Comments on: Eircom DSL Losing Sync

By: Declan

Declan — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:17:20 +0000

James, I have a sort of resolution for you. It comes in the form of technical knowledge…you say you lost your connection a few times for some unknown reason….this is not true, you lost your connection due to overcrowded exchanges (all of which are under eircom’s control). You see every company that provides broadband has a contension ratio, eircom’s ratio is 48:1 and inyour case a 49th person was add or logged on where they shouldnt have…its basic scientific theory of white matter…..there can only be 100% at all times sometimes some of that 100% is added to which pushes out a percentage of the matter where it goes nobody know (and eircom are hardly rocket scientists are they)….in-fact poor old einstein would have a heart attack if he were’nt already dead!

By: Brian Downey

Brian Downey — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:48:59 +0000

Yes, I think I have the Eircom support training sussed. They teach you to change a customers login details, and the rest of the time it’s ‘How to blame the customer for the fact that we’re completely useless’ courses. Typical exchanges;

Eircom: Is there an alarm on the same line?
Customer: Yes
Eircom: Not our problem so, we can send an engineer to your grandchildren for a zillion Euros!

Eircom: Is there an alarm on the same line?
Customer: No
Eircom: Is there an alarm installed on any building in a three mile radius?
Customer: No
Eircom: Do you own a car?
Customer: Yes
Eircom: What colour is it?
Customer: Blue
Eircom: Not our problem so, we can send an engineer to your grandchildren for a zillion Euros!

I have an internet cafe and the broadband goes down everyday. The average speed of our 4mb package is under 2mb, but it regurlarly drops to dial-up speeds. Support is a joke – my dog knows more about broadband, and I don’t even have a dog! A friend of mine in Belfast has 8mb broadband for half the price, and BT threw in an IP phone and account for good measure. On the plus side, Eircom will either wake up or die (although it might take a while).

By: Karen Helagan

Karen Helagan — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 19:07:41 +0000

Thank you so much for getting back to me so quickly and I certainly
appreciate your comments.

A few years back I had some problems with my mobile whilst working in Dublin and came across their usual line of defence…wait ages on the phone, then look as though they are helping you by transferring you to someone else and then either cut you off or put you back to the original operator.

After I had this done to me on a number of occasions I threatened that myself and my colleagues would go down to their HQ with banners advising customers to go elsewhere. We would also notify the papers to make sure they got a good picture of the anti-Eircom demonstration. That did the trick – apologies were given by some minion in HQ and the matter sorted the next day with all our £50 deposits returned that they had been holding on to for
months.

My problem now is that I no longer live in Ireland (alas) otherwise I would be heading for their HQ and venting my anger. I tried looking up the current Chairman/CEO’s names but it seems impossible to locate this information despite my attempts on various search engines. Lots of hits but never clear which section of Eircom they operate from or when they took up their position. So if you could help me track down the name of the person I should write to I would be most grateful.

By: James

James — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 18:36:04 +0000

A letter to the Chairman is a great option – I had to resort to that a couple of years ago in a different house when I was unable to breach Eircom’s first line of support. Like your father, I needed to speak to the local technician… or any technician… but all I could get through to were the people answering the phones. At one stage, I rang them up and spoke at length with an Irish guy who suggested that I follow up with the customer care department. He forwarded me onto the customer care department, and a lady answered the phone and heard what I had to say. She then passed me onto another department, which sounded promising until I recognised the voice of the guy that I had originally spoken to when I rang Eircom. In my case, I wrote a letter to the CEO, and within a week my problem was solved. Perhaps that route is no longer as effective.

By: Karen Helagan

Karen Helagan — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 18:23:30 +0000

My father ordered Eircom Broadband at the beginning of December and watited and waited… After several phone calls waiting for at least 45 minutes to get through to their support line it eventually turned up after 6 weeks. A friend came round to set it up (an IT specialist at a large company) and despite several attempts he was told by Eircom that there could be a problem at the local exchange and someone would be in touch to make an appointment to call round to the house to inspect the connections/filters/etc. That was 2 weeks ago and he has made even more phone calls….and after another long call last night they told him that he would have to contact his local Eircom technician but couldn’t tell him who that was! We have decided that a letter to the Chairman may well be in order advising him to change their name to EIRCOM BROKEBAND…. if anyone can suggest how my 80 year old father can get a connection I would be most grateful for your comments. Thank you.

By: Derek Vard

Derek Vard — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 21:03:00 +0000

I too have experienced terrible problems with eircom. More often than not I cannot get onto the Internet and need to reboot the modem. I did have the netopia standard wireless modem but replaced same with Belkin DSL Wireless Modem which I thought would resolve the problem. It didn’t!

Eircom suggested that I replace filter on Telephone Line which I did. Then they suggested that my connection to Sky was the problem, which the Sky technician said was a load of b***x.

The rebooting of the modem virtually without exception seems to resolve the problem. Anyone any idea what’s going on?

By: Terry Oliver

Terry Oliver — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:57:08 +0000

In reply to Richard 5th January, I have exactly the same problem as you. How did you get a refund?
I know all the people in their support section by first name BUT…… I don’t know any technicians at all!

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 09:58:38 +0000

I started out with UTV Internet due to my fear that Eircom’s service would be crap. My wife’s company then moved to Broadband with Eircom for working from home. After several months of paying for Broadband from both UTV and Eircom (never refunded) and no sign of an engineer to perform an install I eventually got their technical support to send out the box direct for a home install.

My broadband dropped completely on December 14th after several month of poor enough line speeds (which I rechkon is probably contention issues and I’m getting absolutely nowhere with Eircom technical support. They blame Eircom Phonewatch, who they won’t deal with directly, leaving me to run around Eircom getting people to answer my questions.

As with anyone else who has to deal with an Eircom support line, their processes are crappy and seem designed to fob people off rather than fixing the problems. And I probably know more about Broadband and how it works than your normal punter.

I finally got a couple of hundred Euro rebate from them the other day with a guarantee that a new drop box with a new filter would solve my problem. It didn’t (as I told them it wouldn’t). I still reckon they’ve switched my line off at the exchange in error, but don’t wabnt to send an engineer to check.

At this stage I’d be willing to pay a lot more than Eircom to get better support – I had to fork out for IrishBroadband wireless to keep me online over Christmas!

On more VERY unhappy Eircom customer!

By: Douglas Smith

Douglas Smith — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 21:50:08 +0000

I have a netopia router set up by the dsl provider and 5 static IP addresses as well as an internal private network. The past two weeks my router has starting losing sync about 5 PM daily and stops having the issue around 8:30 to 9 PM, so I’m without Internet during that time. So far the Technician has not been able to identify anything but a huinch that the unit might be bad, but putting in a same type new one did the same thing as soon as traffic passed in.

We have good luck with 2Wire units keeping sync, but they are a bitch to set up with Static Netowrk routing and no DHCP use.
Wish I could figure that out to set up those like the Netopias .

Douglas

By: Linus

Linus — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 15:18:51 +0000

Yeah i got problems with the DSL connection. First fo all i have to say that you should have got your broadband within 10 working days, i got it after 20 working days. Then it worked fine , for 6 days (till yesterday). But now i have no dsl connetion, and i was told that they would check it out sometime later, and that it could take a couple of weeks. Is that good service? Should i pay the monthley rent after using the broadband for only 5 or 6 days?

Please help me //Linus