NTL - Worst Broadband in Ireland?

Cuddlesworth

I find it ironic that I left IBB to go to NTL. Still seems like a better service though.

speedy21

Current Status - Not able to connect at all to NTL.

Dear Diary...
I havent updated in a few days because I'm worried that I'm sounding like a scratched record.
NTL has been down since the weekend - it connected once or twice at slower than dial-up speeds.
I'm using dial-up to write this because NTL just won't connect.
I've been a customer of NTL broadband for several weeks now and have only got connected a handful of times.

I called support today - the guy on the phone was *shocked* that 3 technicians were due to call out to me but didnt - he apologized on behalf of NTL for the service that I received and he promised that his team leader would call me back in an hour. That was before lunch - and no one called me back for the entire day.

So Late that evening I called again - spoke to a guy - told him my story AGAIN - but his system was down - so he can do nothing until tomorrow - so he offered to call me back tomorrow. Will he/Won't he? Only time will tell.
I'm guessing no!!!

speedy21

Dear Diary,
Today I tried to cancel NTL...
Spoke to a nice guy Robert - who apologized that no technicians called out and said he would transfer me directly to a technician so I could discuss my on going problem and get it fixed ASAP.
He promised to call me back later to see how I got on.

So he transfered me.
I was on hold for 30 mins - when my mobile rang - it was Robert wondering how I got on.
Told him I was still on hold for a technician - he said he'd call back later.
He called my mobile back again 40 minutes later - and I was still on hold!

He apologized and told me that all the technicians would be going home soon so not to bother holding any longer but to call back again tomorrow.

Fair play to him - he's the first person to actually call me back from this company - just a pity I'm still nowhere!
Will try again tomorrow!

Nala

My mother has been ringing them every day for the past 10 days. She is left on hold for at least half an hour and then told "A supervisor will call you back". This morning she was left on hold for an hour and a half!!!!!!! When the girl answered she said the usual 2A supervisor will call you back", my mother demanded to speak to a supervisor and was put onto one who told her no one can come out til next Wednesday!!!!!!!!!!!! I just sent them an email. Incompetent ****.

quazzy

speedy21 wrote:

Dear Diary,
Today I tried to cancel NTL...

E-mail: Customer.Support@ntl.ie

Postal address:
ntl
PO Box 321,
Dublin 3

Opening hours : Account & Billing Queries
Monday - Friday, 9am - 6pm

If you're determined to cancel the ntl then I would re-iterate my previous post. The only way they are going to notice you is if you stop paying them - soon you could be getting telephone calls on the hour every hour.

Write to them (Registered Delivery) and explain why you are cancelling and then instruct your bank to cancel and Direct Debit etc...

Hope it all works out,

Q

speedy21

Dear Diary,
Couldnt connect to NTL at all today - however tonight I am able to connect at the mind bogglingly awful speed of 0.9kb/s
A webpage takes about 20 minutes to load - if it doesnt time out beforehand.

The guy from cancelations said he would transfer me directly to a technician today.
So he put me through - I sat on hold for over an hour - eventually some guy (Richard) took my details.
He said a technician would come out to me this Friday after lunch.
I told him three previous technicians failed to show - He said they have just installed a new system and that a technician will definitely be out to me on Friday.

Fourth time lucky?!

Will keep you posted.
This is definitely my last attempt to get someone to fix it - I'm going to cancel it if technician #4 fails to show up.

Ridel

Speedy21,
Im sympathize.

Im on 3mb in Dublin 14.

I appear to have a connection but the PC cant access the internet.
IP address is screwy, 89.*.*.*, I think it should be 192.*.*.*

It has not worked since last thursday 23rd Novemeber. 3 phone calls to customer service, one of which involved 40 minutes on hold, finally got me a call back yesterday afternoon at about 2pm. Some broadband "technician", i use the term loosely, told me that the boys in Amsterdam were working on it. Also mentioned thats its definitely a problem at their end & that they have NO time frame for fixing it. I dont think they actually know what the problem is. Which is very scary. She mentioned that they thought they had it fixed a week or two ago. (I hadnt experienced a problem at this stage mind you). Something about running out of IP addresses in their allocated range but now the problem is back they are not sure what it is.

Suffice to say, if yours is the same issue as mine then your screwed. Sorry.
Having a technician come out will make no difference. It seems like some sort of serious infrastructure issue and some lad in a white van aint gonna fix it this time.

Please keep posting about how you get on as Im in the same boat and will be cancelling very soon unless this issue is totally sorted and I recieve compensation of some sort.

Ridel

JNive

what that guy told you is correct, and one of the few to actually do so. your ip address should be 89.101.x.x however their routing is indeed getting screwed in or around the amsterdam point. In many cases, some routes on the internet are ok, others cant be reached so check if you can reach chorus.ie or ping/tracert chello.nl

lafors

Ridel wrote:

Speedy21,
Im sympathize.

Im on 3mb in Dublin 14.

I appear to have a connection but the PC cant access the internet.
IP address is screwy, 89.*.*.*, I think it should be 192.*.*.*

It has not worked since last thursday 23rd Novemeber. 3 phone calls to customer service, one of which involved 40 minutes on hold, finally got me a call back yesterday afternoon at about 2pm. Some broadband "technician", i use the term loosely, told me that the boys in Amsterdam were working on it. Also mentioned thats its definitely a problem at their end & that they have NO time frame for fixing it. I dont think they actually know what the problem is. Which is very scary. She mentioned that they thought they had it fixed a week or two ago. (I hadnt experienced a problem at this stage mind you). Something about running out of IP addresses in their allocated range but now the problem is back they are not sure what it is.

Suffice to say, if yours is the same issue as mine then your screwed. Sorry.
Having a technician come out will make no difference. It seems like some sort of serious infrastructure issue and some lad in a white van aint gonna fix it this time.

Please keep posting about how you get on as Im in the same boat and will be cancelling very soon unless this issue is totally sorted and I recieve compensation of some sort.

Ridel

Well just to add another to the list of compainers (is that a word?)
I signed up with ntl 2 months ago (I'm on the 6mb connection)
Well since last week my service is brutal, My download speeds are OK (well not 6 but about from 3-4.5) but my up speeds are terrible, between 10k-80k.

It takes ages to load pages, then they work fine, then not, etc...
I rang ntl, on hold for 40 minutes (that hold message is made to make you hang up), when I got through, the lad I was talking to refused to help me because the account is in my wifes name. I lost the plot. Eventually he agreed to listen (I thought of ramming the modem down his throat...like a poster said earlier).

Anyway, he gave me the usual spheel about a technician will call within 48 hours....bulls**t. Then I asked him about the amsterdam thing and he said he didn't know what I was talking about. (btw I can ping chello.nl no bother?)

Anyway if they don't fix this I will be cancelling my dd and not paying for the bb service, I will pay for my tv though.

Oh and if they say anything about the 12month contract just quote the Sale of Goods and Supply of SERVICES Act (& COMREG), seeing as they aren't providing the service people signed up for.

End of rant!

JNive

ok, for those of you on NTL/Chorus and that can ping chello.nl no problem but have issues with other sites here's my offer of help.

In firefox or IE set your connection settings to use the following proxy for all protocols.

dallas-2.dsi-gaming.com:3128

if you get an access denied message, then let me no what Class C you are on, ( 83.101.x.x for example )
I only had my C-Class added, but other NTL/Chorus people may be on others

gerire

Ive been having grief(no net access) since sunday. Managed to get through yesterday morning, 9 am phone calls get through aparently, used a different number though 1800924424 which seemd quicker probably wasn't though.
Any way, when answered it was obvious the person on the end of the phone had not got a clue, and booked in a service call for next wednesday, 1 week WTF?
Went home from work and the ready light was on, so ran a dl/ul speed test and managed to get speeds of 2 1/5 mb down, which isn't too bad, but there it was the QOS @ 2%. Ive been with NTL for years now, we were in the roll out area years ago, and have not had any trouble until the last few weeks, very unimpressed, will see how they go over the next week if it doesn't return to its previous good service Ill be looking elsewhere for my new apartment

lafors

JNive wrote:

ok, for those of you on NTL/Chorus and that can ping chello.nl no problem but have issues with other sites here's my offer of help.

In firefox or IE set your connection settings to use the following proxy for all protocols.

dallas-2.dsi-gaming.com:3128

if you get an access denied message, then let me no what Class C you are on, ( 83.101.x.x for example )
I only had my C-Class added, but other NTL/Chorus people may be on others

I tried this, got access denied.
I'm on 89.101.x.x

How will this help? (I'm an engineer, just not a telco engineer )

JNive

actually what are the third set of digits in that ip.

basically, for those that can access some sites and not others, then by setting up your browser to proxy with my server, all your browser traffic comes over to this server, then to the destination site, thereby getting around whatever problem is on the routes that you cant connect through

Ridel

Well, I got home last night and everything was working fine. Panic over for the moment I guess.

@ gerire: Whats a "QOS @ 2%" ? Do I need to check if I have it and is it bad ?? :eek:

JNive

QoS on those tests is referring to the difference between maximum and minim speed achieved during the test, if you get a sharp burst of 5mbps and then it drops to 1mbps and then levels back at 3 and 4 mbps for instance, then its 20% QoS

speedy21

Dear Diary,
Took my Fourth day off work today to sit in and wait again for another NTL technician.
Technician number 4 failed to show despite the promises from Richard in the technicians dept (???) that one would call out.

I don't understand how a company the size of NTL can fail 4 times to send someone out and not even phone to say that there is a problem and they won't be able to make it.

It looks like there is no one to complain to - I suppose my best option is to go back to UTV - I never had trouble of this sort with them

Will call NTL again on Monday - they're closed now

LumoColor

I used to have teribble problems with NTL in Lucan when I used if for Gaming it was so bad it was unusable. Pings would be up and down like a h0ez drawz, connection would restart for no reason and a whole host of technical problems wiping out my connection for weeks at a time.

So I got a seperate Netsource/ Magnet 3mb for gaming and use my 6mb NTL for just mail/ web and other downloading, and most of the time its find, I actually get very good download speeds of around 550k/sec from most UK sites.

Now I just get annoyed with the niggly NTL problems like DNS where whole sections of the net disapear from time to time on the default NTL name servers and not being able to send mail to some common domains. Though I can always flip this traffic at Netsource/ Magnet if its work critical, so far ive never seen them both down at the same time.

I just wish one provider could offer a single quality service that was actually *Always On* not *Intermittantly On*.....

MiloFoxburr

speedy21 wrote:

Dear Diary,
Took my Fourth day off work today to sit in and wait again for another NTL technician.
Technician number 4 failed to show despite the promises from Richard in the technicians dept (???) that one would call out.

I don't understand how a company the size of NTL can fail 4 times to send someone out and not even phone to say that there is a problem and they won't be able to make it.

It looks like there is no one to complain to - I suppose my best option is to go back to UTV - I never had trouble of this sort with them

Will call NTL again on Monday - they're closed now

Thats weird...

Recently my NTL BB was down for about 2 month's Techies came out on 2 occasions to attempt to fix it. Both time's we got a text message the day before to remind us that a techie would be out and a time. The techie always arrived around that time.

Admittedly they didn't fix the problem until one day when another NTL Techie knocked on our door and asked if out BB was down my mam said yes for the past two months and he said they'd found an issue around the corner that was causing it.

I know my story doesn't help much but it just seems odd that your having such issues with NTL.

(Oh they also refunded us for the two months that it was down although we did have to push it)

Rockiemalt

my ntl is playing up at the mo as well. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't...this is a common thing then?

christophicus

My Pings have gone really high recently. Im getting 200+ on a server where I used to get max of 40!!

christophicus

speed has gone to ****e now aswell as the ping. It seem sto be every sunday after 12pm that it gets really bad.

mickger

christophicus wrote:

speed has gone to ****e now aswell as the ping. It seem sto be every sunday after 12pm that it gets really bad.

I'm in Waterford and my speeds are sh**e too. This happened last weekend too and lasted until Wednesday. Speeds were good up until today :mad:

Astro1996

Tallaght here and im gettin downloads of 991k at the mo on the 3mb line and my ping is 160ms were as other players from ireland have pings of 26ms 30ms and 37ms respectivly - terrible :mad: