If you're waiting a while on Smart, keep waiting the service is sweet.

Blub2k4

I ordered Smart early in May and was thinking it would never arrive due to delivery dates not being meet and was getting slowly but surely more and more annoyed at what seemed to me to be gross incompetence.

I was rationalising it to my other half ( who was possibly the reason I was getting more annoyed as she wanted BB to communicate with family in the UK and was in my ear about it a lot) by saying to her that it is not in the interest of a start-up company to intentionally jerk their customers about, and it had to be something else that was causing the delay.

Eventually I found GarfieldConnoll on here and pm'd him telling him of my disheartening experience, he was from the first contact engaged in the problem and willing to give a commitment as to what he was doing.
It turned out that the "issue" was Eircom messing about and not releasing the number, as they did with a number of accounts on Beggars Bush it would seem, in the name of "repairs" of which they had not notified Smart as is their duty when a release of a customer such as myself is moving service.

In any case when it came down to it Garfield brought his weight to bare on the relevant people in Eircom and he delivered as promised a little ahead of the timescale he had eventually promised.

I am making this post for two reasons, one is to commend Garfield personally for doing a good job and one is to tell others who may be getting disheartened by a longer waiting period, to hang on in there.

The service is as advertised, Irishspeedtest is showing almost exactly the 2mb/128 upload that is advertised with the service and my pings are 25ms on average to anything I've tested so far.
I waited two months but it was worth it, test drove it this weekend for the first time.

Dont let the monopoly win.
Blub.

optiplexgx270

humm you have had it 4 days ... think ill wait to hear some others supporting this.

lardboy

I agree. Just been switched over and it's a great connection so far. We'll wait and see if it holds up, but it seems much quicker than the same eircom line. Ping for boards is 30ms and www.irishisptest.com is clocking me at 1.96Mbps down and 133bps up, which is near enough as advertised.

I likey.

Gonzo

that sounds great but unfortunately smart will never be available in my area,
since smart is dsl, just like eircom, why are the overheads with smart almost minimal like cable bb compared to eircom where the overheads are quite large?
my 2mb with eircom gives me 1.75mb and my 128k upload gives me 104k

zippo22

I'm gettin' the exact same as you. 1.75 and 104.

tman

heartening news indeed

i decided to pussy out about a month ago and go with esat, whose retarded online order system lost them a potential customer.
i'm now playing the waiting game once again. hopefully the Shantalla exchange doesn't take much longer.

GarfieldConnoll

Gonzo wrote:

since smart is dsl, just like eircom, why are the overheads with smart almost minimal like cable bb compared to eircom where the overheads are quite large?
my 2mb with eircom gives me 1.75mb and my 128k upload gives me 104k

It's not that the overheads are minimal, I imagine they are very similar. We build the overhead in to the port profile, so whilst it's advertised as 2Mb, it's actually provided as 2Mb + X%, so it's something like 2.25MB that we provide. So when you strip out the overheads, you get 2Mb. I can't remember what % the increase actually is.

Garfield.

WizZard

Quick Smart. Enable Nutley!!

blah

We got a letter in Clontarf saying that Smart was now available but that we'd have to change our number, which I'd heard of before. That's kind of a put off. And I read in the paper a story about a Smart customer who go screwed around with a load of unwarranted bills and poor customer service exascerbated the problem. And poor customer service is a real turn off for me. But it is cheap though, I guess I'm more of a wait and see type of guy.

chorus techy

Yeah its a pain in the arse and smart are pretty poor about meeting targets, but I got my BB today and its bloody amazing! A little bit difficult to get the modem set up, but once I did its amazing. Far faster than BT Irelands broadband service by far. I think I get just above 2mb downloading and about 100kb uploading. So it seems to me, considering free line rental it is worth the wait!

hmmm

What I found odd is that the first contact I got from Smart after I completed the application was the delivery guy with the modem, 2 weeks later. A followup email/phone call after receiving the application forms would have been nice, if only to say "we have received/haven't lost your application and you will be getting broadband".

chorus techy

hmmm wrote:

What I found odd is that the first contact I got from Smart after I completed the application was the delivery guy with the modem, 2 weeks later. A followup email/phone call after receiving the application forms would have been nice, if only to say "we have received/haven't lost your application and you will be getting broadband".

Yeah they're notorious for informing you or giving feedback. I had my eircom number disconnected, my line switched and I hadn't even realised it or gotten my new number yet! I only got the modem today - it would have been nice had they told me "we'll be switching your line over on blah date - your smart number is this".

edanto

Completely agree that it's worth the wait. I've had it for about a month and no downtime. First bill just arrived, for less than thirty quid. For a months rental, broadband and calls! They had given us E20 credit for the delay, but even still, it's the best price in the country.

Speeds as reported above and grand pings too. heanet 15ms, bbc about 24. Had to change the phone number, but no prob as I'd only gotten the line back for the broadband. They were awful at staying in touch to tell of progress and the modem arrived out of the blue.

All in all though, well good product - good to see someone come in and shake up the market. Hope their court case goes well.

MrB

hmmm wrote:

What I found odd is that the first contact I got from Smart after I completed the application was the delivery guy with the modem, 2 weeks later. A followup email/phone call after receiving the application forms would have been nice, if only to say "we have received/haven't lost your application and you will be getting broadband".

Yea, same thing happened to me it was just plain luck that I happened to take that Wednesday off and so was available in the morning to accept the router. (still had to ask the guy to wait a minute while I put some cloths on though!)
Still it was worth it, so far I've had perfect service and perfect customer service, which is a first

machalla

I've been on it since April and I can say its been excellent overall. The router has a bit of a habit of freezing every few days or so but otherwise its been good.

The only company that were able to provide me with BB in this country also. Due to a line that would "never support broadband" according to the resident Telecom monopoly.

gsand

Probably would have gone for smart myself here but for the change of number. They offer no number routing service thing so if someone rings the old number they go through to the new number and they cudnt say when our number would be available...I really dont know anyone who would take up their offer on that basis...still good to hear people who are getting sorted have a nice service...

Blub2k4

As far as i know the number change is an eircom "limitation", personally I reckon it's just another hoop they are making people jump through to make smart seem less appealing, how come people can port their number to other services?
I have it a while longer now and the service is still stonking.

Customer service wise they are not the greatest, but then it's a premium product at a budget price so you really get what you are paying for plus a little bit.
If the product is stable then you wont need the CS anyway, so far it's like a rock.

I'm a smart fanboy at this point so let's see if it stays that way.

Benny_Cake

I've got to join in the praise for Smart Broadband - while I found the customer service to be extremely poor,after a wait of some 4 months I finally have it and have had no complaints so far from a technical standpoint.Excellent speeds,great price,I'm happy (once I don't have to contact customer service again)!