My Broadband Nightmare NTL and IBB

Drapper · 16-06-2005 10:40am #1

Most of you will think I'm mad but here goes, btw I'm a pc gamer and in my late 20's and getting sick of compalining about Broadband in Ireland.

Septeber 2004 installed IBB and service was rock solid. Christmas 2004 service starts to dip and pings very bad. March 2004 srvice gets an overhaul and pings get back on track, but not perfect as from September 2004 - 2005.

In the mean time to feed my BB addiction NTL was launched in my area (Luttrelstown, Castleknock) and I signed up with intentions of ditching IBB ASAP. Which I was locked into a 12 month contract!

Ntl installed and sweet as candy for one month. 1meg with 256 up. Ping around 40 put conistent. Then after 1 month service latency hit the ceiling and has been the same since. Like IBB the cutomer serive has more or less done nothing for me accept say "it is in the porcess of being fixed and we are trying to sort it out"........

The irony is that I have NTL and IBB, I live in D15 and both dont work right ! some people on boards cant even get one BB provider! As i've said NTL is oversubscrided in the area and the connection is at 25 % IBB is "fair" at weekends, however I've spend on average an additonal €50 on telephone calls each month to sort both out !

In summary should I be incontact with Comreg or is there any other "service" sector agencies I can get my storey to? Any advice would be appreciated.

(I've not been charged by NTL yet as I refused to pay for a modem sitting on my shelf gathering dust).

Nevyn · 16-06-2005 10:57am

Cant say which is worse no service or the fact you have two sh1ty ones.
FFS you think one of them could get thier act together .

Drapper · 16-06-2005 11:01am

Thaed wrote:

Cant say which is worse no service or the fact you have two sh1ty ones.
FFS you think one of them could get thier act together .

Yes and ADSL is not in the area (which is 2 km from the Blanch Exchange) but "all lines fail test" ............. I give up !

RicardoSmith · 16-06-2005 11:53am

I'm in D.15, can't get ASDL since the line fails test. I don't why, though I did hear from someone else on the boards that its the equipment in the exchange thats causing the problem not the lines. I have NTL and have had a lot of downtime with it. Response times have been awful from day one. I find that the support people in these companies have little technical ability, you have to contact them over and over to make any progress on a problem. All they want is an easy sale, they are not really interested in providing a service. That sums up my experience.

I have friends in the UK with 8mb lines, and they can't understand why I can't get a decent broadband. connection Especially when living less than 7 miles from the center of a capital city.

Drapper · 16-06-2005 4:03pm

RicardoSmith wrote:

I'm in D.15, can't get ASDL since the line fails test. I don't why, though I did hear from someone else on the boards that its the equipment in the exchange thats causing the problem not the lines. I have NTL and have had a lot of downtime with it. Response times have been awful from day one. I find that the support people in these companies have little technical ability, you have to contact them over and over to make any progress on a problem. All they want is an easy sale, they are not really interested in providing a service. That sums up my experience.

I have friends in the UK with 8mb lines, and they can't understand why I can't get a decent broadband. connection Especially when living less than 7 miles from the center of a capital city.

Lads NTL have read this thread............ I've had a chat with the head of thier complaints section and hopefully some progress............ THE POWER OF BOARDS.ie

Steffano2002 · 16-06-2005 4:31pm

That's a nice thing to see: a company that actually cares about its customers! It's refreshing!

Now Drapper, next time you speak to this "ntl Head of Customer Complaints", could you ask him to contact his counterpart in IBB and get him to give me a call? There are a few things I'd like to share with him... Ta m8!

I'm SO annoyed with broadband in Ireland... We pay 5 times what they pay in other "developed" countries for 1/4 of the speed and worst of all: latency is pathetic! All my mates in France also have 8Mb connections and perfect pings and they're always telling me "they STILL haven't fixed your ping?" or (my favourite) "How much are you paying for that crap again?"... :mad:

I'm off to play baseball with my IBB radio on the roof to calm down... Talk to you all tomorrow...

causal · 16-06-2005 7:58pm

Drapper wrote:

Lads NTL have read this thread............ I've had a chat with the head of thier complaints section and hopefully some progress............ THE POWER OF BOARDS.ie

Good luck with it Drapper - let us know how you get on - all of us ntl customers are watching keenly.

causal

CiaranC · 16-06-2005 8:02pm

That's a nice thing to see: a company that actually cares about its customers! It's refreshing!

Are you talking about NTL? Excuse me while I die laughing.

Drapper · 16-06-2005 8:34pm

causal wrote:

Good luck with it Drapper - let us know how you get on - all of us ntl customers are watching keenly.

causal

Having the same problem m8? we need to rally some people in D15 to get the service in order !

causal · 16-06-2005 8:47pm

I'm in D.16 but I am with NTL, and often people ask me what are ntl like for bb - so I like to be able to give a full and accuracte picture.

causal

Drapper · 16-06-2005 8:54pm

causal wrote:

I'm in D.16 but I am with NTL, and often people ask me what are ntl like for bb - so I like to be able to give a full and accuracte picture.

causal

How is yours mate?

causal · 16-06-2005 8:58pm

I've had it for 6 months and it's been fine - so far so good.
Just hope it stays that way.

causal

seamus · 16-06-2005 10:12pm

Was pretty ****e out here (Lucan) for most of last week, but it's popped back to normal for this week.

dub45 · 16-06-2005 10:25pm

Having been a long time customer of NTL for TV and found them possibly to be the worst company in the entire Universe for customer service I was afraid that once they began to spread their wings with bb that the same thing would happen and sadly it seems to be the case :eek:

It never ceases to amaze me that these Companies will invest oodles of money in the products, marketing etc etc and yet the basic 'interface' with the customer is dire almost without exception. It is an extraordinary fact that in most companies the further away from the customer you are the more you are paid!

Lads NTL have read this thread............ I've had a chat with the head of thier complaints section and hopefully some progress............ THE POWER OF BOARDS.ie

This is an appalling indictment of NTL. Do they not have any quality control on their product? Does anyone listen to the feedback from their CSR's?
Do they not follow up on complaints taken by their CSR's? Why should it take a thread on boards to alert a so called major company to the fact that they have problems in an area? What sort of internal reporting mechanisms (if any!) do NTL actually have?

Drapper · 16-06-2005 10:52pm

dub45 wrote:

Having been a long time customer of NTL for TV and found them possibly to be the worst company in the entire Universe for customer service I was afraid that once they began to spread their wings with bb that the same thing would happen and sadly it seems to be the case :eek:

It never ceases to amaze me that these Companies will invest oodles of money in the products, marketing etc etc and yet the basic 'interface' with the customer is dire almost without exception. It is an extraordinary fact that in most companies the further away from the customer you are the more you are paid!

This is an appalling indictment of NTL. Do they not have any quality control on their product? Does anyone listen to the feedback from their CSR's?
Do they not follow up on complaints taken by their CSR's? Why should it take a thread on boards to alert a so called major company to the fact that they have problems in an area? What sort of internal reporting mechanisms (if any!) do NTL actually have?

I agree ! Companies invest to get a return, whos is thier mmarket ? WE are, do they listen? No.

Ok they try to suite thier corporates but the joe soap needs to be herd too ! Look what Sky Digital did ? A GREAT SERVICE and people flood to them! Customer Service 100% and ohhhh They Are British DOMINATING an irish market in 36 months ............ IBB, NTL should be ashamed ..........

IF you have an issue the SKY person is friendly and will always chase up a query ! It takes little effort ! and never leave you hanging!

I await my response from NTL ............

RicardoSmith · 16-06-2005 11:55pm

Well my NTL BB is down again. Worked for one day properly in the last two weeks. I don't even watch TV that much these days because the programming is so dire. I'm seriously considering ditching NTL for good.

A friend in the area has been trying for 2 years to get cable TV from NTL. Most of my neighbours have SKY. You can understand why.

RicardoSmith · 17-06-2005 10:00am

Well its back working this morning. [sigh] Was talking to a few of my neighbours and alot of them have sky because NTL was so unreliable even for basic TV services. I might try getting my line sorted out. Once I can get BB from ASDL I have a lot more options. I'm not convinced to try IBB in my area. While I have friend who have it working they are all over the southside, not in D.15.

Drapper · 17-06-2005 11:55am

RicardoSmith wrote:

Well its back working this morning. [sigh] Was talking to a few of my neighbours and alot of them have sky because NTL was so unreliable even for basic TV services. I might try getting my line sorted out. Once I can get BB from ASDL I have a lot more options. I'm not convinced to try IBB in my area. While I have friend who have it working they are all over the southside, not in D.15.

Think this explains my theory, oversubscribed, all fighting for a clogged signal! morning and late nights no bother, but batle for space in the evening and your lost !

D

RicardoSmith · 17-06-2005 12:00pm

Drapper wrote:

Think this explains my theory, oversubscribed, all fighting for a clogged signal! morning and late nights no bother, but batle for space in the evening and your lost !

D

I wonder if simply leaving it on 24/7 would solve part of the problem. When I've done this (usually by accidently since I like turning everything off) I usually still have a connection in the evenings when I get home.

Drapper · 17-06-2005 12:21pm

RicardoSmith wrote:

I wonder if simply leaving it on 24/7 would solve part of the problem. When I've done this (usually by accidently since I like turning everything off) I usually still have a connection in the evenings when I get home.

Thats the tip I was given, but when you try to reboot to "sort out" the latecy you loose your space in the que !

RicardoSmith · 17-06-2005 12:30pm

Drapper wrote:

Thats the tip I was given, but when you try to reboot to "sort out" the latecy you loose your space in the que !

Did you find rebooting helps latency? I didn't.

Drapper · 17-06-2005 12:34pm

RicardoSmith wrote:

Did you find rebooting helps latency? I didn't.

Booting the techie team and modem made no difference!

RicardoSmith · 17-06-2005 12:39pm

Drapper wrote:

Booting the techie team and modem made no difference!

LOL

Drapper · 18-07-2005 2:32pm

Well its been fixed since last Wednesday, and I'm srtarting to love NTL more and more each day ! the pings are 25 - 40 to our team server and the DL's are fantastic, think I may wait util my contract is up with IBB and give it the whole heave ho in August. I really dont Upload so I'm content with thje 3m/bit NTL package.

Only strnage thing is the first hop to the gateway is 19ms and then only 25-35 to our server, can anyone explain, with Eircom and IBB the hop to the first router is 6 - 9 ?

My Broadband Nightmare NTL and IBB

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