fastcom

yellowpens wrote: »

Thank god I am not alone!!

I have been with fastcom for just over a year. I was actually looking forward to dealing with a regional telecoms provider. I dealt with killala bay broadband (Tim Lacey) and was always happy with him and he was a one man band so I expected the same and more from Fastcom - "Fastcom is Ireland's fastest growing internet and communications provider".

I got my phone and broadband from them. the installer came out installed it, when done he asked me if i wanted to try it out, at which point i said no ill try it later, just tell me the ip address of the router - looking at the linksys voip router.

O thats not a router he said, you need to plug a router into it

I just said OK then!! knowing it was a router - thought the lad didn't know but hey!! anyway I was running out the door and later had a play with it and everything seemed ok.

I live in an area where the phone number would be 096 36xxx or 37xxx so i discovered that my phone number issued was 071 93XXX

At this stage i stepped back and was a little disappointed as I could of easily of set up my own VOIP service at a much cheaper price, but hey ill get over it I thought. I did at this stage download the entire fastcom.ie site and run a search for the term "VOIP" and similar terms and not one match.

I felt that I was mis sold the package, they just say "Home Phone with no Line Rental Charge" so most would just assume the phone would be in some way relayed via a local exchange.

About two weeks in we were having allot of issues with the quality of the "Line" on the phone it was unusable. Brian was the guy I always got on the support line, and he kept claiming that I was the only one with this issue!

so after a few weeks he said that other customers were having issues and it should now be resolved.

And it was OK for another few weeks until the same issue came back.

This time he went messing with the voip router, he reset my ports (which i had forwarded to other hardware on my network such as PC SERVER and CCTV etc.

and set my router to get IP Addresses From a router off my network, which meant that say my computer that used to get assigned an ip from my local router of say 192.168.1.3 was now getting assigned an IP of 73.xx or something i cant recall.

so when on the phone to Brain explaining his error, he tried to tell me that "The Blue Linksys Box" is "Just A Box We Use" is not a router, it taken me 20 minutes to get him to understand that it is a router, that I know its a router, you cant tell me its not a router - ITS A VOIP ROUTER!!!

Im sure they are briefed on these things - "DONT MENTION THE TERM VOIP!" I can just imagine it.

Anyway ya . . so my hardware was been left open to a wider network


The next issue was with accounts they never sent an invoice and tried to take money out of my account.

this has happened a few times

I asked Mary in accounts if the invoices were compiled automatically or send manually, she claims they are send automatically but if they were I would have got them, then in March i think it was, I got 3 or 4 extra invoices with non payment charges. . sending signals saying don't question us or we will charge ya.

Then all though April - May - June and maybe before it we had this issue with our phone where our number was showing up as +71XXXXX instead of +35371 so when you called people and they would say is this your new number we were saying ya, as in save it

but when people called it they couldn't get through

or say we called and they seen a missed call and pressed call the same thing.

It was A NIGHTMARE as we had to keep explaining that we were with fastcom and its an issue on the "Line" so in the end i sent this mail.
______________________________________
Dear Fastcom

I am fed up of this phone service.

I have been asking you month after month to fix the issue regarding the way our phone number shows up on other peoples phones when we ring

it either shows up as
+7193XX02X

When someone tries to ring back that number it does not come through to us as the 353 is not on the number

and more recently it is showing up on landline phones as 00881028

It is not acceptable, and you are not making any effort in fixing the issue, and have never even offered any discount for the service whist the issue has been going on.

Fix the issue or cut off the service it is as simple as that - If im paying for a service I expect it to work as it is indented.

If I knew you were offering a sloppy VOIP service I would never have signed up for it.

A very disappointed customer

_______________________________________________

After that that issue was sorted out within a day, but why did it have to come to me been so frustrated?




after that its been outages here and outages there on and off

You dont bother ringing them any more you just through word of mouth find other people in your area using fastcom and drop them a text

"your internet down?"

Reply: Ya

Because before that you might be messing with your computer and turning the router and antenna off and on again ring them and they would say they had no reports from other customers experiencing and difficulties.

then one day we got a call from family on the mobile saying they were trying to call for a day or two on the "Landline" but could not get through.

When I tried it myself indeed a voice came on saying "The Destination is unreachable" thats a power phrase - When I rang to see what the issue was, of course "we tried to phone you on such a date and such a date" they always seen to of tired to ring you but never get you, yet they cant seem to replay to an email.

they told me there was an issue with "The Blue Linksys Box" and there is one "Waiting for me in the fastcom office in Sligo". Would you believe they expected me to get into the car and drive an hour and a half round trip, to pick up a new "Blue Linksys Box"

whats the issue I asked?

they could not update the box with new settings

I then new that was as I had protected the router with a password so I gave them the password. problem resolved.

a few weeks later. . .

Then our phone started saying new mailbox message, and we would check and there was no messages, weird i though. so we disabled out answering machine (on our local phone) but the issue remained. ( I only got to the end of this issue today)

It turned out that during these outages people ringing were been directed to a mailbox leaving a message without my knowledge.

I asked fastcom about it and was told they don't offer a mailbox to customers

Like what does that mean??? - callers are getting throught to a mailbox and its not mine??

anyway

just before xmas we were having slow BB and bad phone again and I said it to them again via email i think,

and they reply never even mentioned the issue!!

again on christmas day!! I emailed them asking about these messages and how to access them, and we were having another issue dialing phone numbers beginning with 071, each time we dialed an 071 number we got a voice saying "call not be completed" I did not expect a resompse on xmas day but maybe 2 days later

8 days went by - I never got a response


I emailed again about a bad quility of the line and how I could not get support as you have to press number 3 for support and it wont work.

They rang, but now they use the internal switch to call, I dont know why eaither to sace money on calls or if they ring using the internal switch they avoid issues from external bandwidth issue the the customer would normally have to deal with and they can say "well the line sounds ok to me"!! I dont know.

Anyway back to yesterday at this stage I was speaking to Joe in support, don't think i dealt with Joe before. I wanted to get to the end of the Mailbox issue and explained that I emailed about it but never got a response or solution to the issue.

Joe straight away send an email with details of how to access the mailbox, I explained that I will review and delete the messages and them will email him and he can disable the mailbox so people to not get redirected.

Nice one I thought - he might be a keeper


________________________________
Email Reads

Dial *124
Enter username:10XX
enter pin: 2X3X

press 1 for voice-mails

Regards

Fastcom


_____________________________________________-

So I try it but sure, The DTMF Tones dont work on my phone so I email back


Thanks Joe

That brings me to another issue where the DTMF Tones dont seem to be sending, I noticed this befroe when ringing you as I had to dial 3 to get support on your system but i could be pressing 3 and it didnt work so just used my mobile.

Can you look into that for me please.

Thanks

_______________________________--


Joe Replys

Hi Darren,

To access those settings we would need to access your ATA thus needing your password for user?

Regards

Joe


____________________________________

What joe is looking for here is the password i set up on the voip router, the router is divided into 2 sections

Section one is the user section

This allows the users to change basic settings such as DNS and port settings and also allows you to set certain phone settings such as call forwarding and call waiting settings, normal stuff and then there is the admin section where fastcom would access to change the voip and other admin functions

So I put a password (which is advised) on the user section.


so deleted the password so Joe could access the router.

__________________________________________

Next thing I just get home open my mail and read:

Hi Darren

DTMF has been changed, also have changed the user password to the fastcom default for the voice gateway devices.

Regards

Joe


____________________________
I replied:


I dont follow!! - why would you change the password?

I tried the 2X3X as is the pin on the voice mail.

so thats not it. . whats the default password?? I need access to the port settings and DNS settings.

Anyway i check the messages so you can disable the calls been forwarded to the voice mail system.

If you can reply to confirm

Thanks
_______________________________________


I am just once again sooooo annoyed at them, they fix one issue and cause another whats that about????

I am at the end of my tether with Fascom.

White Heart Loon wrote: »

See, I've worked for FWA providers, it's not the price of a CPE, it's important for a provider to remove it as it contains credentials like the wireless encryption key and CPE password that could allow someone connect to their network.



Also, installers are usually contractors who get paid per job, a disconnection is an easy job and they would therefore be more enthusiastic about it, especially this time of the year.