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My Experience with Lastmile Broadband

  • 09-08-2007 10:52am
    #1
    cousin_borat
    Registered Users Posts: 995 ✭✭✭


    Hi there,

    just to let other Boardsters know about my experience with Lastmile broadband.

    I'm setting up my business from home in Leitrim, early days so I went for the residential package rather than the Business since bandwidth requirement is not huge yet.

    I contacted LM from the US to arrange for a Line of site test. Sent the cheque for a full years subscription since I was anxious to get tested asap to know whether I would have to go with the more expensive Satellite option.

    Cheque was cashed within a couple of weeks. Fine. Lastmile did also make it known in the ir T & C's that there was a 6 week lead time after payment, again fair enough.

    I was making these arrangements from the US and subsequently china so I explained that I needed to be contacted by email to give an approximate date when they would be out in order to give notice for somebody to be at the house in Leitrim.

    The one time they tried to contact me was by phone even though I'd explained that I was in China and was not reachable, not listening to exactly what the customer says is a constant with the call centre.

    The customer service department is totally unhelpful, time and time again I asked could they tell me where I was on the list for their engineers, they did not have the information and would only "pass a note" onto the engineers and promise that an email would be sent. Never happened.

    Eventually asked to speak to a supervisor, I was either stonewalled or told "they're in a meeting".

    After calling numerous occassions and after the 6 weeks were almost up and no sign of any date I requested the package to be cancelled.

    I cc'd the company directors and customer service for confirmation that my cancellation was received and was being processed as well as briefly outlining the problems I experienced. Again silence.

    I called again this morning, stonewalled, no supervisors available and was told to contact the directors who seemingly are the supervisors.

    This isn't the end of the world, thankfully Ciaracom has started in Leitrim.

    I'm pretty sure I'll get my refund as well but in my opinion the companies attitude to customers stinks to high heaven and I found they very difficult to deal with. In the end I was left feeling like a crank having to constantly call them but when they won't make any concessions that you're out of the country notwithstanding the fact that I paid them upfront.

    Hopefully this provides some insight, lastly I gave Lastmile plenty of time to reply to me before posting this.

    BTW I work as a Software consultant and its so annoying to see Ireland shoot itself in the foot with lack of decent broadband outside of urban areas. But thats another story.


Comments

  • #2
    Sponge Bob
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    Official Ireland solved its problems years ago, our tech guru Noel Dempsey did it while minister, read my sig :)

    Seeing as you are the first to mention ciaracom could you tell us how that went please ???

    http://www.ciaracom.ie/index.html

    could you maybe post your experience with the 2 carriers, separately , on the BB board which is here .

    There is not that much recent LM stuff and nothing of note at all on ciaracom who are in the north midlands between net1 (east) , digiweb (around) , fastcom (west) and lastmile (south) and this lot


  • #3
    thebman
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,012 ✭✭✭✭thebman


    Tell me about it man. I watrying to get it for my da in Offaly.

    Paid whatever fees were required by them and they said they'd be out in a few weeks or whatever. It was 2 months later before they did a LOS test and we failed it.

    Now the problem I have is that we rang them a number of times and were told someone would be out in a couple of days. Also told after the first couple of weeks that we shouldn't of had to wait so long and it was still another few weeks after that when they called out.

    All this for a rip off broadband package? Sorry no go. We are with 3 broadband now and getting higher than dial up speeds but not much more from it but not having problems on the scale of some of the other users here.

    I think its a disgrace that broadband in this country is such a cowboys game. Its like there are no rules! Judging from what everyone says about Comreg, there probably are no rules.


  • #4
    cgarvey
    Registered Users Posts: 3,884 ✭✭✭cgarvey


    Moved IoffL> BB

    Unfortunately Borat, that level of customer service seems to be standard for all BB companies, big and small.


  • #5
    Bummer
    Closed Accounts Posts: 153 ✭✭Bummer


    im also interested in how ciaracom offers.....im sure i hav there coverage in west cavan region...let use know how u get on cousin_borat Please:)


  • #6
    cousin_borat
    Registered Users Posts: 995 ✭✭✭cousin_borat


    Just back from China, Application has just gone into Ciaracom. They sound promising and they say they have a 2/3 week lead time for LOS test.

    Will update...

    Out of interest, I cc'd one of the directors of Lastmile, Cyril Moriarty, this post along with my complaint about their service and in the interest of right to reply. Surprise, surprise no reply :)

    At least this post will come up on google eventually when somebody searches for lastmile!


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  • #7
    veXual
    Registered Users Posts: 344 ✭✭veXual


    The reason behind their amateur behavior is because they employ about 6-8 people I believe and thats it!

    I've been with them a while now and know that trying to get through to them or have queries answered is like beating my head of a brick wall!

    Cant wait till September when I'm out of home and have a proper broadband connection


  • #8
    OHP
    Closed Accounts Posts: 437 ✭✭OHP


    For the last few weeks I have been unable to surf the www using LMBB (it is “sort of” fixed now again. I honestly thought I had a gotten a Virus it was that bad. I downloaded HMP (Hit man Pro) and all sorts of stuff to try fixing the problem. Even paid for Kaspersky (totally brilliant AV programme) But it turned out that all that was wrong was my LMBB connection. It ALWAYS worked great from 01:00 in the morning but never during the day or after 18:00hrs. Needless to say I sent loads of e-mails to them and never even got one reply until I actually rang them several times and then I got this:

    Dear Customer,

    It has been brought to our attention by a number of our customers that their quality of service has deteriorated.

    We have been aware that a small number of our residential customers have regularly exceeded their monthly data transfer limits. As a consequence of this continued abuse of our fair usage policy we have been forced to implement certain procedures to ensure a fairer service for our entire customer base. One such procedure is to implement the monthly data caps as defined in the customer contract using an automated service. This will temporarily restrict heavy users that exceed their monthly transfer limits. The restricted user speed will be 64kbps down 32kbps up to the internet. This is still sufficient for browsing and email and is still faster than dial up. Most other ISP’s implement a similar policy.

    During our investigations we have noticed some residential customers with data transfer in the range of 20GBytes to 70GBytes per month, up to 6 times over the limit. This is a clear violation of our fair usage policy. There is no doubt that by restricting such users we can make everyone’s online experience much more enjoyable.

    In addition to this we are working on introducing a telephony service and plan to upgrade customers basic service level over the coming months.

    The traffic limit for a Residential or AirMax Home package is 10 GBytes per 30 days. This amount is calculated on a rolling 30 day window from the current date to 30 days ago. When a customer’s data traffic exceeds this limit the customer’s account is automatically restricted. When a customer’s data traffic amount drops below 10 GBytes for the last 30 days the account will be automatically unrestricted.

    Many of our customers may not be aware of the huge amount of traffic that is been generated through Malware, Peer to Peer (P2P) applications, Spyware, Viruses, Spamming, Unsecured home wireless networks (WiFi Wireless Router), Computer Hijacking.

    Thank you for your co-operation in this matter. This policy’s impact should have a beneficial result for all Lastmile customers,

    Lastmile Broadband


    I have asked them several times if it was actually possible to go over my 10Gig limit with just a 1/2Meg connection in 1 month unless I was connected 24/7. Or if I did actually go over it, why did they not say anything?

    I have been with LMBB a long time now and the trouth be known it is only because I could not get any other sorth of Broadband. And think about it €37 pm for a terrible 1/2Meg Wireless connection is a total Rip Off! Eircon and greed all over again. Enough said..

    OHP


  • #9
    eoinok
    Closed Accounts Posts: 75 ✭✭eoinok


    OHP, can they not provide you with some mechanism in which to check your usage? If they dont, then you have a genuine bone to pick with them.
    If they do, and you dont bother to check, then you have no reason to complain if you have exceeded your cap.

    It is quite easy yo download 10GB on a 1MB connection. I've seen people yank down 70Gb on a 512K connection in a month!

    Try and hit this http://84.203.253.4/test/100meg.bin , leave it run for a minute, and tell us what your download rate is in kb/sec.


  • #10
    OHP
    Closed Accounts Posts: 437 ✭✭OHP


    Well here you go.

    Black Knight
    It is taking so long to make this post I have given up on the Black Knight one :(

    And

    171223726.png

    170528512.png

    Speedtest.Net

    And as far as I can see there is no mechanism that I can find on their site www.lastmile.ie for checking my usage. Plus they never actually said I did go over my 10Gig cap. That was just a formal message to all LMBB users. I am actually only on a 1/2Meg Connection and when it actually works I get this.

    168519755.png

    But 90% of the time it is as seen at the above 2 results.


    OHP

    PS The link you gave wont work for me?


  • #11
    cousin_borat
    Registered Users Posts: 995 ✭✭✭cousin_borat


    As promised update. Ciaracom called out to the house in carrigallen and had it installed no problems. There was a tree preventing getting a signal from the Carrigallen transmitter but there was one in Ballyconnell that they used. Two weeks after receiving the application they were out. 3 Meg connection so no complaints on that regard either.

    Also Lastmile were prompt posting out the refunded cheque accompanied by an explanation that they have delays due to the bad weather during the summer.

    That is all


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  • #12
    OHP
    Closed Accounts Posts: 437 ✭✭OHP


    cousin_borat wrote:
    As promised update. Ciaracom called out to the house in carrigallen and had it installed no problems. There was a tree preventing getting a signal from the Carrigallen transmitter but there was one in Ballyconnell that they used. Two weeks after receiving the application they were out. 3 Meg connection so no complaints on that regard either.

    Also Lastmile were prompt posting out the refunded cheque accompanied by an explanation that they have delays due to the bad weather during the summer.

    That is all

    First of all, I have never seen anything like this from Lastmile. And now they have 3Meg connections????? I honestly think that there is really good people working within Lastmile and they are Really Trying to make it work for everyone… But the People that actually own it don’t know about it yet. Otherwise this would never have happened. Secondly, this 3Meg connection from Lastmile???? Where did that come from.?? Why do they not keep people/customers actually informed? To be honest I have had enough of Lastmile.. Period!

    OHP

    Sorry I just found it:


    Speed: 3Mb/3Mb**
    Price/month: €149.00
    Connection: FREE
    Data Transfer: Unlimited*

    Are they actually for "Real" or what? What a Ripoff!! :mad: :rolleyes: ;)


  • #13
    rrpc
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,244 ✭✭✭rrpc


    OHP wrote:
    First of all, I have never seen anything like this from Lastmile. And now they have 3Meg connections?????

    The poster was referring to Ciaracom when he mentioned a 3Meg connection, not Lastmile. Might be a bit cheaper?


  • #14
    OHP
    Closed Accounts Posts: 437 ✭✭OHP


    Sorry was meant to be like this:
    Also Lastmile were prompt posting out the refunded cheque accompanied by an explanation that they have delays due to the bad weather during the summer.

    First of all, I have never seen anything like this from Lastmile. And now they have 3Meg connections????? I honestly think that there is really good people working within Lastmile and they are Really Trying to make it work for everyone… But the People that actually own it don’t know about it yet. Otherwise this would never have happened. Secondly, this 3Meg connection from Lastmile???? Where did that come from.??
    Sorry I just found it:

    Speed: 3Mb/3Mb**
    Price/month: €149.00
    Connection: FREE
    Data Transfer: Unlimited*

    Why do they not keep people/customers actually informed? To be honest I have had enough of Lastmile.. Period!


  • #15
    cousin_borat
    Registered Users Posts: 995 ✭✭✭cousin_borat


    OHP, I was referring to Ciaracom. TBH I must have spoken to every single person in Lastmile and found them all bar one lady to be unhelpful. I know this may have come from above but theres no excuse for unprofessionalism. As for the bosses, they're too busy talking themselves up and getting mugshots with Enterprise Ireland et al rather than improving their business.

    I have'nt got home from the US yet to verify that the 3 meg speed is actually what they told me on the phone to the engineer after the install.


  • #16
    OHP
    Closed Accounts Posts: 437 ✭✭OHP


    Sorry, I was actually being sarcastic about Lastmile and I really agree with you they are the worst!! I actually spent 1hour and 47minutes trying to get through to them today and had to keep pressing the 1 Button on the phone constantly just to be put on hold. Anyway when I eventually did get through I cancelled my subscription with them. Happy Days.

    OHP


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