Dial Tone but no Broadband or dial in or out

DwoaC

Hi Folks,

On saturday morning our eircom phone and broadband stopped working.

While we still have a dial tone, we get an engaged tone once we dial more than 4 numbers.

When we dial into the phone the phone we are dialing from gets a normal ring but the phone in our flat does not make a peep.

Finally our broadband is failing to log in.

I've called eircom 3 times (including one call to customer complaints when 1 operator refused to let me finish a sentence. They are amazingly rude.) Eircom want to send out an engineer but will charge 160 euros if they can't find the fault. That sounds like a scam to me, after all, how will I know where the fault was found?

So I called the broadband support. They were much more helpful. They could see that the autentication was failing. If I understood the tech correctly, our phone line is not associated with our number. He mentioned a database entry may be incorrect.

So I asked broadband support to escalate the call to engineering (for which there is no call out fee) and left them to get eircom to sort the phone.

Here is the kicker. We walk out of our flat 5 minutes latter and we find 3 eircom vans digging multiple holes in the street and working with a massive bundle of cables. Of course the workers were sure that what they were doing "shouldn't be a problem." Well we all know there shouldn't be a problem but unfortunetly...

Has anybody come across a problem like this? And what can I do to get Eircom to fix it. Is there an escallation process you can force Eircom to go through?

Thanks in advance.

zilog_jones

I had similar problems a couple of years ago. Turns out the phone line running outside the house under the door was damaged (we got a new door fitted recently). We are with BT though - had no trouble getting an Eircom engineer out and it was fixed within a couple of days.

Solair

This is DEFINITELY a fault on the eircom network side, not in your home. If you have a dial tone you do not have any internal faults.

Dial 199000 (the number read back service) and check that you are indeed connected to your phone line.

It's possible that the guys doing the engineering works have accidently connected you to a spare line. This would still have a 'soft dial tone' but would not have any eircom account so you wouldn't be able to make outgoing calls. It would also explain your lack of broadband. Your number would also ring perfectly if calling from outside. As far as the exchange is concerned, it just sends the ring signal down the line and if there's no phone connected to it, it would just continue ringing anyway. It's just like as if you've unplugged your phone.

If calls are barred / there is no account the exchange will give you a 'reorder tone' (rapid busy) or a verbal announcement if you dial a few digits.

The only numbers that should work are 1901 (eircom sales) and 199000 (number read back)

Failing that, I would check that eircom haven't accidently disconnected your services for non-payment. It could be a clerical error, or you could have a problem with a bounced DD or cheque payment. Although, they usually let that roll for a bill or two before they would go as far as cutting off services.

I remember doing some IT related work in Ballybunion a few years back when I noticed an Eircom engineer doing work in a cabinet near the theatre. I then found out that the credit card machines in the local SuperValu stopped working... on further investigation he had knocked out the whole town!