All advertising is free till May 1st 2008. Please contact Webmaster@CraicOn.com

No fair play for Moville broadband users

Posted Monday, June 6, 2011

 E-mail this page    Printer-friendly page

we were sent this by Ciara McDaid so we thought we would publish it 'as is'.

Eircom and Vodafone

I am writing in relation to the Moville broadband, something I am
hoping you can help me with. I already had a case with comreg (case
number 122781) which is now closed however I am contacting them again
tonight to open a new case against Eircom this time whereas the
previous case was with Vodafone. I have been in contact with customer
services with Vodafone many times and unfortunately there has been no
resolution to the problem. It’s a very long story, which has been
going on for the best part of a year, but I’ll try to summarise.

Slow

I am supposed to receive 7mb download, and 0.6mb upload. The average
speed I receive at any time of the day or night is 0.79MB. The last
few weeks however have been even worse. Sometimes the speed is better
for a few days but most of the time it is terrible, and much worse
than mobile broadband. I will forward you a 340 results of speed tests
I have conducted, there is a few of them which are on mobile broadband
but you should be able to tell this by the icon. 99% of them are home
broadband results. I would like to emphasise that this is everyone in
Moville experiencing this dismal service, not just me.

Different Routers

I have tried different routers (high performance),with and without
filters, without phones plugged in, and with the router plugged into
the master socket. I have performed hard resets on the routers and
restarted the DSL connection. The username and password for Vodafone
broadband is input correctly. I have also followed all additional
advice I have received from Vodafone representatives. None of this has
made any difference.

DSL

When I use the line checker to determine "what kind of broadband your
line supports" using Vodafone
(http://www.vodafone.ie/df/homebroadband/ProductsLineAndSpeedCheck.shtml
)
I am told my line is enabled for DSL broadband, and I am offered up
to 8MB packages. When I do the same test using the eircom website
(http://www.eircom.net/broadband/recommends/?BV_EngineID=null&BV_SessionID=null&cid=BBResults&option1=19&option2=7&option3=18&option4=6&linespeed=&invalid=0&ngb=false
)
they RECOMMEND not the 3MB package but the 8MB package. However, when
I sign into myvodafone I am told "Your line doesn't support this
product". The speed I am receiving is less than what I got when I was
initially signed up to BT Internet at my previous address when I was
only paying for 1MB.

Modern Estate

I live on a modern estate, one in which all the phone lines were put
in at once. My house is located around 200metres maximum from the
exchange. As the speedtest.net results I have attached will show the
ping can go as far as 800+ms which is absolutely ridiculous. It should
never exceed 100ms when I am testing using a nearby server (Sligo).

Comreg

When I got comreg involved Vodafone finally started taking me
seriously and conducted tests on the line and kept assuring me that
there is nothing wrong with the line etc. However one day when the man
contacted me he asked for permission to access the router settings
remotely, and I agreed, but he said can you turn it on and I said it
is on, and he replied that its not because I hadn’t been connected to
Vodafone in over 48hours, something which was not true which is
indicative of the seriousness of the problem.

Weeks

After weeks and weeks of
Vodafone ringing and telling me they got eirocm to check the line and
there is no fault, they said there was nothing more they could do and
I said that I wasn’t happy with that and I wanted an eircom technician
to come to my house. The following day they said that eircom admitted
then that it was not a line fault but the exchange itself, something I
had suggested to them several times as my parents and all my friends
and family in Moville have a terrible connection.

Needs Upgrading

Furthermore the man
at Vodafone said that the exchange needed upgraded but this might not
happen for years. Despite this eircom are still taking on new
customers. If you check the website on when next generation broadband
is coming to Moville (www.ngb.ie) you will see that they have no
intentions of doing so in the foreseeable future.

Inishowen

As usual Inishowen
is not a priority. How can they expect to charge people for a service
they are not providing and refuse to resolve the issues with the
exchange? Vodafone offered to give me two months broadband for free as
a goodwill gesture but this doesn’t address the issue.

Overcharged

Everyone connected to the Moville exchange is being over charged for a service
they are not receiving. I imagine that each and every customer would
be entitled to a refund of at least a years worth of the difference in
price between the 7mb package and the 1mb package, a speed of which I
cannot even attain right now while on the 7mb package.

Commit

When I first contacted Vodafone they told me that signing up for the
most expensive package (meaning I had to commit to another year of a
contract) would resolve my problem. I was assured time and time again
that doing so would mean my speed would never drop below 5mbps
download speed. This is not the case.

Wits End

Changing to another provider would not solve the issue as it is the
responsibility of eircom to do maintain the lines, something which
they are not doing. I am at my wits end if I do not receive a
satisfactory result this time the only thing I can imagine can help
would be a class action lawsuit on behalf of all the broadband
customers connected to the Moville exchange.

I am planning to set up a facebook
group as well to gain momentum for the cause.