(Another) Tale of woe regarding Irishbroadband

Mr. Flibble

Stories about Irishbroadband's abysmal customer service are in no short supply but I cannot resist adding mine to the ever growing pile. Many of the grievances they cause, I believe, to prospective customers is not mainly due to the fact that they are over stretched with new connection requests but that they have a policy of lying about when they will connect customers. This makes some sort of business sense as if they outright told people that they aren't going to get connected for 3 or 4 months the customer would unhappily take their business elsewhere. And as Irishbroadband have no real competition - so far as no one else offers uncapped access at a reasonable cost - they can sit tight in the knowledge that they can string consumers along for months and months by hanging the carrot just out of reach.

Once you have managed to snatch the carrot and get connected you had better prey that no hiccups are encountered. In my case the hiccups (this round of hiccups at least) started last week. An average ping time of 300ms, for the 60% of pings which weren't lost. Ie. an unusable connection. A call to tech support informed me they could do nothing remotely and an engineer must come round to upgrade the equipment. OK, says I. Will it take long, I ask. I'm told I must wait for a call from scheduling to arrange a time for a call out. A day goes by with no call. I decide to ring back to remind them. Later that day my call is returned and I'm told someone will be around later the same day. I'm taken in as the carrot enters my field of vision once again. 7pm and no one has arrived. Me: 'Hi tech support, where's my engineer?' Techsupport: 'He was there earlier'. Me: 'No he wasn't'. Techsupport: 'Humm, odd.'
Another call to them the next day and I'm told that he probably turned up and thought it was a bit windy to go up so left without informing me or scheduling of the fact. My roof is elevated off the ground which could be dangerous to an engineer, you see. Fair enough, I don't really want any of their employees deaths on my hands, not when I think it through calmly at least. I call again am told that no one is available to come out for 5 days. So I will be left without a connection at least until then. Do they really have 5 days worth of other customers also without connections? Must be, it's not like they'd divert their resources to setting up new connections, and increase the aweful billing paperwork that it inevitable entails.
So I am left until the 20th of December till they'll let me grab the carrot again. Unless of course it happens to be a little windy (or wet - thats too dangerous too). I'm sure they expect me to believe that wind and rain are a stupendously rare occurrence in winter months in Ireland - I was probably very unlucky of a breeze the first time they called out really.


Conor McCarthy

BigMoose

They certainly dont seem to be going out of their way to get new poeple connected. After my recent aborted effort (due to wind) I have to wait over a week for them to try again. As you say it's hard to believe that wind and rain are such a rare problem to them in Ireland at this time of year... I find it hard to believe a day goes by without either happening.

Cionn

I suppose in July it will the be fear of getting sunburnt that will allow them to justify postponing the engineer coming out to your house. I'd be getting worried if you want internet access for Christmas if I were you I'm waiting "2 weeks" for connection from them since April. Odds on them turning up on the 20th 10/1

spongebob

Don't forget that if they DO go on the roof and get kicked in the head by a Reindeer that just 'happens' to be up there casing the joint (as they do) their public liability insurance will not cover them and you are fully liable for the Reindeer strike .

Check your home insurance before you get pushy with them. !!!

M