Ice Broadband steadily becoming even more terrible

BigglesMcGee

Filled in their online form a few weeks ago and heard nothing. Got an email address of a friend (couldnt find one on their site) and we CC them all of the mails to ICE. Havent heard anything on that either.

I guess i'll just have to phone, but if they cant handle their own electronic communications i dont hold out much hope.

k99_64

redelephant

I've been trying to contact ICE for the last month to cancel. 2 phone calls and 3 emails ignored. I've cancelled the direct debit but I want the aerial and cabling removed from my house. They also owe me a refund I was promised 8 months ago. I've complained to Comreg. Any suggestions on what to do next? Does anyone have an email or phone number for the MD?

smadger

I was pretty nervous about getting Ice after reading all these posts, but as a long-time sufferer of '3 fraudband' I decided to try the 2-week trial (while rejoicing that my contract is nearly up with that shower).

Initially it was so-so. Steady speeds of 500-600 kbs. But the ping times of 50ms were a vast improvement over the 500-4000ms lag of 3's offering, and made both web browsing and playing WOW at least usable.

Last wednesday there were a lot of outages during the day & I thought 'here we go - just as my 14 days expires'. Turns out it must have been some sort of upgrade as I've been consistently getting 3Mbs ever since. Hurrah - welcome to the naughties mid-Louth

Hopefully those of you who are having problems will see some upgrades soon.

bartificer

smadger wrote: »

I was pretty nervous about getting Ice after reading all these posts, but as a long-time sufferer of '3 fraudband' I decided to try the 2-week trial (while rejoicing that my contract is nearly up with that shower).

Initially it was so-so. Steady speeds of 500-600 kbs. But the ping times of 50ms were a vast improvement over the 500-4000ms lag of 3's offering, and made both web browsing and playing WOW at least usable.

Last wednesday there were a lot of outages during the day & I thought 'here we go - just as my 14 days expires'. Turns out it must have been some sort of upgrade as I've been consistently getting 3Mbs ever since. Hurrah - welcome to the naughties mid-Louth

Hopefully those of you who are having problems will see some upgrades soon.

I don't wanna rain on your parade because it is certainly true that ICE is better than the 3G stuff from three which is just a disaster, however, I think you've just made a terrible mistake. The core problem with ICE is that they seem inept at managing their network and their support is a total joke. Once anything goes wrong the frustration will begin. You'll be on hold for hours, your messages will go unanswered and your emails will be ignored. This will go on for weeks or months. It will waste away your time while raising your bloodpressure and giving you grey hairs. If I hear the phrase "we appreciate your patience and we thank you" one more time I think I'll crack. They play it about every 30 seconds or so and you are very likely to be on hold for 30 minutes of more, that is assuming they haven't gone home early that day.

An inability to manage your network combined with disastrous support is a bad combination and that's what you get with ICE. It's not a matter of if it goes wrong, but when. Right now you're getting good service. I had that experience too at times. I've also had 7 weeks of outages since mid-December!

I really hope you beat the odds but you really are playing with fire and there is no safety net (to mix a metaphor).

Good luck!

Bart.

BigglesMcGee

smadger wrote: »

I was pretty nervous about getting Ice after reading all these posts, but as a long-time sufferer of '3 fraudband' I decided to try the 2-week trial (while rejoicing that my contract is nearly up with that shower).

Initially it was so-so. Steady speeds of 500-600 kbs. But the ping times of 50ms were a vast improvement over the 500-4000ms lag of 3's offering, and made both web browsing and playing WOW at least usable.

Last wednesday there were a lot of outages during the day & I thought 'here we go - just as my 14 days expires'. Turns out it must have been some sort of upgrade as I've been consistently getting 3Mbs ever since. Hurrah - welcome to the naughties mid-Louth

Hopefully those of you who are having problems will see some upgrades soon.

Welcome ......... TO HELL

pm.

how come my ping is always low and my speeds are s...hite :mad:

BigglesMcGee

pm. wrote: »

how come my ping is always low and my speeds are s...hite :mad:

Try pingplotter. It will show you your ping every second over say 500 pings. The problem with speedtest is it doesnt measure average pings.

Its the ping spikes that cause you the trouble. You might get 10 good pings and then another one of half a second. Not good for gaming or voip.

I really think that Ice Broadband just wind peoples speeds down until they notice. Then put them up and start the windout process again until it is noticed again. Your average Joe soap wont notice that he is not getting the speeds he is paying for as he's just browsing.

BigglesMcGee

Well, they've just turne off the phones today. Nothing but an engaged tone all day.

bartificer

BigglesMcGee wrote: »

Well, they've just turne off the phones today. Nothing but an engaged tone all day.

I'm on hold as I type this. All seems normal. The same crappy music and the same patronising message. Oh ... and of course no one actually answering the phone.

bartificer

Got some interesting info out of ICE sales last night.

1) After 5:30pm they have a total of ONE person on support
2) They know Maynooth is overloaded
3) They are still signing up new poeple regardless

I've also been running smokeping against my connection and you can see the results here: http://www.bartbusschots.ie/blog/?p=803

Bart.

redelephant

Comreg got back to me within 24hrs of my email saying they would 'open the lines of communication' between me and ICE. And that ICE had 10 days to get back to me. Anyway ICE rang me today(2 days later) and I got an appointment for removal for the aerial for a time that suits me. the point is keep complaining to Comreg, it worked for me.

maninaskirt

The usual weekend service from ICE...

BigglesMcGee

Speeds are fine here today, but massive 50% packet loss.

rourkek4

see history of my speeds below, during the installation i asked the tech what the story was with speeds and contention in the area, he ran speedtest to proove to me that they were fine as you can see in the top test result below. it only lasted one day! what a shower of cowboys i actualy want to hurt them i hate the way that in ireland we are just expected to take what we are gien and pass it off as "the typical irish way" i want my money back, i want my rig removed but i have no other option for BB as i dont have a landline and IBB told me "oh yeah sorry your high tower is at its capacity nothing we can do for you" after waiting 14 days of the 10 i was told that someone would be out to connect me in. i want to take out a page spread in the kildare paper saying how terrible they are.


DATE DOWNLOAD UPLOAD
3/31/2008 11:05 AM GMT 2823 kb/s 951 kb/s
3/31/2008 3:43 PM GMT 2282 kb/s 613 kb/s
4/27/2008 1:37 PM GMT 82 kb/s 224 kb/s
4/27/2008 1:43 PM GMT 76 kb/s 194 kb/s
4/27/2008 2:34 PM GMT 119 kb/s 477 kb/s
4/27/2008 4:04 PM GMT 132 kb/s 331 kb/s
4/28/2008 7:44 PM GMT 99 kb/s 345 kb/s
4/28/2008 9:40 PM GMT 131 kb/s 396 kb/s
4/30/2008 2:43 AM GMT 347 kb/s 628 kb/s
4/30/2008 7:22 PM GMT 193 kb/s 485 kb/s
5/2/2008 8:23 PM GMT 80 kb/s 150 kb/s
5/3/2008 7:58 AM GMT 134 kb/s 80 kb/s

bartificer

rourkek4 wrote: »

see history of my speeds below, during the installation i asked the tech what the story was with speeds and contention in the area, he ran speedtest to proove to me that they were fine as you can see in the top test result below. it only lasted one day! what a shower of cowboys i actualy want to hurt them i hate the way that in ireland we are just expected to take what we are gien and pass it off as "the typical irish way" i want my money back, i want my rig removed but i have no other option for BB as i dont have a landline and IBB told me "oh yeah sorry your high tower is at its capacity nothing we can do for you" after waiting 14 days of the 10 i was told that someone would be out to connect me in. i want to take out a page spread in the kildare paper saying how terrible they are.


DATE DOWNLOAD UPLOAD
3/31/2008 11:05 AM GMT 2823 kb/s 951 kb/s
3/31/2008 3:43 PM GMT 2282 kb/s 613 kb/s
4/27/2008 1:37 PM GMT 82 kb/s 224 kb/s
4/27/2008 1:43 PM GMT 76 kb/s 194 kb/s
4/27/2008 2:34 PM GMT 119 kb/s 477 kb/s
4/27/2008 4:04 PM GMT 132 kb/s 331 kb/s
4/28/2008 7:44 PM GMT 99 kb/s 345 kb/s
4/28/2008 9:40 PM GMT 131 kb/s 396 kb/s
4/30/2008 2:43 AM GMT 347 kb/s 628 kb/s
4/30/2008 7:22 PM GMT 193 kb/s 485 kb/s
5/2/2008 8:23 PM GMT 80 kb/s 150 kb/s
5/3/2008 7:58 AM GMT 134 kb/s 80 kb/s

You'll just have to get a phone line in, that's what I'm doing as that opens up my options significantly.

Also, don't be too hard on IBB, FAR better that they refuse to sign up more people than the mast can handle than they do an ICE and just keep piling them on regardless. It's that practice that has resulted in the disastrous ICE service in Maynooth.

Bart.

pm.

im the only 1 on the base station, so why are my speeds ****.e ? :mad: tbh last night they where great how can it fluctuate so much

Unwelcome

Emmm... Yeah Hell

akari no ryu

Ice are currently at over contention capacity in Maynooth.
They are signing people on anyway, with a two year lock in on the contract.
Our current download rate is in the mid 100s of Kbps, the ping is unreasonably high and the packet loss is absurdly high.
We're using smoke-ping to keep an eye on it.
The end result is sub-dial up quality and speed.

akari no ryu

rourkek4 wrote: »

i want to take out a page spread in the kildare paper saying how terrible they are.

I'm fairly certain they'd be willing to run an article on it. Submit one, what's the worst that can happen.

Cabaal

BigglesMcGee, your posted edited http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=55831814&postcount=585

Not very constructive

BigglesMcGee

Cabaal wrote: »

BigglesMcGee, your posted edited http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=55831814&postcount=585

Not very constructive

Which part wasnt very constructive? i cant even remember what i wrote in it now.

Still > 50% packet loss here.

I think if people check their pings to Ice they will find that pings from you to Ice are very bad, but pings from anyone to you are fine.

I've checked this with several people in my area.

One of them says that Ice told him it would be fixed today.

Lets see.

Unwelcome

OMG! although ping is not reaching more than 100, its completelly impossible playing CSS for few days now :mad: all that drops and freezings in-game are just terrible:mad: someone experienced it? Just first time see something like that! Mainly you can play normally or you are kicked for high ping.. but something like that......:mad:

BigglesMcGee

Sooooo bad the last week.
Takes about 5 mins here to load a web page. Benn like that since Saturday.
Being trying to call Ice support all week and no answer.

When you give up waiting after an hour or so on hold and press the button to leave a message, THE MAILBOX IS FULL

Says it all about Ice Broadband really doesnt it.

Try this and set it to ping ANYWHERE 100 times and then just laugh, because there is not much else you can do.

http://www.pingplotter.com/download.html

bittihuduga

looks like ice broadband died in maynooth yesterday...i had no connection or slowest connection in the world :-(

BigglesMcGee

bittihuduga wrote: »

looks like ice broadband died in maynooth yesterday...i had no connection or slowest connection in the world :-(

Ashbourne here.
Still rubbish.
Since saturday its been unusable max speed of 10kbps. yes, bits.

Ice wont anser the phone since Saturday.

They really dont give a crap at all.

BigglesMcGee

Was on hold all night last night without getting through once.

Their Voice mailbox is still full.

Thats a whole week of trying to call them all day, email them and getting nothing.

Have a look at his test from IrishISPtest.com

Quality of Service 6%. Thats 96 out of every 100 packets sent that dont make it.
Download 15 kbps (almost 4 times SLOWER than dialup).

How can it be possible for a company to treat their customers this way.
Some communication to say what the problem is, that they are aware of it and working on it and when it will be sorted would be the least i would expect.

Also if you go to their automated service updates it says all of their different issues will be resolved in mid april.
Newsflash to ICE Broabdband.... Its MAY now.

bartificer

They only have ONE person on support after 5:30 on weekdays so it wouldn't surprise me if it was the same on weekends. Needless to say that one person can't possibly handle the flood of angry calls ICE generate with their utter ineptitude at running a network.

If you ring during the day on a week day you will get an answer in a reasonable time. Though, don't expect the answer to be reasonable ... those 10 to 14 days for a fix in Maynooth have LONG LONG passed.

Totally unbelievable ... they must be in breach of consumer law in some way?

Bart.

stepbar

Why doesn't someone take a court case against these guys?

bartificer

stepbar wrote: »

Why doesn't someone take a court case against these guys?

If I wasn't totally broke I would give it serious consideration. To take a case you'd also need to know exactly what law they are breaking ... anyone have any ideas on that?

Bart.