Free trials??

Cianos

Hi,
Im going to be moving into a new place soon with a phone line that (as far as I know) has never had broadband. I thought I would take advantage of as many free trials as I can before subscribing to one. What is the best way of going about this? I heard you have to get the Eircom one last, is that true? How do I apply for free trials, and how would I make them go back to back, so there is as little in between time as possible? Also, how long does it take for them to get your connection going?
Cheers!
-Cian

Blaster99

The only ones doing the free trial is UTV.

skywalker_208

yea your a bit late looking for free trials.. the rest of them ended on March...

Cianos

Doh!

Ok...well UTV are offering 3 months so I suppose thats good enough. How long does it take to get it set up?

BrendanD

Judging from my own experience 4 months I am just coming out of my free trial with them now and I won’t be staying, try ringing customer services if you have a few hours to spare

Cianos

BrendanD wrote:

Judging from my own experience 4 months I am just coming out of my free trial with them now and I won’t be staying, try ringing customer services if you have a few hours to spare

It took 4 months to get set up?!

Redrocket

i also am looking to take advantage of the free trials before paying ( i know what broadband is like im just being cheap ).
so utv are the only guys left, how long would it take to setup?

gandalf

Ordered UTV BB trial on Friday will let you know when I am enabled.

Redrocket

cheers i checked out their site, does anyone know how long it takes for eircom to re-connected a phone line?

Repli

If you cancel the trial with utv, are you still roped into the 12 month telephone contract with them?

Redrocket

dunno, ill be getting the phone off eircom not with utv?
what other companies can i pay phone rental to?
if i could, id pay someone else for it rather than eircon

BrendanD

Cianos wrote:

It took 4 months to get set up?!

Yes and about 20 emails and a few hours per day hanging on for customer services, applied for trial on 10 oct told it would take a max of 15 working days November nothing happening so rang and emailed customer services, no reply to any emails one day got through to customer services assigned a ticket number 3 weeks later nothing happened rang and emailed again another ticket raised so on finally got enabled on the 5/02/2005 wont be staying there.

bk

While UTV are the only company offering a free trial, there are other, better options.

For instance BT (formerly EsatBT) have no minimum contract period, so you could cancel whenever you like.

Eircom only force you into a 6 month contract, while offering free connection and two months free, so you only pay for 4 months.

kaizersoze

stevenk wrote:

dunno, ill be getting the phone off eircom not with utv?
what other companies can i pay phone rental to?
if i could, id pay someone else for it rather than eircon

If you go with UTV for BB you have to take their phone service aswell but you still pay your line rental to Eircom. UTV introduced single billing a long time ago but they never actually did it. Alot of people signed up for it but are still getting line rental bills from Eircom.
If you want to totally get shut of Eircom then go with BT Ireland.

cdebru

utv have started taking the rental now
i know a couple of people paying the rental to utv

however iam still paying eircom about 8 months after i signed up to pay utv

personally i think i would go with smart if it was me just waiting for my contract to end with UTV

chorus techy

Cianos wrote:

It took 4 months to get set up?!

It took me about 3 months to get one set up with BT! Eircon didn't seem to like other companies giving customers free trials :rolleyes:

Cianos

God, I didnt know it took this long to get connected for a free trial, its kind of worrying. Would it have anything to do with the phone line not being ready for BB to be installed? I gots to have broadband, and asap, so Im not sure what to do.

The Eircom offer sounds ok if they only require a 6 month contract. It says they offer 4 months free...(3 months trial then your first month free) would this be the case with a 6 month contract I wonder?

kaizersoze

Cianos wrote:

The Eircom offer sounds ok if they only require a 6 month contract. It says they offer 4 months free...(3 months trial then your first month free) would this be the case with a 6 month contract I wonder?

I don't think the Eircom offer is a free trial.
You sign up for 6 months and the first 2 months are free, so you only pay for 4 months. 10 working days is the norm for setup btw

dkane

stevenk wrote:

dunno, ill be getting the phone off eircom not with utv?
what other companies can i pay phone rental to?
if i could, id pay someone else for it rather than eircon

At the min Eircom are not charging to reconnect phone lines which are "in situ" - basically means that if the line was active within the past 6 months you dont have to pay. If it was longer than that you will have to pay 130Euro for a new line.

The only company other than Eircom doing line rental is Smart Telecom.

Getting connected to broadband "should" take about 10 working days but a lot of people have experienced delays.

gandalf

Well got my line enabled yesterday and the modems arrived today. Impressed very fast from initial impressions but I have to go and do some "tests"

And they got it done in the 10-15 days timeframe quoted. The only question I have is why it took Eircon 2 years plus to say my line was ok for ADSL.

Wiz

Applied to UTV last Feb. I'm still waiting. A number of emails have been sent and ignored. Phoned a few times but managed to get very little info. They are the cheapest and it shows in the level of Customer Service they are able to provide. i.e. None!

3 friends all signed up and have one by one given up and moved to other operators. I had Esat BB on trial before I applied to UTV. It seems if you've been on another companies trial Eircom are slow to do the switch to the new supplier.

I sent an email Monday to the Management of UTV Internet and to the Admin. I've given them 7 days before I start a campaign to annoy them and make people aware of the type of service or lack of they could expect from UTV.

julius

You do realise that when moving from one BB ISP to another you need have give a cancellation code from the previous ISP to the new one so they can free up the line???

Had that trouble myself and that was why I had such a long wait.

jor el

dkane wrote:

At the min Eircom are not charging to reconnect phone lines which are "in situ" - basically means that if the line was active within the past 6 months you dont have to pay. If it was longer than that you will have to pay 130Euro for a new line.

No you don't. If the line is physically installed in the house then Eircom will charge about €20 + VAT to reconnect the line and give you a number regardless of how long it's been idle. If there is no line you need to get one installed.
Either way, you'll also need to wait until Eircom do the line test which they will only do once the line is active. Took about 3 weeks for them to check my line when I activated it.

I think Smart can connect lines, but only if you're on one of their enabled exchanges.

The only company other than Eircom doing line rental is Smart Telecom.

Also untrue, BT do single billing.

Getting connected to broadband "should" take about 10 working days but a lot of people have experienced delays.

This is, unfortunately, true. I myself have not had to wait for more than two weeks for the installation, once the line is confirmed to pass, but many others have. Particularly with UTV there seems to be a lot of delays. Also, if you get through to BT's Abyss dept your order may simply go "missing".

If you don't mind paying, BT's no minimum contract and single billing offer is probably the best, €49 or €57 a month for BB + line rental. Unless of course you can get Smart BB which is cheaper, but I think they have a 1 year contract.

gandalf

Wiz surprised to hear about your issues. I have been a customers of UTV's now for a few years and have found their customer service to be head and shoulders above Eircom & Esat BT. I found IBB to be good as well but unfortunately my trial with them was ruined by a massive tree that masked out their signal.

I would think that as julius suggests your problem lies with Esat/Eircom are not releasing the line over to UTV but I am surprised they didn't tell you this. Did you send your complaint email to a particular person in UTV or just to a customer service email. If you need an email for one of the management team I will try and dig it up tonight as they helped me with a ISDN issue I had a couple of years ago.