to a cheaper bundle last week too after they tried to sign me up for a phone that we dont need, now saving 15 a month with more broadband and the same channels.

give us the name of the rep you deal with then cos i seem to only get cnuts who need to sell me tv and phone subscription even i tell them politely at least 15 times in 10 mins i dont want or need the extra service!! ffs!!!!!!!!!!!!

awec

They do phone a lot looking to sell stuff.

Vodafone are another lot who like to phone me all the time asking if I'll take their broadband.

If my phone rings from an unknown Irish number then 9 times out of 10 it's either UPC or vodafone.

BeerWolf

First world problems - I got to live in the 3rd world countrysides here in Ireland and make do with mobile broadband with pittance for a monthly allowance of 20GB for €30... -.-;

Dravokivich

awec wrote: »

They do phone a lot looking to sell stuff.

Vodafone are another lot who like to phone me all the time asking if I'll take their broadband.

If my phone rings from an unknown Irish number then 9 times out of 10 it's either UPC or vodafone.

Vodafone rang me the other month asking if I'd be interested in their broadband service, said no I've everything with UPC on their higher rated package.

They suggested me going with a Free Too Air solution and getting them in for broadband, that's at max 1/3rd of what I receive consistently already.

Jonny Blaze

Honestly never had a problem with upc in 6 years. The dark days of eircom are long behind me at this stage!

hitbit

I too had very many years of trouble free service from UPC but an upgrade brought that to an abrupt end. They simply could not recover our services from the disastrous effects of said upgrade. So in the end we had no option but to switch to a more expensive Sky. At the moment this is meeting most of our requirements but we need them to provide the broadband speed promised .

Hitbit

How Soon Is Now

Broadband + xbmc.

That is all.

Seaneh

Lived in a house in Galway and for 2 years we paid for the basic UPC digital package and for some reason I got the sports channels free and we could record the movies from the movie channels. We couldn't watch the movies as they were airing but we could put them to record on the menu and then play them back afterwards. Was great.

mfceiling

I've moved in to a new house which doesn't allow satellite dishes...

I hear this new horizon box is magnificent and blows the brilliant sky box out of the water.

F*ck my life...