How's Esat these days?

dahamsta

I can't believe I'm contemplating this, but it's looking like EsatBT is my best option for BB. Before I jump in though - tomorrow - any comments on their services, support and billing these days? I see an IOLBB ping issue below, but tbh I don't seem to have seen that many complaints the last few months. Have I just not been paying attention?

Need to order tomorrow, so don't put off replying please.

adam

Tazzle

I've played with 2 people on IOL, after the upgrade their pings suffered horribly. I guess their network got a bit bogged after everyone went crazy with their 2MB, netsource style. I think it's calmed down now. Though, I guess it could get dodgey again if they introduce a new cap, or some other offer. I think it's still randomly bad on some nights.

Sarsfield

I'm currently considering switching from Eircom to BT. Just a bit nervous as despite Eircom being the root of all evil their BB product has exceptional reliability.

That's all I'm interested in - uptime. Not bothered about pings. Blistering speeds are no great shakes once I can browse at good speed and all day long.

Is it safe to move? I know it's the same product, but is the service as delivered by BT up to the same standard of reliability as Eircom?

Willymuncher

Well for me personally the service has been excellent, good pings, generally good speeds, their download/upload caps speak for themselves compared to others...i don't know what their support is like as i've never had to ring them, i have found their billing to be a bit dodgy though...they aren't too great at informing their customers regarding that, one thing to note though and tazzle said it, the speeds can dip some nights, recently its been stable....but last week it was jumping from 200kb to 100/50kb and back up to 200 again.

Stephen

Yeah, pings went to ****e just after the upgrades but it seems fine now.

sceptre

Well you did ask

dahamsta wrote:

billing

I got a bill from them for 0.00 about two months ago for the preceding two months. The accompanying letter urged me rather strongly that I pay immediately. Funnily enough I hadn't been a customer of theirs since March 2004 when I jumped ship to UTV because their billing was crap.

support

Spent half an hour in the waiting queue to tell them to stop wasting my postman's time. Managed to get through when I phoned the sales line on the mobile (got through immediately there) and acted not impressed that I couldn't get through to billing to tell them nicely to piss off. To be fair the guy put me to the top of the queue and transferred me immediately. Probably annoying someone else who then slipped back one place down towards the phone queue from hell.

Haven't been a customer for over a year as I mentioned above so on technical and customer support levels they could be the greatest phone company in the history of mankind now for all I know. Billing department still appears to be made up of a thousand monkeys with a thousand random bill generators though.

Tazzle

Oh yes, I've esat for my phone and line rental. Absolutely, the worst, most atrocious farce of an accounting department ever. Seriously, not only do they make an unimaginable amount of errors, they refuse to admit they have, and then demand to know why you haven't paid them in full, when the mistake would be apparently obvious to any novice.

For a company that claims to have excellent customer care, they are sadly mistaken. (i'm not saying eircom is any better, but at least their products are solid)

Serbian

I was a customer of theirs up until one week ago when I left for NTL. The service was fine before the upgrade. Suffered random disconnects occasionally but that wasn't really a problem. Random amounts of money disappeared from my account every couple of months at the start, but they seemed to come to terms with billing a regular amount of money after a while.

That was all before the upgrade. Once I was upgraded, the service was unusable between 6pm and 12pm, suffering from prolonged disconnects (sometimes that whole time-span) or huge latency. I complained but they just told me it was my phone line or my modem, though none of these were a problem beforehand. The customer service was intolerable, huge queues and nobody seemed to have answers to any question.

I got sick of dealing with them and just cancelled my account. Luckily NTL was available, so I am now happily using that.

tuxy

Sarsfield wrote:

Just a bit nervous as despite Eircom being the root of all evil

i agree with this
now maybe you can't bring yourself to go with eircom out of principal
but its been 100% reliable for me
i always get full speed once downloading off a good server,
always low pings(20 ms to irish servers,30 ms to uk) and i have never had any downtime since i got it over a year ago

Dizzyblabla

I'm with Esat, haven't had any problems at all... haven't been billed yet though cause I'm on the free trial thing...

dancin

Been on Esat for 18 months now. Mainly family web browsing, so can't comment on game latency, ping time related stuff.

But the service itself has been reliable. In the first few days after the upgrade the download speed fluctuated, but has now settled down to a steady 200 KBs or higher for downloads.

The few times I've had to ring their tech support, didn't have to wait too long. Got my problems answered OK.

Scruff

Before i changed over line and phone calls to bt as well as getting their broadband i was using their Anytime diall up package to access the internet. Signed up for the 3 month free trial before it ended in march. Was told the Anytime subscription would be automatically cancelled. it wasnt and my account was debited for it. had to ring them and point it out to them. They appologised for the error and said it will be credited to my account. wont know till june if this in fact has happened or they've fooked up again.

actuallly i also didnt get my €5 off for paperless billing...

dahamsta

tuxy wrote:

now maybe you can't bring yourself to go with eircom out of principal

There's an appreciable price different too. Eircom and Esat's BB products are the same price, but line rental is €15/month cheaper with Esat. €15/month ain't gonna break my bank, but when one's as bad as the other...

Scruff wrote:

actuallly i also didnt get my €5 off for paperless billing...

Says €30/year on the site?

adam

Gilgamesh

ESATBT is quite cool, but they seem to suck bigtime on Bittorrent and such likes.

We have just gotten IBB Business Breeze with 4MB, ROCKS BIGTIME!!!

OfflerCrocGod

Stephen wrote:

Yeah, pings went to ****e just after the upgrades but it seems fine now.

I think it's fair to say that people from ALL providers had their ping go to **** when the upgrade occured. I'm quite happy with the service now, I never really had any problems with them until the upgrade made things a bit wonky but now everything is fine.

impr0v

The tech side of things is pretty good in my experience, including technical support on those rare occasions when there is a problem. However, as others have stated above, dealing with anyone from their administration/accounting is an exercise in absolute frustration. The ineptitude they display is staggering and in absolute contrast to the corporate image they try to portray.

Chad ghostal

im on an exchange in cork and have had no problems,

-I've only been playing americas army, but the pings have been better than before the upgrade (40+), i've had no lag problems at all.
-the downloads are as good as can be expected +200kBs sustained on a good server,
-Bittorrent has been fine (apart from upload obviously) - above 180kBs on a good torrent
-Have had no problem with billing, but there are many stories of pain and sorrow.. just watch em like a hawk if you decide to go with them.
-and despite the wait for support, i've found most of the staff helpful and usefull in fixing the one (minor) problem with billing i had when i ordered the service in the first place..

dahamsta

It seems billing is still the big issue then. It's a shame that all these years after the NoLimits fiasco they still haven't got it right. Actually, no, it's not a shame, it's a f*cking disgrace...

However, I know how to deal with those ahabs in billing a bit better these days, so I guess I'll go with them. Thanks for the feedback folks.

adam

AdMMM

I was with EsatBT for their trial last summer and I must say I was impressed. The ordering part was difficult and it took many long (but free!) phone calls having them accused me of already having broadband and thats why my order wouldnt go through. Eventually though I convinced them that they were wrong (they were!).

The actualy service was top notch, however the speeds were slightly dissapointing as I live RIGHT BESIDE the telephone exchange (speeds were 460k btw).

Their billing is atrocious, with them sometimes double charging us and sometimes not charging us at all before being sent angry letters asking us to pay them before they bring in debt collectors. It was that letter that made us cancel all business with EsatBT.

I'm now happily using Eircom BB which has been superb so far. No downtime (although some of my friends are having DSL Sync issues) and Im maxing out my connection.

I think overall, its a lottery over whether or not you will be dealed with in the way you'd like.

beller b

I rang BT a few weeks back while waiting to see how things were going with Smart.. I found the sales rep very arrogant with a take it or leave it attitude, & dismissed Smart as a non runner who will not be connecting any customers for at least another 6 months.blatent lies like that that was enough to put me off ,not to mention them looking for €90 installation on a self install kit.(even EirCON wouldn't try that!)

dahamsta

beller b wrote:

not to mention them looking for €90 installation on a self install kit.(even EirCON wouldn't try that!)

They would; they have. They just don't at the moment because they're running a promotion.

Sarsfield

I remember Esat billing well (I had NoLimits).

I can't believe it's still as bad. Has nobody been fired over this? For a private-sector, profit-oriented organisation to leave such financial incompetence uncorrected is absolutely staggering from a business point of view.

Liffeyman

Have say EsatBT are just ok, there download speed are good around 106K but upload sucks at best iv got 8K to 10K max