Permanet playing hard ball.....

Agricola

Just looking for some advice on this......

After 2 years of fairly solid service, the problem is I now have a signal loss issue which they have admitted is down to them adding in more capacity on my local transmitter. I now find myself on the border of 2 sectors which is leading to poor signal and sector switching.

They have sent out an engineer who tried absolutely everything. While he was here the guy at HQ straight away advised that I should just cancel - just like that. I refused as I get great value from the package and will not under any circumstance go back to Eircom. The engineer advised that future work would more than likely resolve it, but he couldnt give a time frame. After much tooing and frowing with the callcentre they have told me they are waiting on equipment to arrive from abroad and when its fitted on the mountain in late January/Feb next year I should be back to normal.

In the meantime I have a very unstable service thats up and down all the time. I would be willing to stick that out for afew weeks if I could get a discount to reflect the fact that Im offline half the time and when I am online Im getting around half my agreed download speed. The manager wont entertain the notion though and has told me via email that since I agreed the service would be poor on the day of the callout, that I can now either put up and shut up or cancel. I understand the legalities of it, (despite not actually signing anything about it) but I think its a fairly disgusting attitude to take with a customer in my predicament. Surely its fair in this case to give me something considering its their fault Im in this position. It seems to me that the way this works is, if the provider cant provide the service, the contract can be torn up just like that, off you go. But if the shoe was on the other foot and I could not fulfill my end of the deal, they would stick me for every cent of the 1 year contract.

Any thoughts on this would be good!

fatherbuzcagney

Agricola wrote: »

Just looking for some advice on this......

After 2 years of fairly solid service, the problem is I now have a signal loss issue which they have admitted is down to them adding in more capacity on my local transmitter. I now find myself on the border of 2 sectors which is leading to poor signal and sector switching.

They have sent out an engineer who tried absolutely everything. While he was here the guy at HQ straight away advised that I should just cancel - just like that. I refused as I get great value from the package and will not under any circumstance go back to Eircom. The engineer advised that future work would more than likely resolve it, but he couldnt give a time frame. After much tooing and frowing with the callcentre they have told me they are waiting on equipment to arrive from abroad and when its fitted on the mountain in late January/Feb next year I should be back to normal.

In the meantime I have a very unstable service thats up and down all the time. I would be willing to stick that out for afew weeks if I could get a discount to reflect the fact that Im offline half the time and when I am online Im getting around half my agreed download speed. The manager wont entertain the notion though and has told me via email that since I agreed the service would be poor on the day of the callout, that I can now either put up and shut up or cancel. I understand the legalities of it, (despite not actually signing anything about it) but I think its a fairly disgusting attitude to take with a customer in my predicament. Surely its fair in this case to give me something considering its their fault Im in this position. It seems to me that the way this works is, if the provider cant provide the service, the contract can be torn up just like that, off you go. But if the shoe was on the other foot and I could not fulfill my end of the deal, they would stick me for every cent of the 1 year contract.

Any thoughts on this would be good!

if your contract is up i don't see what else they can do for you! they sent out an engineer and you say he did absolutely everything he could but couldn't improve on your connection, they tell you the truth that they can't fix the problem . if you were still in contract id expect that they would give a discount until the service i acceptable.they are trying to provide you with a service not obliged to!

I know that Permanet used 16QAM modulation on their service for a long time but have been changing to 64QAM in some areas, to increase capacity. However this requires a stronger signal. Maybe your signal was good enough for 16QAM but not for 64QAM.

If they've told you they can no longer provide you with a stable service then there isn't really much you can do.

Agricola

fatherbuzcagney wrote: »

if your contract is up i don't see what else they can do for you! they sent out an engineer and you say he did absolutely everything he could but couldn't improve on your connection, they tell you the truth that they can't fix the problem . if you were still in contract id expect that they would give a discount until the service i acceptable.they are trying to provide you with a service not obliged to!

I am in contract because I signed up for the VOIP package when it became available here which required a new modem to be sent out. They have said due to the issue, they will not hold me to the contract obligations and I can leave anytime I like with no penalties. Thats grand for them, but not for me.

The other thing is, if it was a straight case of just saying "We can never provide you with a service again" that would be fine. But Ive been advised that this is a fixable problem that will be addressed in 4 to 6 weeks. I have told them Ill stick it out and they are happy to keep adjusting frequencies every now and then to keep me going to some degree. So surely it would be fair to at least knock a bit of the monthly bill untill it's resolved. Instead because they have me over a barrel, they will continue to take the full whack! Lovely.

Karsini wrote: »

I know that Permanet used 16QAM modulation on their service for a long time but have been changing to 64QAM in some areas, to increase capacity. However this requires a stronger signal. Maybe your signal was good enough for 16QAM but not for 64QAM.

Possibly. According to the engineer that was here, I should have no such signal problems as my location in respect of the mast is as good as it gets. Around 1.5 to 2km as the crow flies and a clear view of the mountain from the roof of the house. It is an issue that arose because of increasing capacity though yes.


I guess you cant get blood from a stone. It's a terrible attitude though I think. Customer obviously has no alternative so relieve him of every cent if he wants to keep giving you business. I worked for a broadband provider myself and if a customer found themselves in the exact same position as me, every effort would be made to keep them on because competition was so stiff in UK market. I suppose if I leave another desperate rural dweller will take my place immediately anyway!

smellslikeshoes

Agricola wrote: »

So surely it would be fair to at least knock a bit of the monthly bill untill it's resolved. Instead because they have me over a barrel, they will continue to take the full whack! Lovely.

They have given you the option to cancel without penalty, it's your choice to stay with them. They have been pretty bloody accommodating if you ask me, if this had been one of the national providers they would have given you a ****ty service, made no apologies or given you a time frame for it getting fixed and you would have had to go to the hassle of breaking the contract under the sale of goods act.

Agricola

So Permanet are a model company because the standard of customer service from the big companies is absolutely fúcking abysmal? Fair enough!

Of course if I was in a position to be able to take my chances with UPC or whoever, I certainly would. I would be getting maybe a 100 mb connection for my monthly sub, whereas at the moment Im paying the exact same amount for a 6mb connection which is now a 2mb one - that works 50% of the time - due to a fault of their making!

Yeah pretty bloody accomodating!

smellslikeshoes

Sorry but you are absolutely delusional, it's your choice to stay with them. If a company isn't providing a good service you cancel, you don't whine about them not giving you a discount because the service is bad. They have been accommodating by telling you the problem and giving you an ETA on getting it sorted and giving you the option to cancel there and then. If they as a company went any further they wouldn't be in business for very long.

Agricola

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Sorry but you are absolutely delusional, it's your choice to stay with them. If a company isn't providing a good service you cancel, you don't whine about them not giving you a discount because the service is bad. They have been accommodating by telling you the problem and giving you an ETA on getting it sorted and giving you the option to cancel there and then. If they as a company went any further they wouldn't be in business for very long.

Letting a paying customer cancel and thus doing without their monthly subscription seems to me to be a better way of going out of business.

If this was a straight forward case of the service continuing to be poor indefinitely, of course I would agree with you completely. Why would I stay with them. But that isnt the case, the problem will be resolved in a month to 6 weeks time. I have expressed a desire to muddle through with it as it (which I was told was appreciated, lol) but unfortunately the person at the company who handles the credit requests doesnt see it that way.

As I said, Ive been on the other end of this situation myself and even though alot of practises were questionable, paying customers werent encouraged to leave with a pat on the back on the way out, when there was a resolution in sight. Its a simple case of dude has no other option - fleece him and/or There will be plenty more where he came from when he cancels. Isnt that the size of it?

fatherbuzcagney

Agricola wrote: »

Letting a paying customer cancel and thus doing without their monthly subscription seems to me to be a better way of going out of business.

If this was a straight forward case of the service continuing to be poor indefinitely, of course I would agree with you completely. Why would I stay with them. But that isnt the case, the problem will be resolved in a month to 6 weeks time. I have expressed a desire to muddle through with it as it (which I was told was appreciated, lol) but unfortunately the person at the company who handles the credit requests doesnt see it that way.

As I said, Ive been on the other end of this situation myself and even though alot of practises were questionable, paying customers werent encouraged to leave with a pat on the back on the way out, when there was a resolution in sight. Its a simple case of dude has no other option - fleece him and/or There will be plenty more where he came from when he cancels. Isnt that the size of it?

but the dude has others options......i taught that their packages were fairly reasonable and not fleecing the customer.... their 23.89e broadband package is hard to beat!!!! a dongle is about all i can think of that comes near in price.
maybe there is other providers on that mountain that would be glad to have you as there is usually a few operators on them mountains.

Agricola

fatherbuzcagney wrote: »

but the dude has others options......i taught that their packages were fairly reasonable and not fleecing the customer.... their 23.89e broadband package is hard to beat!!!! a dongle is about all i can think of that comes near in price.
maybe there is other providers on that mountain that would be glad to have you as there is usually a few operators on them mountains.

Im not saying that their prices are in general fleecing customers, far from it. I have the phone package with them for 45 a month. Im saving a fortune between standing charges and UK phone calls, as both are free. There are other options but none come close to Permanet for value.

What Im saying is, giving someone a shítty service and being happy to take the full amount off them is fleecing someone. I mean if your ESB supply was on the blink every day and you could only get electricity every few hours, would you expect to pay your normal bill amount? No. If your water supply dried up due to reservoir maintenance and you had no running water for a week, would you expect to pay your normal water consumption charge? No. But somehow we accept this shít from broadband providers!

Im probably too naive / morally upright, but I would think If I was in their position it would be perfectly reasonable to give a customer in my position some leaway until they fix the issue they created. An issue I might add, that is affecting half a dozen other people in the vicinity.
But when did morals ever come into business, eh.

fatherbuzcagney

Agricola wrote: »

I have the phone package with them for 45 a month. Im saving a fortune between standing charges and UK phone calls as both are free. There are other options but none come close to Permanet for value.

maybe hold on and hope the problem gets resolved asap...... must be working ok tonight:P

alph

I understand your problem and all, but they didn't move you into a house / apartment / whatever where getting good broadband was problematic.

They don't have an obligation to provide you in particular with broadband, they have an obligation to make money. Giving discounts to people in rural areas because they don't get the full speed or whatever will likely cause that company to fail in the long run.

You have the option to leave, and while there may not be many alternatives, that isn't their fault.

I get your frustration though, I was in a similar situation for years with Eircom in that I was paying for their lowest package of like 2mb and getting roughly 30kbps speeds with no alternatives.

Agricola

fatherbuzcagney wrote: »

maybe hold on and hope the problem gets resolved asap...... must be working ok tonight:P

It is yeah, and that only adds to the frustration. I might be offline all tomorrow and I have put in many a weekend of late with nothing from Friday to Monday. But then its ok again and the merry go round continues!