need to complain: Eircom speeds

Stuxnet

I have the 7mb package from eircom,
yes I know they say speed Up to 7mb
but i live in a relatively new estate, I'm hardly a mile from the exchange, (ennis) yet my speed has never exceeded 415kbs
before i moved to this address during the summer, i was in a similar type estate, same package even, and its the same account, and i was getting between 700-800kbs on my downloads,
I have firewalls sorted and port forwarding enabled for certain programs etc., i know what I'm at,
so surely there's something wrong,

what kind of info or stats should i have to hand when I go ring about this, paying 60 a month for 400kbs is unacceptable, ive left it go for too long, its really annoying me now, this sub standard service

thanks

Barname

when you call them they will tell you that you failed to read the small print

'up to'

thats what they will emphasise 'up to'

they will play dumb on contention ratio

400 - 500 is typical on 7mb service

smart economy!

Cabaal

OP, similar type of state means nothing.

The speed you receive is down to the distance and quality of your phone line and that does not mean distance "as the crow flys", as such the PSTN cables may travel for many miles before they hit your premises.

Before you go complaining to eircom I'd suggest you post your line stats here (available from your router) and also ensure that your internal physical connections are setup 100% correctly....read the FAQ if you need assistance.

Even if all your line can take is say 512K lets say due to line length and quality then the best you'll get eircom to do is perhaps drop you to a lower priced package (if one is available). There is no law that will make eircom guarantee you say 1MB.

HATCHET IRL

this "up to" crack is a joke, a very unfunny joke. Eircom are a bigger joke. Whats ur contention ratio? I moved from eircom to magnet, even tho its a resold eircom line my speeds have been alot better cause contention went from 48:1 to 12:1, didnt fix my lag spike problem tho.

Stuxnet

Barname wrote: »

400 - 500 is typical on 7mb service

aye, but its only half of what i had before moving house, same package,
afaik i'm 24:1
a screen of my stats, which i know nothing about,
thanks lads

http://i50.tinypic.com/33nvzox.jpg

where it says 4000 down stream, i had 7000 in the last house, i always took it, 1mb to be around 100kbs, so this would say my line is only going to 4mb ?

jor el

That's strange. Your attenuation would suggest your line is capable of far greater than what you're getting, 8Mbps even. The sync rate at 4Mbps is either because of a problem, or eircom have set it to 4. I'd give them a ring tomorrow, and check what they've set your profile to.

Thoie

I have a relatively similar query, hope you don't mind if I pop in here.

My parents are paying for an Eircom 3Mb bundle, but are getting speeds of roughly half that. I'm not there at the moment, so can't post stats, but the last time I was home I checked, and it seemed to me that they should be able to receive close on the full 3Mb. Mother rang Eircom and was told that on the 3Mb package that was all she'd get, but that if she upgraded to the 7Mb package, then she'd get speeds around 3-5.

Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but if the line is capable of speeds in the 3-5 region, and she's paying for a 3Mb bundle, why should she have to upgrade to a more expensive bundle just to get what she's already theoretically paying for? I understand that they only promise "Up to" a certain speed, but I assumed that was to take into account quality variations on the line.

anoble66

if the line is on the 3mb profile, then the time you take into consideration the packet overheard etc then the max your going to really download at is around 300KB/s which equates to about 2.4MB. And thats not taking contention into consideration - during peak times that 3MB connection could be downloading at well under 1mb.

So what eircom is saying, is if you want to actually download at a rate of 5MB then you would need to upgrade to the 7MB package.

Thoie wrote: »

I have a relatively similar query, hope you don't mind if I pop in here.

My parents are paying for an Eircom 3Mb bundle, but are getting speeds of roughly half that. I'm not there at the moment, so can't post stats, but the last time I was home I checked, and it seemed to me that they should be able to receive close on the full 3Mb. Mother rang Eircom and was told that on the 3Mb package that was all she'd get, but that if she upgraded to the 7Mb package, then she'd get speeds around 3-5.

Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but if the line is capable of speeds in the 3-5 region, and she's paying for a 3Mb bundle, why should she have to upgrade to a more expensive bundle just to get what she's already theoretically paying for? I understand that they only promise "Up to" a certain speed, but I assumed that was to take into account quality variations on the line.

BOBBY

BOBBY wrote: »

aye, but its only half of what i had before moving house, same package,
afaik i'm 24:1
a screen of my stats, which i know nothing about,
thanks lads

http://i50.tinypic.com/33nvzox.jpg

where it says 4000 down stream, i had 7000 in the last house, i always took it, 1mb to be around 100kbs, so this would say my line is only going to 4mb ?

Ring Eircom and tell them to allow 7Mb down you line, they're only allowing 4Mb atm judging from your stats. When I upgraded to 7Mb they only upgraded my line to a 6Mb. I rang them and they changed to 7Mb within 5 mins.

alexindublin

I'v an Eircom 7mb aswell and it's peaked 3.14mb. The last couple of weeks it's been disgraceful altogether. Last monday at around 9pm i ran several speed tests( one was the eircom speedtest) and i got 0.06mb down and 0.02 up.The speed was so poor that i had to get off the home network and use my o2 dongle. I was with imagine before eircom and my 7mb connection gave me between 5mb and 11mb. How can this be on the same phone line. The exchange is in Palmerstown, spitting distance from me, and my line has been tested to 13.12mb. Do i have any chance of breaking away from eircom and going to another ISP or am i stuck with them even though they're not giving me what i signed up for?
Will the "speeds up to" loophole bite me in the ass if i try get away from them?

Or is my best bet to just sit silently and put up with the most disgraceful internet service i'v come accross since dialup !
Can i get a second ISP in on the eircom line while contracted to eircom?

thefinalstage

alexindublin wrote: »

I'v an Eircom 7mb aswell and it's peaked 3.14mb. The last couple of weeks it's been disgraceful altogether. Last monday at around 9pm i ran several speed tests( one was the eircom speedtest) and i got 0.06mb down and 0.02 up.The speed was so poor that i had to get off the home network and use my o2 dongle. I was with imagine before eircom and my 7mb connection gave me between 5mb and 11mb. How can this be on the same phone line. The exchange is in Palmerstown, spitting distance from me, and my line has been tested to 13.12mb. Do i have any chance of breaking away from eircom and going to another ISP or am i stuck with them even though they're not giving me what i signed up for?
Will the "speeds up to" loophole bite me in the ass if i try get away from them?

Or is my best bet to just sit silently and put up with the most disgraceful internet service i'v come accross since dialup !
Can i get a second ISP in on the eircom line while contracted to eircom?

If you complaint to Eircom and go through the proper channels you can cancel early.

No, you can only have 1 isp on a phone line at any one time.

alexindublin

Cheers man. I'm getting close to blowing a fuse with them at this stage. Spose it'll take months to get away from them..lol. Do you know if i'll have to pay them rental to the end of the contract (bout 8.5 months left on a 10 month contract) ?

thefinalstage

alexindublin wrote: »

Cheers man. I'm getting close to blowing a fuse with them at this stage. Spose it'll take months to get away from them..lol. Do you know if i'll have to pay them rental to the end of the contract (bout 8.5 months left on a 10 month contract) ?

If you run through the stuff with tech support and they can't fix the problem then no.

alexindublin

Awesome. Thanks a million, i'll hit them when i get home from work.

Thanks a mill.

Fracture

The only way your going to get anything fixed is if you happen to ring up and get through to someone who knows what your talking about, which is probably around 5% of the operators.

My brother had to explain to them what contention ratio is, and this was the broadband support people and that still didnt get the porblem sorted. Plain and simply broadband in this country is a joke and its not gonna be set up properly for a long time.

alexindublin

I'v had those already. Rang this morning, gave them my speeds etc, first was told the connection was fine !! When i asked if i was on 24:1 or 48:1 contention ration, there was silence for a second and then "I'll just put you on hold for a second" !!

In one call of found the following words to be totally alien to the broadband support team.....Latentcy, Contention ratio, here's the one that drew a blank, probably coz it's an IT term - "PING", i couldn't believe it when the guy didn't know what it meant !

I know that if they do sort it out that it'll clap out again in no time so i'm hoping to get one of the 95% morons to go through it and get nowhere so i can get the hell away from Eircom and back to Imagine, I should have never left them, 5 years and i had to ring imagine support twice - to get settings for new routers !! Yes I am an idiot for leaving a good service for eircom.
Once bitten....

cahill31

@AlexinDublin. I'm also on a "7 mb" connection from Eircom and dealing with the same issues that you described in your earlier posts. I'm getting next to nowhere with Eircom support and was wondering if you had any suggestions and leaving Eircom is not an option right now unfortunately.

alexindublin

I ran every test possible,ie speed test, line test etc and got onto eircom broadband support. Every time i got a stupid answer or explanation i fired stats and facts at them. Took 40 minutes but i got my 7mb from them, but i got it.
If its noise in your area and if changing channels dosn't fix it ask for a different router.

If your line cant carry 7mb, demand a line upgrade or change plan + refund for wthatever length of time the charged you for 7mb. They would have known from day one what your line can carry so if your line only carries 3mb and they sold you up to 7mb, then they delibertly ripped you off

If your not happy with the tech support person you get ask for another until you get a helpful intelligent one.

Biggest thing to remember is that you are the customer and you don't have to take any cr*p of them.

Take into consideration that the 7mb you pay for is actually only "upto 7mb" but keep at them til they get it up to a speed that your happy with.