Smart going belly up?

JJDoherty

This has been posted on the SmartTelecom support board in the last wee while:

"Smart Telecom are pleased to announce that restoration of services to our customers began today at midday.

Smart's broadband customers should have had inbound and outbound voice services restored today.

It has come to our attention that some of our broadband customers have lost access to our broadband services over the past two days. We aim to contact those customers directly in the coming days with a view to restoring our service as soon as possible.

We would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologise to all our customers for any inconvenience caused during this difficult time and as a token of our appreciation for your continued support, we are increasing the speed of your existing broadband product by an additional 3Mbps.

This upgrade will take place during the next 24 hours and will be available for the remainder of 2006.

We look forward to continue providing you with our exciting products for many years to come."

simp

"Official Accouncement" from eJay on the Smart Boards:-

Smart Telecom are pleased to announce that restoration of services to our customers began today at midday.

Smart's broadband customers should have had inbound and outbound voice services restored today.

It has come to our attention that some of our broadband customers have lost access to our broadband services over the past two days. We aim to contact those customers directly in the coming days with a view to restoring our service as soon as possible.

We would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologise to all our customers for any inconvenience caused during this difficult time and as a token of our appreciation for your continued support, we are increasing the speed of your existing broadband product by an additional 3Mbps.

This upgrade will take place during the next 24 hours and will be available for the remainder of 2006.

We look forward to continue providing you with our exciting products for many years to come.

http://support.smarttelecom.ie/forums/showthread.php?t=889

Full Moon Angel

Hey guys check this out!!

http://support.smarttelecom.ie/forums/showthread.php?p=7459#post7459

Smart Telecom are pleased to announce that restoration of services to our customers began today at midday.

Smart's broadband customers should have had inbound and outbound voice services restored today.

It has come to our attention that some of our broadband customers have lost access to our broadband services over the past two days. We aim to contact those customers directly in the coming days with a view to restoring our service as soon as possible.

We would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologise to all our customers for any inconvenience caused during this difficult time and as a token of our appreciation for your continued support, we are increasing the speed of your existing broadband product by an additional 3Mbps.

This upgrade will take place during the next 24 hours and will be available for the remainder of 2006.

We look forward to continue providing you with our exciting products for many years to come.

Kensington

6Mbps - **** YOU €IRCON!!!!! . Best of luck to smart in the future, keep up the good work!!!

Diver79

Official Announcement taken from Smarts website

---

Official Announcement - Service Restoration

Smart Telecom are pleased to announce that restoration of services to our customers began today at midday.

Smart's broadband customers should have had inbound and outbound voice services restored today.

It has come to our attention that some of our broadband customers have lost access to our broadband services over the past two days. We aim to contact those customers directly in the coming days with a view to restoring our service as soon as possible.

We would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologise to all our customers for any inconvenience caused during this difficult time and as a token of our appreciation for your continued support, we are increasing the speed of your existing broadband product by an additional 3Mbps.

This upgrade will take place during the next 24 hours and will be available for the remainder of 2006.

We look forward to continue providing you with our exciting products for many years to come.

Diver79

Looks like somone got there before me.

Still good news all round!!!

bk

So what about the Smart Vision customers:

A) Is this service continuing?
Will they also gt increased to 5m/6m from the pathetic 2m?

Diver79

I would imagine so. I'd like to know about the phone service though.

Is it true that smart will no longer take on new voice customers. If so are they still servicing existing voice customers.

the corpo

6mb, woooo!

i love smart

it'll be great while it lasts

Kensington

From what I gather, any CPS voice only customer must change operator within the next two weeks. If you look on their website now, the only options you have of signing up to smart is to take their broadband - regardless of whether you click "Broadband" or "Residential" so they mustn't be signing up any more voice only customers.

Diver79

I've got BB and Phone, so can I take it that both will continue to be provided by Smart?

iblis

Diver79 wrote:

I would imagine so. I'd like to know about the phone service though.

Is it true that smart will no longer take on new voice customers. If so are they still servicing existing voice customers.

Quote from comReg: "Smart Telecom home phone customers are required to switch to an alternative provider."

From:
http://www.askcomreg.ie/home/update.209.LE.asp

Sounds to me like they are indeed ditching that part of the business. Perfect time to do it I guess...

Sponge Bob

They will service existing voice customers from now on but may have to do some funky voice 'routing' as in 'via' another carrier. I must keep me gob shut beyond that .

machalla

Ah well good news for me at least. I can keep my BB till the next time they go out of business but by then at least DSL2 should be more widely available

I wonder is the price staying the same as the strategy will have to be different now.

Interesting times as the Chinese might mean it..

art

This is great news - two days service loss to get the service upgraded to twice the bandwidth is fine by me

(*I wonder how many people will now ring Eircon now "begging" to cancel their order from yesterday )

RasTa

Foxwood wrote:

The mind boggles! eircom hasn't been an Irish company since Tony O'Reilly and Valentia took it private. Do you really think that the hundreds of millions that Mr O'Reilly and his buddies sucked out of the company stayed in Ireland?

You've been hoodwinked (to be very polite about it).

Yeah well i aint going to be polite since i walked out of Eircom myself so i really dont give two ****s about them. But if anyone here had any sense(since u all seem to be on broadband) you would cut off your phone line altogether, use their mobile for incoming calls and use skype for outgoing calls. But your all too stupid to do so, so continue wasting your money to whichever company you want. because whoever has the monopoly is going to do the same.

Blackdragon

Diver79 wrote:

Official Announcement taken from Smarts website

---

Official Announcement - Service Restoration

Smart Telecom are pleased to announce that restoration of services to our customers began today at midday.

Smart's broadband customers should have had inbound and outbound voice services restored today.

It has come to our attention that some of our broadband customers have lost access to our broadband services over the past two days. We aim to contact those customers directly in the coming days with a view to restoring our service as soon as possible.

We would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologise to all our customers for any inconvenience caused during this difficult time and as a token of our appreciation for your continued support, we are increasing the speed of your existing broadband product by an additional 3Mbps.

This upgrade will take place during the next 24 hours and will be available for the remainder of 2006.

We look forward to continue providing you with our exciting products for many years to come.

Well now it looks like it was worth sticking with Smart and waiting for the smoke to clear..... Take that EIRSCUM.... 6MB connection as of tomorrow - YEEHA:D

Sir Oxman

So far good news but for how long?
I hope to hell they survive plus I'm already on 6mb @ 65e does that mean I go to 9mb or stay at 6mb for 35e??

Happy (I hope) news.

shayser

art wrote:

This is great news - two days service loss to get the service upgraded to twice the bandwidth is fine by me

(*I wonder how many people will now ring Eircon now "begging" to cancel their order from yesterday )

Is there a 5-day or 7-day cooling off period or something like that in effect?

Sponge Bob

5 day cooling off, if the order was not signed by the ACCOUNT holder then email consumerline@comreg.ie and tell them an eircom winback man forged your signature on a form and here is your account number please fix it for me .
you cannot complain to eircom becuase he refused to give his name

machalla

While 6mb sounds all nice and thangs how many lines will actually support it? I was supposed to be on 4mb down 512kb up but the most the line would ever support was sub 2mb and even then not reliably.. The up speed is nice for €35 though

Blackdragon

shayser wrote:

Is there a 5-day or 7-day cooling off period or something like that in effect?

This is actully a good point for anyone who switched during the last two or three days to Eirscum or anyboby else.
I believe there is indeed a cooling off peroid which is usually 5 days so if i were you id call whoever and cancel the order.:)

Legion

delah wrote:

So far good news but for how long?
I hope to hell they survive plus I'm already on 6mb @ 65e does that mean I go to 9mb or stay at 6mb for 35e??

Happy (I hope) news.

"We are increasing the speed of your existing broadband product by an additional 3Mbps."

So you should go up to 9Mbps.

RasTa

Go with NTL BB 39.99 a month for 6 meg
Ireland € 0.020
Ireland - Mobile € 0.184
Ireland-Dublin € 0.020
Skype call rates above, save yourself 500 euros a year

Foxwood

Blackdragon wrote:

This is actully a good point for anyone who switched during the last two or three days to Eirscum or anyboby else.
I believe there is indeed a cooling off peroid which is usually 5 days so if i were you id call whoever and cancel the order.:)

The "come back to eircom" page on the eircom website had an option to skip the cooling off period so that your request could be "processed as soon as possible":

You are entitled to a 5 day cooling off period, during which you can change your mind about having your service returned to eircom. If you wish to waive your entitlement so that your order is processed as soon as possible, please indicate below. *
Yes please waive my right to a cooling off period.
No please observe the cooling off period.

You can't submit the request without explicitly selecting one of the above.

Wanna bet that all the winback forms have that exception too? With the "no cooling off" option helpfuly checked by the sales person?

Foxwood

RasTa wrote:

Go with NTL BB 39.99 a month for 6 meg
Ireland € 0.020
Ireland - Mobile € 0.184
Ireland-Dublin € 0.020
Skype call rates above, save yourself 500 euros a year

RasTa, RasTa, why is that name familiar????

Oh yes, he's the guy who recommends staying with eircom so that the money stays in the country!!!!!

That must be why he's recommending that people pay an American company (Skype) higher rates than an Irish company (freespeech, blueface, etc) for their VoIP calls.

bk

RasTa wrote:

Go with NTL BB 39.99 a month for 6 meg
Ireland € 0.020
Ireland - Mobile € 0.184
Ireland-Dublin € 0.020
Skype call rates above, save yourself 500 euros a year

Skype is ok, but not great, need to have the phone on to use.

Blueface.ie is much better IMHO, €15 pm gets you unlimited local, national and UK calls at anytime and you don't need the PC on, can use your standard phone (DECT) and you get a normal number (as well as a geographic number) that people can ring.

All just like a real phone but cheaper.

Can be used with NTL, Smart, etc.

simp

I just got a call (at 18:09) from a guy in Comreg. He advised me that my BB/Voice service would be active for another two weeks, and that they could guarantee nothing beyond that. He advised me to start looking for another provider.

I asked him if he was aware of the announcement on the Smart forums. He said he was not, but that I would be better advised to look to announcements in the mainstream media before making a judgement on the future of Smart.

I asked him if he was aware of the distinction between the Voice (wholesale rental from eircom) people (temporarily reconnected but likely to be disconnected), and the BB (LLU) people (mostly connected and likely to stay that way). He didn't seem particularly aware of any distinction.

I asked him if I would be breaking my contract by leaving Smart now, and he advised me that Smart had already rendered my contract null and void by not providing an uninterrupted service.

This guy had obviously been briefed against Smart... I wonder whether he's just reading from old notes, or whether the situation really is still that tenuous..? Would anyone from Smart care to comment? Or Comreg for that matter?

(Gonna duplicate this over on the Smart boards...)

RasTa

Foxwood wrote:

RasTa, RasTa, why is that name familiar????

Oh yes, he's the guy who recommends staying with eircom so that the money stays in the country!!!!!

That must be why he's recommending that people pay an American company (Skype) higher rates than an Irish company (freespeech, blueface, etc) for their VoIP calls.

Read above, did I not just tell people if they are going with a different company, go with internet calls and stop wasting money on landlines.
15 quid a month is ok for free calls to landlines, but again who rings landlines? If its really urgent they can just ring your mobile.
So fox, in your great wisdom smart is number one? Explain who is,

art

Foxwood wrote:

The "come back to eircom" page on the eircom website had an option to skip the cooling off period so that your request could be "processed as soon as possible":

You can't submit the request without explicitly selecting one of the above.

Wanna bet that all the winback forms have that exception too? With the "no cooling off" option helpfuly checked by the sales person?

As far as I know, a service provider is legally obliged to observe a "cooling off" period - I don't think ticking boxes etc will make any difference if a consumer is aware of their rights, etc - though, again, Eircon will probably just lie and say an engineer has already begun blah blah blah ...