UPC must go, what's the best alternative?

Allyall

I am at the end of my tether..
I am currently with UPC, paying €34 Per Month for (a supposed) 20MB.

I have been having trouble with them for 2 months now. I eventually had an engineer call around, to tell me that i needed a new cable. He booked another engineer for a weeks time. A week and a half later a different engineer arrived out, and replaced the old cable with a new one. No difference to my broadband.

I just went to Speedtest.net and got 1.34 Mbps, so i decided to ring them again. (My internet went completely 3 days ago, and i was waiting on a call back from a technician in there, to update me on the line fault.) I got through to a guy named Gordon, who proceeded to tell me that there was "noise on the line".
I was, as always, polite, but probably sounded a bit upset/annoyed. I didn't raise my voice or swear etc.. But i did say, i have heard the "noise on the line" sentence for the best part of 2 months and i believe it to be a "bit of an excuse", and on some forums i have seen posts and threads referring to that problem, going back 3 or 4 years. He then told me that there has been no update on my ongoing problem, and that is why nobody has got back to me. So i asked "Is the noise on the line, likely to affect neighbours?"

He told me that he is not qualified to talk about broadband technical faults, and asked me to hold, while he got somebody who is.
2 minutes later (listening to a dead phone) i realised he had indeed hung up on me.
What sort of customer service is that? Does anybody in there monitor the calls?

Anyway, Can anybody help me? I am looking for a good, broadband alternative, I was going to get magnet, but they have quoted me €49.99 Per month for 8Mbps, which is too much for me..

Any other decent suppliers out there?

Kensington

I don't think they actually hang up on you, more that their phone system seems to fail to reroute your call so when they do go to transfer you, it ends up just dropping your call instead.

Nobody is going to beat UPC in terms of price though.
Expect to pay at least €40 per month for a basic DSL package.
Smart offer 10Mb for €40 per month but only available in a limited number of exchanges so you may not be able to get them.

Be aware too, that the speeds quoted by the likes of Smart, Magnet, Eircom are all maximum theoretical speeds. Depending on your phone line, your connection could give you the full speeds quoted or you could end up with speeds worse than what UPC were providing you.

wmpdd3

We had 20Mb with upc, it was fine, no issues, usually around 16Mb down load, changes to 10 Mb due to cost and it feels much faster!



It's always just at the 10Mb and 1Mb upload!

In saying that, I called in Feb to give 1 months notice to downgrade, wasn't done.

Had to call again in April to finally get it done, but I had the time, date and name of the person I spoke to, the operator just said, 'oh' I'll get that done so. Think she could see what had happened on the screen.

keithclancy

Allyall wrote: »

I am at the end of my tether..
I am currently with UPC, paying €34 Per Month for (a supposed) 20MB.

I have been having trouble with them for 2 months now. I eventually had an engineer call around, to tell me that i needed a new cable. He booked another engineer for a weeks time. A week and a half later a different engineer arrived out, and replaced the old cable with a new one. No difference to my broadband.

I just went to Speedtest.net and got 1.34 Mbps, so i decided to ring them again. (My internet went completely 3 days ago, and i was waiting on a call back from a technician in there, to update me on the line fault.) I got through to a guy named Gordon, who proceeded to tell me that there was "noise on the line".
I was, as always, polite, but probably sounded a bit upset/annoyed. I didn't raise my voice or swear etc.. But i did say, i have heard the "noise on the line" sentence for the best part of 2 months and i believe it to be a "bit of an excuse", and on some forums i have seen posts and threads referring to that problem, going back 3 or 4 years. He then told me that there has been no update on my ongoing problem, and that is why nobody has got back to me. So i asked "Is the noise on the line, likely to affect neighbours?"

He told me that he is not qualified to talk about broadband technical faults, and asked me to hold, while he got somebody who is.
2 minutes later (listening to a dead phone) i realised he had indeed hung up on me.
What sort of customer service is that? Does anybody in there monitor the calls?

Anyway, Can anybody help me? I am looking for a good, broadband alternative, I was going to get magnet, but they have quoted me €49.99 Per month for 8Mbps, which is too much for me..

Any other decent suppliers out there?

Have a look in here:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055827236

Your not alone it seems

smelltheglove

I had serious issues with UPC and was hung up on a few times. I made notes of all the people I spoke to and all the excuses I was given so I could refer to them during eachphone call. IN the end I just moved provider.

Firstly I went to BT, brilliant service, then they changed to Vodafone, great service, I would get around 6mb on average. Remember the quoted mb with these providers is UP TO i.e. up to a 20meg line with UPC.

I recenty moved and the house was wired for UPC so I thought you know what they might be ok now so I called them, my hubbie called them and I called them again and after these few calls we realised any noton of going back to them was ridiculous. We called vodafone, asked to reinstate our accound and had broadband (averaging about 7megs) within a week. Great customer service too and the net never goes down!