Eircom or Eir con???

FatB

I moved to my new rented accomidation because broadband was not available in the place I was in, I was assured by eircom that this place had broadband available, I moved in and signed a 6 month contract for the renting of the house... I signed up for broadband (went through the checks to see if broadband was available, the computer said it was...) I also ordered a data thingy for the pc (€50) to connect to my new wireless network...

This was all nearly a month ago, I recieved no calls, post or even an email since then... I rang customer care a few days ago as I was sure my dad got a call afer a week and a half to say everything was set up, when I got through they asked for my account and telephone number, they then told me that broadband was not available here!!!! :eek:

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, I knew broadband can be a bit hit and miss but never before heard of it being available one minute and not the next!!!

I've checked most of the numbers that I know in the town and buildings like the town hall and garda station fail the test thingy, yet the hotel 3 doors up from me has it, so does the electrical shop and chinese on the other side of me... I'm living on the main street and I've come accross houses that are 300/400 metres further from the exchange than I am that can get broadband... this house was only finished being built in June of last year...

Is there anything that eircom could of done by accident and could be rectified soon or am I totally bolloxed for 6 months??? Ive already made a complaint to eircom but have yet to recieve anything back... Thanks in advance, Willie

AARRRGH

Your story does not surprise me.

Everything the eircom call centre staff say is bull**** just to get you off the phone.

That company has big problems. Amazingly they don't care.

Complaining to comreg won't do any good (eircom will never lose their license so comreg are powerless.)

I hope NTL becomes available in your area soon.

jd

What have you connected up to your telephone line since you moved in?

FatB

I've connected nothing except for a bt house phone lol!!! I've now signed up for 52k but that was 2 days ago!!! Is it possiable that work being carried out on the line may of "broke" my connection? e.g. I saw an eircom tent up the street with someone working away at wires a week or so ago!

dub45

FatB wrote:

I've connected nothing except for a bt house phone lol!!! I've now signed up for 52k but that was 2 days ago!!! Is it possiable that work being carried out on the line may of "broke" my connection? e.g. I saw an eircom tent up the street with someone working away at wires a week or so ago!

Unfortunately your experience does not seem to be unusual :mad: A friend of mine who lives in Raheny had checked his line umteen times on line before applying and it passed every time!. He applied to UTV and after a decent interval he phoned them and asked what was happening - he was told your number is marked in red on our spreadsheet which means you dont qualify!!!

We were so confident of him getting it we had set up a wireless network :rolleyes:

Paddy20

No one should ever believe anything EirCoN state's verbally. Always insist that they confirm in writing by snailmail/post that broadband is available and enabled on the telephone line number and location you wish to use it from.

P.

FatB

No bother lads, thanks for the info! I'll get onto them till I at least get an apology! ADSL cant be that f'd up that its unstable!!! What would happen if you were a customer and all of a sudden its gone? Its some peoples livelihoods!!!

PcP

Not much help at the moment but if you have to look for rented accomodation in another 6 months you might be better looking at the areas where Esat have equipment in the exchanges, or that NTL have enabled for cable BB.
Anything that uses Eircom or runs on their network has the potential to be far more hassle than its worth.

Paddy20

FatB,

Have you tried the automatic line test, UTV Clicksilver broadband offers ?..if not click on: http:www.utvinternet.com/
and then Clicksilver broadband for the Republic of Ireland type in your area code and number and 2 seconds later it will tell you if they can supply broadband and if required their brilliant telephony service to you.

Worth a try I think.

Good luck .

P.

simonm2

Ring Eircom (or whoever gets the line rental) and tell them that if the line isn't broad band enabled within two weeks you will simply get rid of the phone completely.

If other buildings in the area have broadband then there is a stong chance that the problem is that your line is on a "splitter." (i.e. effectively you are sharing the phone line with someone else). Somewhere on this board a guy reported on a similar problem (Fairview area if my memory is correct) - Eircom's suggestion was that he get a new (second) line for broadband - he said no thanks and told them to take out the phone completely - his line was enabled in less than a day (obviously he had gone through a whole saga over months before he finally got totally fed up and told them to take out the phone - when hey presto, magic phone fixed!).

If you want to be sneaky, you could ring up sales and ask if you got a second new line installed for broadband would it work - that would go a ways to establishing where a splitter is the problem. Have look at http://eircomtribunal.com/dossier_splitter.html for info. Essentially no new splitters can be installed and while they may not have to be pro-active about removing them, they will with a little commercial pressure.








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Da_cOmRaDe_MiKe

lad, welcome to my world...

my story.
i rang eircom, orddered a phone line.
they connected it.
i ran them 2 days later, and asked for a broadband connection. they checked my line, and told me to ring in 1 week for results... i waited and waited...
the line test failed....
i rang them back a day later and asked why.. they said there was a copper plate 15ft form my house stopping thr boradband conenction...
after a week of thinking, i rang again.
was old something similiar, i asked for a supervisor...
he said sorry nothing we can do...
i asked for the department supervisor..
within 8 days, my boradband was connected, i had a bb router sent to my house ( for free ) and i got 3 motnhs free trial instead of 2...

why? cos im a bitch.

complain. threaten with a letter to te ombusdman.
and ask for the person's boss all the time. it gets results.

dub45

Paddy20 wrote:

FatB,

Have you tried the automatic line test, UTV Clicksilver broadband offers ?..if not click on: http:www.utvinternet.com/
and then Clicksilver broadband for the Republic of Ireland type in your area code and number and 2 seconds later it will tell you if they can supply broadband and if required their brilliant telephony service to you.

Worth a try I think.

Good luck .

P.

Unfortunately they dont confirm that it is definitely available for your line what the reponse says is:

Good News! Broadband appears to be available in your area

Which is a long way from saying your line is ok!

On the other hand it does say a line is not suitable!

Broadband is picky alright. A friend of mine tried for months to see if he could get broadband and it failed every time. Then I suggested to him that he disconnect everything except one phone. Two weeks later the line passed.

I installed the broadband for him and did some tests afterwards, turned out that his Sky Digibox was causing the line to fail the test. Luckily he is out of his subsidy period with Sky and could leave the line out of the box.

So all it takes is one device to bring the whole line down.

Paddy20

Dub45,

Yep, you are correct. However, remember you have typed in your telephone number and it will tell you immediately if it fails, and you can order then online if it states " It appears broadband is available in your area ".

They then sort out EirCoN for you .

P.

dub45

Paddy20 wrote:

Dub45,

Yep, you are correct. However, remember you have typed in your telephone number and it will tell you immediately if it fails, and you can order then online if it states " It appears broadband is available in your area ".

They then sort out EirCoN for you .

P.

The fact that they say it is available in your area is no guarantee that you will get it. It is as simple as that. And as for UTV sorting out Eircom...........UTV could do with sorting themselves out in certain areas first!

As I posted above a friend of mine got positive answers on this test umpteen times only to find out that his line was not suitable.

And it was only after waiting a good while and contacting UTV that he eventually found out that his line was not suitable. UTV were in no hurry to let him know. When he inquired as to why he had not been told he got an answer like 'we would have got round to it eventually!"

Paddy20

I can only speak from my own personal experience, and that has been and still is that U.TV Internet & Telephony services leave EirCoN in the shade.

I was the first ordinary consumer to have broadband in my home town, and that was entirely thanks to U.TV Clicksilvers broadband instant online checking service. I even had it before the local politicians who are still talking about how Ballybofey/Stranorlar is down to get broadband activated in 2005 !

P.

dub45

Paddy20 wrote:

I can only speak from my own personal experience, and that has been and still is that U.TV Internet & Telephony services leave EirCoN in the shade.

I was the first ordinary consumer to have broadband in my home town, and that was entirely thanks to U.TV Clicksilvers broadband instant online checking service. I even had it before the local politicians who are still talking about how Ballybofey/Stranorlar is down to get broadband activated in 2005 !

P.

No it was due to the fact that UTV resold you a line enabled by Eircom. Simple as that. UTV are powerless other than to resell a wholesale Eircom product. (And they are very quick to tell you how they rely on other people where there is a fault! ''we have raised a ticket'' or whatever...)

UTV's checking service is reliant on the Eircom database AFAIK there is no other source for such information.

And far from leaving the Eircom nternet service in the shade it would seem both from personal experience and following boards that UTV have had more disruptions to the bb service than any of the other main ISP's and for a long time their ping performance was deplorable in spite of customers' pleas for improvement. Both the ping and stability performance seemed to have improved considerably lately. But that is what we pay them for after all!

Whether we like it or not Eircoms own bb product has consistently provided the most reliable and fastest speeds and pings.(How often do you see a post on boards about Eircom's poor bb performance never mind lengthy threads?)

Where UTV score is on pricing and cap and up to recently on customer support. They also have a big plus in the direct contact available through the UTV support group (and in some peoples eyes the mere fact that they are not Eircom is enough!) And it must be emphasised that UTV are lucky to have some exceptional staff - Carl, Charles and Martin have and do regularly go above and beyond in terms of helpfulness.

Recently UTV transferred some people onto the Esat network for a brief period (due to a network fault) and immediately some of those people noticed an improvement in performance over what they obtained from UTV. UTV did not dispute this (see the support group)

Additionally UTV are constantly trying to think up other ways to tie people into further 12 month contracts (e.g. availing of price decreases and moving between clicksilver products required/require a further 12 month contract)

They also made a mess of the introduction of their new talktime which inconvenienced a lot of people (again see their newsgroup)

Oh I nearly forgot to mention that they advanced their bill deduction date for their customers by 12 days in December without highlighting the fact (other than the normal note on the account webpage) now if Eircom did that!! The advance was for their administrative convenience. So much for customer friendliness and consideration!!!

Like all the other ISP's UTV have their strengths and weaknesses but eulogising them really does neither the potential customer nor UTV themselves any favours.

ZENER

Excellent post Dub45 !!

It gets me sometimes when people spread urban legends about companies without doing any research and forming their own opinions on them. It easy to say "oh them, sure they're a load of wasters . . " just because everyone else is saying it and cannot produce a credible reason to back it up.

Eircom have supplied my phone line for the past 17 years and have moved the number through two different houses without fuss and in good time - I have never once had a reason to call them to complain about anything in all that time.

My broadband is from IOL who from my experience provide a great service and again I have never had cause to complain or contact them. I was enabled in July '03 as promised and has been up ever since.

My point is that people are too quick to tar a company without ever once doing the homework or bothering to find out what reasons people have to tar the company. There are posts on boards where an individual will slate a company - usually Eircom - because they themselves f***ed up and not because the company did anything wrong !!!! Credit where it's due I say.

ZEN

koneko

Eircom were nothing but trouble for me in the past, it took them nearly 6 months to supply me with a phone line (new estate).

Having said that, I'm with them now for broadband and it's been super. No downtime at all, super fast pings, no slowndowns.

ZENER

koneko wrote:

Eircom were nothing but trouble for me in the past, it took them nearly 6 months to supply me with a phone line (new estate).

Having said that, I'm with them now for broadband and it's been super. No downtime at all, super fast pings, no slowndowns.

I can understand the frustration but consider the number of new housing developments on the go, Eircom must rely on the builder to provide the ducting etc before it can move in and begin work, how long after you moved in was the estate actually completed ? It's easy to forget that it's not JUST Eircom who are involved here although I will accept it's their responsability to provide you with a line.

If we want Eircom to provide us with lines within days of requesting them then they need to get more staff which will mean it'll cost the customer more either way they get slated for it.

The obvious answer is to open up the industry to other private companies although that too could lead to problems - think of the bus situation, what private for profit company is going to run loss making projects - likewise will a private company run a line to the backend of nowheresville for just one customer ? No they won't and we don't blame them for it, but we expect Eircom to do it and then moan when it takes them time.

Sorry for drifting off topic here, I'll go now.

ZEN

Dr Bolouswki

I ordered a new line from ericom in March 04 because the line I had failed the broadband test. I rang them 14 times over the follwoing 3 months - only 1 person was remotely helpful, and despite my polite but firm dealings with all the others they simply said, yeah, have to wait, can't give you any more info, so what.

If i had a choice I'd have ordered a phone line from someone else. But due to the weakness of comreg and the high cost of entering the market, eircom is all we have.

The braodband availability in Ireland is pathetic. As the only provider of fiixed lines to the consumer market is eircom, who else can we blame?

I'm very happy your experience with Eircom has been so jolly, Zenner. Spare a thought for the many many others who cannot get broadband due to the laziness and incompotence of Eircom.

I'm aware that once you actually have Eircoms BB service, its very reliable. It's getting it thats the problem.

Eircom finally rang me at the start of December about my new line. I've had IBB for the last 3 months. I laughed at the guy who rang.

ZENER

It's regretful that your experience of Eircom was so poor - however can you accept that koneko's request for a first line may be prioritized over your request for a second one which may or may not have solved your problem ? You could probably care less but these are the decisions that someone must make and as always someones nose will be out of joint over it.

You can't blame Eircom for other companies reluctance to enter the market here surely, also as you've found out they don't have a monopoly on broadband only DSL, there are other alternatives.

Anyway what would you be doing with bb anyway, surely there isn't that much good news about Man City !!!

ZEN

Cabaal

Paddy20 wrote:

No one should ever believe anything EirCoN state's verbally. Always insist that they confirm in writing by snailmail/post that broadband is available and enabled on the telephone line number and location you wish to use it from.
P.

I can't even count how many times I looked for something to be confirmed via e-mail or post/snail mail

- I even spoke to a supervisor and they flat out refused to send me out a confirmation letter

- And this made me laugh!!!
When I looked to get a confirm via e-mail the supervisor..get this...said they had no ability to do this.?!??

So let me get this straight....eircom the biggest ISP in Ireland can't even allow its staff to send a e-mail wtf ?

As far as companys go Eircom is a feckin joke the first time I tried to get DSL they couldn';t even get the right installation address correct in the 3 months that I had that particular account open

The second time I count myself lucky, I got a brand new PSTN line installed and ordered Esat DSL within a week and a half
Not one issue since.....touch wood!

ZENER wrote:

You can't blame Eircom for other companies reluctance to enter the market here surely, also as you've found out they don't have a monopoly on broadband only DSL, there are other alternatives.
ZEN

Well no you can't, but you can blame Eircom for not doing a decent job trying to provide DSL in this country, look at BT in the UK
They do a excellent job in comparison, if your exchange is enabled and your line comes back as a long line or even a slim chance of getting DSL, they'll send out a BT eng to your house to test your line
From what I've heard EirCON don't do this

capistrano

Just to add my story...

I moved into a house in the Cabra area last November. Before I moved I entered the phone number of the previous occupants on the Eircom broadband site to see if the line could get ADSL. It said it could.

When I moved in I got a new phone number on the existing line. Then I tried to order broadband but the line failed the test! And I'm about 500m from the nearest exchange!!!

Thankfully NTL started offerring cable broadband and I now have that - it's great!

I'm just waiting now for a decent VoIP service and I'll dump Eircom completely. I think I'll be getting drunk that day to celebrate!

Dr Bolouswki

Zener

I'll be spending tonite using my high speed wireless broadband to read all about Man City's glorious draw at highbury

ZENER

LOL

Zen