Never give up......

Call Me Jimmy

Hello everyone! The boards.ie is the reason I have broadband on its way to my house. After months of waiting for my exchange to be upgraded it finally was nearly one month ago. After finding out that people all up and down my street had it I gave eircom a call expecting only to have my line pass and to give my details for my order..... but oh how it wasn't so simple. My line failed and was given no reason why, they just said my line ISN'T SUITABLE FOR BROADBAND.....

So I came to the boards seeking help, help I got only 5 minutes at the site. I saw in a post that some guy who couldn't get broadband had emailed some complaints department in eircom and after a while he ended up getting broadband. I emailed the department and after a week of my email being forwarded to new people it arrived to a certain Pat Smyth's inbox. He was the first person to actually check my line details and saw that I had an ISDN box installed from the records, he told me to ring him as he thought that the ISDN might be causing me to fail broadband line tests. I told him that my ISDN was never used and the box just sits there and is not connected to our phone line. At this point he did what none of the previous eircom people on the phone had done and asked me if I had anything else that might be plugged into telephone line. I told him I had 2 Sky Plus phone cables going into phone socket along with our phone and whattaye know?? THEY FAILED MY LINE

So the next day Pat had the test done with my sky plus connections plugged out and it passed, broadband is on its way to my house!

The main thing that bothers me is that, according to the first eircom sales people I rang to get my line tested was that my line was "not suitable for broadband" when it was perfectly fine, they never asked was there anything else plugged into socket besides fone, something which I would not have known would have affected the tests. So I'm a happy camper now and that's my story, however if I had just accepted the crap from eircom in the beginning that I couldn't get broadband, I wouldn't be getting it in a few weeks.

Ronan

I am glad you are getting it (Wish I could ). But are you ordering it from Eircom ? I'd get it from Esat (bigger cap anyway) and ring up Eircom and tell them you are going with Esat as a protest against them

job

You should go for digiweb !

20GB Cap / 10 days setup & same price as iol's equilevent pack.

Free Webcam ( with bizjet )
Free €200 ( upon signup )
Usb/Ethernet Modem


Good Setup

Hellraiser

IOL are crap for customer care as are Eircom, however i have had both as BB providers Eircom have been better and have had less downtime than IOL in my experience.

I am with IOL at the moment and have had loads of ping issue in games and a few probs with download rates going below average on me.

I personally myself would advise going near both of these and try someone else with better customer support.

Call Me Jimmy

I have ordered it with IOL because of the fact that our phone is with iol and that means i get 16gb cap for 39.99 a month, same amount as the 4gb with eircom (4 or 8 not sure) and I asked a guy (not with eircom or IOL) is there any difference for games and the likes and he said it was the same product so I dunno, I'm not exactly a computer whizz by any means so I'll just hope it goes well with IOL for games (sure if it doesn't at least i can get rid of them after 3 months

tuxy

oh my a competent employee at eircom
thats a first :P

AdMMM

I must also thank boards.ie for helping me to get BB.

After 4 weeks of getting nothing out of the custumer care department @ EsatBT, I came across a very old thread about EsatBT (entitled IOL are a disgrace), I looked at it and saw that people were emailing Bill Murphy, the CEO of EsatBT and he was helping people out.

I emailed him and I was assigned my very own person. She emailled me every day and I got the equipment THE DAY AFTER she put through another order!

Just a suggestion, but maybe a thread should be started listing useful contacts at all the major companies if your having trouble ordering?

Hellraiser

Ok its now 7.57 pm and i emailed Bill about my problem, lets hope i have some luck aswell.

Will be good to see if i get a reply on monday.

Hellraiser

WOW 8.05 and Bill emailed me back to ask me about my problem.

Big up to Bill.

Hopefully i will be sorted soon so.

If only they could have a quick response team like that all the time.

shinzon

Pat Smyth's inbox

You dont have an e-mail address for him do you, shin on the bandwagon one last time


SHIN

Hellraiser

bill.murphy@esat.com

Tell him you seen this thread on boards.ie and let him know your problem and i'm sure he'll get back to you.

Seems like a really nice guy.

Call Me Jimmy

Yes shiz i have pat smyth's email address but I think I would have get his permission to put it on here, and that means I have to email him again and he will check had my account with eircom bb been set up and then I would end up telling him that after all his help I ended up getting bb with the competitors IOL..... try the other emails in this thread and if you have no success I might email pat

dub45

Originally posted by Call Me Jimmy
Yes shiz i have pat smyth's email address but I think I would have get his permission to put it on here, and that means I have to email him again and he will check had my account with eircom bb been set up and then I would end up telling him that after all his help I ended up getting bb with the competitors IOL..... try the other emails in this thread and if you have no success I might email pat

Well in helping you get bb (even if you dont go with Eircom) Pat did help generate some money for Eircom as they will get the wholesale payment so dont feel too guilty if you go back to him!

seamus

Originally posted by Call Me Jimmy
The main thing that bothers me is that, according to the first eircom sales people I rang to get my line tested was that my line was "not suitable for broadband" when it was perfectly fine, they never asked was there anything else plugged into socket besides fone, something which I would not have known would have affected the tests.

In fairness to sales, they may be scum, but this isn't their fault. None of them have any technical qualifications whatsoever (or at least they're not required to), so such questions would never occur to them.
On top of that, they're working from the same database as the rest of us, and even if they do schedule a test, they just get an email back with a thumbs up or thumbs down, no technical info whatsoever.

AdMMM

Still in correspondance with Bill. He's helping me sort out Eircoms problem, as they killed my line while activating it.

I now have a new found respect for Esat, they are handling this matter very intelligently indeed and I will definetly continue with them for a few years at least

shinzon

Originally posted by Call Me Jimmy
Yes shiz i have pat smyth's email address but I think I would have get his permission to put it on here, and that means I have to email him again and he will check had my account with eircom bb been set up and then I would end up telling him that after all his help I ended up getting bb with the competitors IOL..... try the other emails in this thread and if you have no success I might email pat

Sorry m8 didnt mean for you to put it up here, just PM me it if you get permission from him to do so

Shin

tuxy

Originally posted by |.Murderer.|
Still in correspondance with Bill. He's helping me sort out Eircoms problem, as they killed my line while activating it.

I now have a new found respect for Esat, they are handling this matter very intelligently indeed and I will definetly continue with them for a few years at least

but why do you have to be in the know about mailing bill
if you mail thir regular mail they wont do anything

center15

I have had IOLBB for 3 months now my line had been failing until I plugged everything except one standard phone out. I just checked on the €ircom site and it says my line is not suitable for broadband even though I have it!!

AdMMM

I belive thats happened to a few people... lucky you ordered BB when you did then!

Ronan

After not getting any Broadband joy for over a year we switched to esat for our phone calls in protest. But alas still no Broadband, even though I knew others on my road had it. So, after reading this tread we emailed Bill Murphy and fair play to the man he got straight back to us and now 1 week later broadband is on its way Seems Eircom had a thing called 'Pulse monitoring' enabled on our phone line (suprisingly it should not have been) and once Esat got onto them it was all sorted. Now, I am very greatful to Mr. Murphy and Esat for sorting this and they will now be getting my broadband business. But it begs the question, why when I was asking for a year could eircom not figure this out ??? ah well, still at least we are getting it now... so indeed Never Give Up.

Hellraiser

Im supposed to have my problem fixed by 2moro, will be good to see if it does get fixed.

Hopefully it will, i will update 2moro either way.

Hellraiser

Heres the mail i recieved back




Marcus,

My apologies for the delay in contacting you.

The ethernet light will be green if the network card in your machine functions at 10 megabits per second (mbs) or it will be amber if it functions at 100 mbs.

Below is the response I have received from our engineering department:

IOL Broadband is Rate Adaptive DSL, which differs from straight ADSL, the plus side is that the distance to the exchange limit is extended thereby making the service available to a greater base. However, with the fact that the distance is extended, each line will negotiate the best speed it can get each time it connects. The very nature of this service therefore means that there cannot be any guaranteed connection speeds.

IOL Broadband Plus is contended at 24:1,this means that there will be variations in the speeds seen by end users, ie. the speed will also depend on how many of the other customers using that same capacity at network level are active at the same time, ie. up to 23 additional customers. Download rates will vary and the example you have given of 56kB/s to as low as 23kB/s, would be considered normal to good, if you consider that potentially 23 other people are sharing the same 512kb line.


In your communication you have raised a concern about 'connection interruptions', we have reviewed your service and everything appears to be in order with your connectivity, a summary of the review on your account is outlined;

- on the days whereby you referenced interruptions, your IOL Broadband service was connected solidly for the full 24 hour periods.
- there is a Session time out on 24 hours, this disconnect is deliberate to ensure the best service for everyone
- there is an Idle time out set to activate if there are 30 minutes without any traffic moving on the line, these idle time outs are the only other occasions aside from the 24hr that you have experienced, where this idle timeout disconnected your service it appears to have been after about 17 hours of live time.


Unfortunately ping has a reputation within the gaming community as being a panacea, it is however a rudimentary network analysis tool. The protocol that ping uses (ICMP) is actually prioritised low on the network, as such it will not provide representative information, eg. it will show spikes when there is other network traffic active etc.

I hope the above helps explain the difficulties you have been experiencing and gives you a better understanding of how the Esat BT broadband operates.


Regards

Sean Flood | Complaint Officer | + 353 1 4327244 | Grand Canal Plaza | Upper Grand Canal Street | Dublin 4 | www.esatbt.com

Our commitment to customer satisfaction continues to be recognised by both our customers and industry, with BT Global Services being short listed in the 'Best Customer Care' category of the World Communications Awards 2004.




Basically im fooked.
Changing BB provider now for definate.

seamus

That's an impressive reply Hellraiser, very accurate. Are you 100% sure that your machine is configured correctly?

Hellraiser

Yep positive Seamus.
I work as an IT technican and am sure of my settings been right etc.

seamus

Hellraiser wrote:

Yep positive Seamus.
I work as an IT technican and am sure of my settings been right etc.

Just checking. Usually us in IT tend to overlook our dumbest mistakes because we can't possibly be wrong

Hellraiser

Yeah i know.
Belive i have checked at leat 20 30 times all settings, even reinstalled the software etc.

Guess ill be getting a new BB provider.