Chorus - WTF!

Private Joker

Have Chorus broadband in Naas got it about 6 months ago, i'm on the 6 meg package. For the first two months the service was good , never a 6 meg line but it was just over 4 megs , which was good for me.

But recently their service has been crap, sometimes not much better than a dial -up , and at best it was a 1 meg package . and to top it all off it has been down all day today and most of yesterday

Does anyone know whats goin on ? i know they are basically NTL now which may have an impact on contention, but could it be this bad even with that? I am sick of ringing their suppport line, waiting 20 mins to get through and all they do is log my complaint.

Bottom line: don't get chorus broadband in Naas , stick with the dsl providers

JNive

dont get them anywhere, you are lucky its only been a day, my friend has been without it for almost 2 months

watty

They arn't NTL. NTL in Ireland isn't NTL either. UPC is the new owner of both.

RangeR

Private Joker wrote:

Have Chorus broadband in Naas got it about 6 months ago, i'm on the 6 meg package. For the first two months the service was good , never a 6 meg line but it was just over 4 megs , which was good for me.

But recently their service has been crap, sometimes not much better than a dial -up , and at best it was a 1 meg package . and to top it all off it has been down all day today and most of yesterday

Does anyone know whats goin on ? i know they are basically NTL now which may have an impact on contention, but could it be this bad even with that? I am sick of ringing their suppport line, waiting 20 mins to get through and all they do is log my complaint.

Bottom line: don't get chorus broadband in Naas , stick with the dsl providers

I've had Chorus in Naas for a month or two longer then you. For my first 3 months or so, I was getting a full 6Mb service. IT was great. For the past 4 months, my service has gone way down. At it's worst I was getting 8Kbps, averaging about 800Kbps. For the past 2 weeks or so, my connection drops about every 20 minutes for an average of 2 to 3 minutes each time.

I've rung them about twice a week for the past few months. Logged many faults and complaints. Ever time I rang I was told that there was a problem but they wouldn't give me any further information. Supervisors were generally not available but promised they would call me back. Neithless to say, most times I never got the call back.

Today, I had enough. I rang them and asked for a supervisor one last time. I was ultimately refused. I then asked, under the data protection act, for all information about my account, including dates and times of when I called them, all information on my account details all faults and complaints I logged. I then asked for the names of the Customer Services Manager and The ultimate head of Chorus.

With all that information, I then told the person that I was taking those two people to the Small Claims Court as I was sick of the service I am NOT getting but still getting charged for.

Within seconds I was put on hold. A few minutes later the head of Customer Services was on the phone to me apollogising. Long story short, she said that she spoke to many directors of various departments for updates.

I was told that the majority of the Chorus network had been fixed over the past month or two and backhaul increased etc. All bar a one pocket in Naas. This just happens to be my little pocket. I took her at her word when she said that they are hoping to have it resolved by tomorrow but told her that I would ring her back on Monday / Tuesday on her direct line [which she gave me] if not resolved.

That's what I found out today.

I'm in Esmondale, what area are you located in, just for reference?

dub45

IrishTLR wrote:

I've had Chorus in Naas for a month or two longer then you. For my first 3 months or so, I was getting a full 6Mb service. IT was great. For the past 4 months, my service has gone way down. At it's worst I was getting 8Kbps, averaging about 800Kbps. For the past 2 weeks or so, my connection drops about every 20 minutes for an average of 2 to 3 minutes each time.
........................................

I'm in Esmondale, what area are you located in, just for reference?

Pity you did not ask them why it took the threat of the Small Claims 'Court to get a decent response?

RangeR

dub45 wrote:

Pity you did not ask them why it took the threat of the Small Claims 'Court to get a decent response?

True, I tought about it but never asked. I just assumed to be true was that the supervisers couldn't be ar$ed until pushed.

BTW, I have every intention of taking them to court if things don't change, it wasn't an empty.

dub45

IrishTLR wrote:

True, I tought about it but never asked. I just assumed to be true was that the supervisers couldn't be ar$ed until pushed.

BTW, I have every intention of taking them to court if things don't change, it wasn't an empty.

Its appalling that it took such a threat to get any sort of answer but reading the threads on here makes me think that NTL/Chorus have reached a new low in customer (non)service recently so they really do deserve anything they get.

Sponge Bob

This useless clowning in their call centre is 100% normal service in Chorus, as for their network in Naas.....its brand new installed this year. WTF do they need to FIX ???

That person is also the Customer Services Manager for all of NTL since the NTL call centre in Waterford closed this week you know :D . Many Boardsies would jiggy your hind leg like a playful spaniel to get that number

RangeR

Sponge Bob wrote:

Many Boardsies would jiggy your hind leg like a playful spaniel to get that number

I'm sure they would. I'll have to keep that one close to my chest, though. As I'm sure you are aware, it would be against charter and the morals and ethics of every day life

PS: No pms asking for the number, they will not be answered. I will accept all forms of bribery, though

Sponge Bob

Chorus know all about the Small Claims Court, I'll wager they never won a court case there because every judge in Ireland outside Galway Waterford and Dublin probably knows from bitter personal experience that they are and always have been useless.

If Chorus ever stood up ina court in Limerick or Cork to defend themselves and made a speech about the excellence of their customer service experience you would find everybody in the court rolling around the floor laughing and the judge would beg them, BEG THEM, to please stop as they could take no more. Therefore they never show up in court to enter a defence and lose 100% of cases against them.

The notable exception to their ineptitude was their decent BB service which has gone down the swannee in the past 4 months, what a shame.

Until UPC took them over both Chorus and NTL knew how to provide proper BB so I really don't know what happened . So Sad So So Sad . No explanation or anything to anybody or an apology of any sort or a rebate for non service . So Chorus

dub45

Apart from the posts here I am also hearing a lot of complaints in the ordinary day to day chats about the appalling standard of service from NTL and that coupled with an imminent price increase must mean that sooner or later they are going to feature on the Joe Duffy show big time if they have not done so already?

Me thinks that Sky must be getting a lot of ex NTL customers with Channel Four's recent arrival on the EPG.

Private Joker

Well a bit of a result, i hope.

the supervisor rang me back and i explained my situation ( again ) . she told me she'd pass it on to the broadband section. Got a call back and he told me he knew there was a speed issue but he had been told that it had been sorted today ( convienient eh! ) . But he did tell me that he would pass my account back over to customer services so my account would be credited. I'll let you know by how much , when and if i get it.

Btw Broadband is still crap

JNive

there appears most certainly to be a deliberate move on their part to restrict bandwidth going through the backhaul links and peerings. Whether its stalling for investment to come through, or a cheap way to make an extra bit of a profit while they can get away with it , it seems that they are just pawning everyoen off with the 'yes there is a problem, we are on it' response again and again, with absolutely no sign of any actual fix.

Plain and simple, the network was perfectly fine before UPC took over, on both network, now physcially speaking, since they have taken over a few things might have happened.

The peerings and international links have had to changed, possibly causing the crappy speeds, but NOT the non-connections issues.

The physical cabling across the cities etc, remains the same obviosuly, and it seemed to work fine before, so the excuse of ' local problems ' relating to the actual cables is utter rubbish.

The only remaining explanation is that they have had to change all the software on their systems to something that UPC require, or just to some cheap bug-riddled economy version of whatever they used previously. Resulting in terrible reliability with there routing and server, which sounds plausible.

The last remaining possibility of change is that competent network engineers/adminstrators either left or were sacked, likely due to cost cutting by UPC, and as a result nobody in that bloody place has any idea how to fix a leak even.

thebman

We had chorus when all they provided was analog tv service and it was cutting out more than once a month for hours at a time. We ditched them for Sky as a result and have never looked back.

They are rubbish and always have been. They just can't provide the service they promise. If you have them, call and tell them you are leaving and they'll half the cost of the service per month to keep you or at least they tried that with us but we were so pissed off we wouldn't take it for 15 quid a month.

RangeR

brim4brim wrote:

We had chorus when all they provided was analog tv service and it was cutting out more than once a month for hours at a time. We ditched them for Sky as a result and have never looked back.

They are rubbish and always have been. They just can't provide the service they promise. If you have them, call and tell them you are leaving and they'll half the cost of the service per month to keep you or at least they tried that with us but we were so pissed off we wouldn't take it for 15 quid a month.

I unhderstand what you're saying but your comparing apples and MX5's. Chorus analog TV has always been a bad deal [from what I hear] but ths is their broadband we're talking about. It was perfect until just after the UPC takeover.

Anyway, back on T. My speeds this morning are back up to 5Mb:500Kb. Almost perfect. To be honest, I'm not greedy and could live with that

We'll see how things go over the weekend. But so far, it looks like Ms. CS Manager was telling the truth. I'm impressed [that I got someone in there to tell the truth].

Private Joker

yeah, mine is back to 5 meg speeds also. happy days.

Sponge Bob

JNive wrote:

Plain and simple, the network was perfectly fine before UPC took over, on both network, now physcially speaking, since they have taken over a few things might have happened.

Correct, both networks were fine and were run from Limerick/Dublin and Waterford/Dublin respectively by experienced and competent staff.

The physical cabling across the cities etc, remains the same obviosuly, and it seemed to work fine before, so the excuse of ' local problems ' relating to the actual cables is utter rubbish.

Correct, unless some fool went out to do upgrades and made a balls of it. In the old days these issues were fixed PDQ , the only long term issue I remember was an NTL one in D15 but NTL did not go into denial mode about that and fixed it ...and no doubt compoed the punters for it.

Chorus NEVER had a significant technical issue with their broadband before this summer.

They have had to change all the software on their systems to something that UPC require, or just to some cheap bug-riddled economy version of whatever they used previously. Resulting in terrible reliability with there routing and server, which sounds plausible.

Very . Add in the fact that this was controlled entirely from Holland as well.

The last remaining possibility of change is that competent network engineers/adminstrators either left or were sacked, likely due to cost cutting by UPC, and as a result nobody in that bloody place has any idea how to fix a leak even.

They may still be there but the Dutch are trying to remote control the whole thing and are not listening to them.

No Competent Irish Network tech would have cut the INEX link, leading me to suspect that some Dopey Dutchman made the decision .

To make it worse the old peering arrangements are still in place as an NTL legacy and still work...thats unless NTL UK kept them and NTL Ireland lost them and UPC never replaced the arrangement with their own which is highly probable. If you are on Digiweb or Magnet or BT and tracert to www.ntl.com it will traverse that INEX peer on its way to the NTL mothership.

Nevertheless they could have replaced the peering had they anybody capable of so doing in Ireland and the will to do so. They joined the INEX on the 01 July but I have never seen traffic go in or through it. Its been at least 4 months since the NTL connnection to the INEX was cut by UPC.

See

https://www.inex.ie/technical/peeringmatrix

Chorus were never in the INEX.

dub45

Whoever is responsible for NTL/Chorus now the complete indifference and in some cases the contempt (not turning up for appointments with customers)which they are are showing for customers is disturbing because they cannot be unaware of how the service (both bb and customerwise) has deteriorated since they took over.

There does not appear to be any sign of concern on their part over this as demonstrated by the post above where it took the threat of the Small claims court to get a modicum of courtesy.

And this is just lessening the real competition in the BB market.

Sponge Bob

dub45 wrote:

Whoever is responsible for NTL/Chorus now the complete indifference and in some cases the contempt (not turning up for appointments with customers)which they are are showing for customers is disturbing because they cannot be unaware of how the service (both bb and customerwise) has deteriorated since they took over.

I would wager the opposite .

The Chorus call centre in Limerick simply have no idea who their engineers are on the ground in Dublin/Galway/Waterford. These engineers were controlled competently by the competent call centre in Waterford which closed this week.

The Chorus bunker staff probably think Limerick and assume that the engineer can get from Ballymun to Ballybrack in 10 mins or 15 if its busy The whole think is a mess and what was historically the most incompetent large telco in Ireland, Chorus, has been put in charge of the notably far more competent NTL .

Chorus could drag the laws of gravity down to their level, thats how they always were. Simply utterly totally completely AWFUL as a company. The word Chorus makes my babies cry.

tl

I have Chorus since august (Naas)... signed for the 6mb... never saw 6mb.. always <1mb... till 3 weeks ago..then service increased and was consistant just over 5mb..... that is till today...

for whatever reason the service is back as bad as ever..

and i left BT for this!!!!
:mad:

RangeR

tl wrote:

I have Chorus since august (Naas)... signed for the 6mb... never saw 6mb.. always <1mb... till 3 weeks ago..then service increased and was consistant just over 5mb..... that is till today...

for whatever reason the service is back as bad as ever..

and i left BT for this!!!!
:mad:

Yes, my connection has been pretty perfect for 3 weeks. I finally rang Chorus yesterday to give them the all clear and close my complaint. I will be getting 3 months refund.

Now you're saying that the connection is gone to crap again? I'll check my tests and traces when I get home.

I hope this is just coincidence :mad:

RangeR

tl wrote:

I have Chorus since august (Naas)... signed for the 6mb... never saw 6mb.. always <1mb... till 3 weeks ago..then service increased and was consistant just over 5mb..... that is till today...

for whatever reason the service is back as bad as ever..

and i left BT for this!!!!
:mad:

Confirmed. Did a speed test last night and I'm down to about 800Kb download. I'll give it a day or two. Might just be a glitch.

RangeR

Looks like they are back to their old tricks. Maybe slightly defending them, the weather is very bad in Naas at the moment. Don't know what affect that would have.

Connection dropped shortly before 11pm. Came back at about 11:15pm but was unusable until not, 11:30. Useable but VERY slow. Upload is about 1.8Mb but download is not regestering at all. No download means that upload is useless.

Guess a "special" phone call to someone "special" in Chorus is called for tomorrow. Anyone else on Chorus having difficulties tonight?

JNive

my connection on chorus in cork seems to be pretty stable around the 2mbps mark ( 6mbps package ) as usual,