NTL analogue gone in North Dublin?

barneyeile · 07-10-2008 07:15PM #1

My NTL analogue has gone this evening. Anyone else having this problem? I live in North Dublin.

fast1 · 07-10-2008 07:59PM

Yes mine is gone also
It was out lastnight too

2 days...not good

nehpets5555 · 07-10-2008 08:57PM

yeah the general Artane area is gone, they better hurry the **** up and fix it, if i miss prision break i'll murder someone

barneyeile · 07-10-2008 10:13PM

Your right about Artane, it looks like its gone for the night! This is why I am being slow to upgrade to digital. I sense my NTL problems would multiply with their digital service.

nehpets5555 · 07-10-2008 10:15PM

barneyeile wrote: »

Your right about Artane, it looks like its gone for the night! This is why I am being slow to upgrade to digital. I sense my NTL problems would multiply with their digital service.

yes as far as i know ntl digitals down too

fast1 · 07-10-2008 10:56PM

i am in clonee and it is still down....

barnicles · 07-10-2008 11:18PM

nehpets5555 wrote: »

yeah the general Artane area is gone, they better hurry the **** up and fix it, if i miss prision break i'll murder someone

Did you? :P

Mcsirl · 08-10-2008 11:30AM

Its STILL Down !!! Been down since about 16.30 yesterday !!! :mad:

bazwaldo · 08-10-2008 12:38PM

Its flippin ridiculous. On ringing NTL, they give an automated message saying where its down and they are working to fix it. Well I should bloody hope they are working on it.

They should be giving more detail as to the problem and when exactly they expect to have it fixed. I only switched broadband&phone to them last week. Not a good sign if this keeps happening.

Alun · 08-10-2008 12:46PM

bazwaldo wrote: »

Its flippin ridiculous. On ringing NTL, they give an automated message saying where its down and they are working to fix it. Well I should bloody hope they are working on it.

They should be giving more detail as to the problem and when exactly they expect to have it fixed. I only switched broadband&phone to them last week. Not a good sign if this keeps happening.

First, calm down! **** happens sometimes.

It's a not infrequent occurrence (especially in Ireland) that contractors dig through cables, UPC (ntl hasn't existed for ages now) ones included. If there are other cables in the vicinity, such as high voltage electrical cables, they might not even be able to get access to them for a while until the ESB are finished. Also, you can't fix coax cables in half an hour with a soldering iron and a bit of insulating tape, and fiber cables pose altogether different problems.

bazwaldo · 08-10-2008 01:04PM

Alun wrote: »

First, calm down! **** happens sometimes.

It's a not infrequent occurrence (especially in Ireland) that contractors dig through cables, UPC (ntl hasn't existed for ages now) ones included. If there are other cables in the vicinity, such as high voltage electrical cables, they might not even be able to get access to them for a while until the ESB are finished. Also, you can't fix coax cables in half an hour with a soldering iron and a bit of insulating tape, and fiber cables pose altogether different problems.

I completely agree with you, but UPC need to give more info when this happens. I was to work from home today as I've a sick child so I could mind him when my wife did the school runs. With broadband down, I couldn't work from home and if I knew it would be back again by a certain time, I could make a decision as to wait till it fixed to work or organise a sitter so I could go to work. Not knowing what the problem was or when it is expected to be fixed, left me in an awkward situation.

The engineers have mobiles and could contact HQ with what the story is and they could update their poor message to something which actually gives some info. Seems reasonable to me.

barneyeile · 08-10-2008 02:26PM

Nearly 2:30pm and the thing is still down! Speedy response or what? Pull the finger out!

barneyeile · 08-10-2008 02:31PM

I think the point about informing people is important. Lack of information only makes people angry. If when we rang they told us approximately when it would be fixed then most people would be satisfied with that.

Alun · 08-10-2008 02:33PM

bazwaldo wrote: »

The engineers have mobiles and could contact HQ with what the story is and they could update their poor message to something which actually gives some info. Seems reasonable to me.

True, but the problem with that is that if, for some reason, they don't make the deadline time, people actually get even more annoyed because they've made decisions based on the assumption that they would clear the fault by the predicted time. Sometimes you just can't win.

Alun · 08-10-2008 02:34PM

barneyeile wrote: »

Nearly 2:30pm and the thing is still down! Speedy response or what? Pull the finger out!

I'd imagine if it's been out that long, there's something pretty serious going on. Normally these outages don't last more than a few hours.

bazwaldo · 08-10-2008 02:42PM

Alun wrote: »

True, but the problem with that is that if, for some reason, they don't make the deadline time, people actually get even more annoyed because they've made decisions based on the assumption that they would clear the fault by the predicted time. Sometimes you just can't win.

Well not knowing any estimate is worse. An expected time of repair at least gives an indication. And if for some reason it can't be fixed by that time, then they can update the message again. Also they could add a few hours for contingency and if they finish early, then people would be happy they are on the ball.

barneyeile · 08-10-2008 02:53PM

bazwaldo wrote: »

Well not knowing any estimate is worse. An expected time of repair at least gives an indication. And if for some reason it can't be fixed by that time, then they can update the message again. Also they could add a few hours for contingency and if they finish early, then people would be happy they are on the ball.

EXACTLY!

paulm17781 · 08-10-2008 03:01PM

I had a bad experience a while back where the guy on the phone gave me the usual lie of "It's a problem with your modem, you'll need a technician" I knew well this wasn't the problem.

About an hour later I saw 2 guys in NTL jackets at the junction box, when I got back up to my apartment (2 minutes) it was working again. What annoyed me was the lies, a simple "there's a problem in your area, we have technician's looking at it" would have been much better than a bare faced lie, which I knew was a bare faced lie.

Now, it is quite possible, this guy had no idea what the problem is and that is why he was fobbing me off. Why did he not know? Why are CC agents not informed of these things? The blame is firmly with UPC management as they are clearly not running the business smoothly enough. Little things like this would make a big difference to their customer relations but they refuse to start implementing decent policies like that.

I see no reason the NOC can't inform the CC of issues where they are passed to concerned customers, rather than being lied to.

VERYinterested · 08-10-2008 03:14PM

Yesterday evening I got a call from UPC asking me if I had received their literature offering Broadband in my area. I told him I had, but I was contracted to Eircom for the next six months. He said "so you're in the process of being contracted for the next six months" and I said "no, I AM contracted to them for the next six months" the ignorant bollocks just hung up! This was before I could tell him that a work colleague was in the process of having her phone and Broadband connected to UPC, only snag is she is without either for the last three weeks. So I guess I won't be in a hurry to do business with them anytime soon. It beggars belief that somebody so short sighted can be canvassing business, does he not realise that maybe in six months I might have a pain in my ringpiece with eircom?

paulm17781 · 08-10-2008 03:24PM

VERYinterested wrote: »

It beggars belief that somebody so short sighted can be canvassing business, does he not realise that maybe in six months I might have a pain in my ringpiece with eircom?

These are lowly paid call centre workers who may not even get commission (maybe they do). Again I ask, where are the managers making sure this doesn't happen? Why do the staff get away with this sort of behaviour? If I hung up on a customer I'd get in so much trouble in work, I'd be pretty certain you aren't the only person who has been hung up on by a UPC culture. I don't get how a company that spend hundreds of million buying two companies and spent further hundreds of million upgrading the infrastructure can get such basic things as customer satisfaction / phone ettitquette so badly wrong.

barneyeile · 08-10-2008 03:29PM

VERYinterested wrote: »

Yesterday evening I got a call from UPC asking me if I had received their literature offering Broadband in my area. I told him I had, but I was contracted to Eircom for the next six months. He said "so you're in the process of being contracted for the next six months" and I said "no, I AM contracted to them for the next six months" the ignorant bollocks just hung up! This was before I could tell him that a work colleague was in the process of having her phone and Broadband connected to UPC, only snag is she is without either for the last three weeks. So I guess I won't be in a hurry to do business with them anytime soon. It beggars belief that somebody so short sighted can be canvassing business, does he not realise that maybe in six months I might have a pain in my ringpiece with eircom?

They are canvassing very heavily for business at the moment. They would have a lot more customers if their attitude changed. I am with Eircom for broadband at the moment and even though it is slow it is reliable. It has only gone down once in nearly 3 years. When you see NTL's broadband speeds you are very tempted but could you put up with the hassle if something went wrong! I want to keep my nerves! This is also the reason I am sticking to analogue TV for the mo. I think they have improved but as Irish Rail might say "Were getting there", although in NTL's case they still are not there yet.

barneyeile · 08-10-2008 03:34PM

IT'S BACK! About time.

It was out for nearly 24 hours! Must of been a big fault. Anyone know what happened?

bazwaldo · 08-10-2008 04:22PM

barneyeile wrote: »

They are canvassing very heavily for business at the moment. They would have a lot more customers if their attitude changed. I am with Eircom for broadband at the moment and even though it is slow it is reliable. It has only gone down once in nearly 3 years. When you see NTL's broadband speeds you are very tempted but could you put up with the hassle if something went wrong! I want to keep my nerves! This is also the reason I am sticking to analogue TV for the mo. I think they have improved but as Irish Rail might say "Were getting there", although in NTL's case they still are not there yet.

In fairness, its not often NTL goes down. So the problem is really their communication when it does. I wouldn't use this as the reason for not going digital. If you go digital you can still use the analogue channels and looking at the prices on upc.ie, its cheaper to be digital than analogue.

So for €23, you get analogue. For €20, you get analogue and value digital. Once you get used to the digital picture, looking at analogue is awful (except maybe for football matches where dig is not quite crisp). Why wouldn't you change to digital?

VERYinterested · 08-10-2008 04:26PM

barneyeile wrote: »

They are canvassing very heavily for business at the moment. They would have a lot more customers if their attitude changed. I am with Eircom for broadband at the moment and even though it is slow it is reliable. It has only gone down once in nearly 3 years. When you see NTL's broadband speeds you are very tempted but could you put up with the hassle if something went wrong! I want to keep my nerves! This is also the reason I am sticking to analogue TV for the mo. I think they have improved but as Irish Rail might say "Were getting there", although in NTL's case they still are not there yet.

UPC Digital is only €20 per month, so it's actually cheaper than Analogue, plus you get more stations and you keep the analogue signal too, so don't be paying them more than you have too. Good to hear the signal has come back in Artane area.

fast1 · 08-10-2008 07:19PM

mine is still down...it has been down for over 48 hours and not one update from NTL...i was on hold for 90 minutes on monday trying to figure out what was going on but got no info

barneyeile · 08-10-2008 08:02PM

fast1 wrote: »

mine is still down...it has been down for over 48 hours and not one update from NTL...i was on hold for 90 minutes on monday trying to figure out what was going on but got no info

48 hours is ridiculous.

Also having to waste time in ringing them. Hope you have the tablets by the phone! Good luck!

barneyeile · 08-10-2008 09:37PM

VERYinterested wrote: »

UPC Digital is only €20 per month, so it's actually cheaper than Analogue, plus you get more stations and you keep the analogue signal too, so don't be paying them more than you have too. Good to hear the signal has come back in Artane area.

Does anyone have a list of the digital channels you get on NTL's basic digital service? The website is a bit vague. They also have this trick of including radio stations as a digital channel.

Infoanon · 08-10-2008 09:47PM

bazwaldo wrote: »

In fairness, its not often NTL goes down. So the problem is really their communication when it does. I wouldn't use this as the reason for not going digital. If you go digital you can still use the analogue channels and looking at the prices on upc.ie, its cheaper to be digital than analogue.

What!!! NTL has collapsed 11 times since Mid July which is particularly annoying when you are missing out on premium sport events that you have paid handsomely for.

I have had it with UPC/NTL - they are incapable of providing a tv service and if you do the maths Sky is a better option.

VERYinterested · 09-10-2008 08:02AM

barneyeile wrote: »

Does anyone have a list of the digital channels you get on NTL's basic digital service? The website is a bit vague. They also have this trick of including radio stations as a digital channel.

Here is the page from their site for the Value Pack, channels seem to be listed clearly with Radio Stations at the bottom:

http://www.upc.ie/television/digitaltv/value/

paulm17781 · 09-10-2008 09:17AM

bazwaldo wrote: »

What!!! NTL has collapsed 11 times since Mid July which is particularly annoying when you are missing out on premium sport events that you have paid handsomely for.

I hope you're taking note of these and being sure to get compensated for the down time. If they can't provide a service, you shouldn't be paying. Ensure you get some money back.

bazwaldo · 09-10-2008 12:02PM

Infoanon wrote: »

What!!! NTL has collapsed 11 times since Mid July which is particularly annoying when you are missing out on premium sport events that you have paid handsomely for.

I have had it with UPC/NTL - they are incapable of providing a tv service and if you do the maths Sky is a better option.

Sorry to hear this. I'm in Artane and other than the past few days, the TV service hasn't been down in ages.

NTL analogue gone in North Dublin?

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