UPC Broadband, wonderful service unless you want to work at the weekends.
I switched to UPC Broadband a few weeks ago and was at first thrilled with their service, 17 megs downstream out of a possible 20 megs, always on, no download limits but it has now become possibly the worst broadband service I have ever used.
I again have no connectivity for the last two hours and yesterday no connectivity for 3 hours (just back up 8hrs downtime)
I am now on almost first name terms with their customer service team who appear to have the knowledge of gnats regarding broadband.
3 weeks in a row I can now almost guarantee it will be down again next Sunday as the company appears to have no clue whatsoever what is going on with their service.
It’s been up and down four times today which beats the three times last Sunday and after 10 minutes of being on the phone with the lovely but brain dead Collette whose best suggestion was” could I call back in four hours” I am probably going to do a Hakka upon their Cisco router.
UPC please don’t sell what you can’t deliver
Please don’t tell me you are “sending a man out”
Please don’t give me stupid stats “there are 94 out of 130 routers in your area working fine”
Please don’t say that” you don’t know what a Traceroute is”
Please don’t put up an IVR informing us of a major fault in my location that was reported at 2.50pm when I reported it at 10.10am
Bring back Cork Multi Channel and Marty Morrissey, all is forgiven
I have to say while I don’t have a lot of good things to say about UPC customer service – 8 days to switch on my digital TV box after installation! – I’ve only ever had one downtime with their broadband, and that was when building work knocked out the whole network in the area. Still, it’s frustrating as hell when it happens. Have they offered any explanation?
Ah – the “Pretty much every where else is fine” line.
Kick me in the nuts while I’m down please
That’s an awful dose, i can’t say i’ve ever had the same UPC experience though; i’d rate mine as first class, including the tech’s that came to the house for installation and signal problems but i live in dublin city centre, the network has been on its feet longer there so maybe they’ve grown out of a few issues.
At least you got that far. I spent weeks just trying to give them money. They weren’t having any of it. Just ignored me, despite many phone calls requesting service.
Currently paying BT more for less. In fairness to BT though, there hasn’t been a problem, yet.
Just went out for two hours here.
Same problem here.
All you get is “try restart your modem” etc.
Jokers.
Was great for last 10 months then just went crazy.
Most nights from 1am – 4am it gets really really slow.
Now I send them speedtest emails everyday.
I think we need a post regarding a good alternative with similar features but who actually deliver.
Was Reading about how UPC plan 100mb for Ireland in a years time. They can’t even deliver 20mb
I had the same problem with UPC. I ended up making a log of every call I made to them and took a note of the response/lack of which I received. I then sent it into the MD and that’s the only way I got my issues fixed! (It was over 3 pages of call logs) I nearly lost my mind never mind my connection!
Now with Eircom, and service is much better..but more pricey. Qualt-y.
Thats a disgrace…if you cant provide the service dont set up the company . In this day an age one wuld think they would be equiped to deal with such a problem…once or twice id fine but that is ridiculous!
I must say eircom are great…very helpful and I rarely have ever had any problems with my connection
I have to say that UPC really sucks. Had to order thrice over the net to get it installed. I have 10 MB broadband express. Current speeds are 0.5MBps. I still don’t understand how on earth can these companies get away with things like this. This is so frustrating.
I don’t know how UPC still have customers if everyone gets that service. I have eircom myself and it works well, though I do still have trouble anytime I do actually have to call them, (ten minutes on hold to find out the person I needed wasn’t there).
not only weekends. to be honest their pricing is quite good but even during the week at certain times like the evening, surfing the web can be daunting!
I have had exactly the same issues with UPC broadband. First months from September the modem was down and rebooting daily and the whole connection was down over a few weekends.
Now I opted in for the 10MB to 15MB upgrage and am getting speeds of 2 to 6MB …
Customer care is useless and they have never helped in anything. Never saying sorry or suggesting to compensate the downtime anyway.
I am looking for another solution for my broadband.
I have had similar problems i got TV phone and 15mb broadband but since it has been installed (Which i had to drill all holes in the floors and walls cause the installer said he was not insured to do it) But since then i have been let down with tech visits not showing up and the broadband and phone totally out non existing so I’m left frustrated as hell with UPC Crap service. Plus tech guys are paid on a per visit basis so it pays them not to fix your problems after all its more money in their pocket, My tech guy admitted he visits 15 people and at least 5 are problems with modems that he cant fix ??? And no idea what the problem is !!
I rang up upc today and orderd the 15mb broadband , im currently paying 25 euro a month with eircom for 8mb , its always being disconected evry ten minutes of the day and when i ring up i very rarely get anyone who can help and they dont understand english , upc seem to have better offers and friendly helpfull staff unlike some companies !!!
My issue is something similar. I recently ordered the 15mb Fibre Broadband. I have it connected directly to an xbox 360 and wirelessly to a laptop. Every one or two hours the service drops. But rather than getting a lower speed I just get nothing. When its working I’m getting 14 to 14.8mb down and 1.1 to 1.3mb upload but as I said thats when its working. Everytime I visit a website that requires a little bit more than the regular or half way through a war in Battlefield Bad Company the service drops to silch and I’m left with a screen saying the website can’t be found or a message telling me I’ve been disconnected from xbox live. Pain in the nether regions. I’ve rang twice now and am due a technician on Tuesday but I don’t hold much hope for that as the guy who installed it had poor English and took approximately 40mins to set it up. I’ll let you all know how it goes but that WiiMax tune is getting catchier with every minute I’m down.
just have to say that my experience with UPC has been good except for not giving me the 5MB service they where giving new punters for the same price I was paying they switched it after a few complaints. Otherwise never had a dropped service
Twitter: dkiernan
1st January, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Hi Pat,
Happy New Year.
Are you still with UPC? – are you happy today? – Is 15Mbs really 15Mbs?
Donagh
Hi
I would like to say that upc’s is back in the late 70′s/early 80′s
I am with them and I can only do what I could do back then.
I have spent months of night and days trying to upload files via ftp. Can t get work because of this.
I really think they just bought broadband books on Amazon and get their staff to read them !
There is no point in complaining to the… , oh, oh !, I was nearly going to say ‘Government’… but forgot we don’t have one of those either. Surely the EU could look at this website and see want is going on in Ireland
They know they will never be touched just like all the “Big Boys” The country is wide open for a proper Global Broadband company to come in and show how it should be done.
Now that would up-lift the down trodden
Update..
My brother who lives in England , will upload my files, but I have to send them to him (snail mail)
At least it will be quicker that trying endlessly for a month to upload about (59mbs) and not be able to.
The hours wasted in checking all files and folders is not worth it, About 1/3 of the files only upload.
If anyone has a better way i would like to know.
How can they sleep at night !
UPC bill you 2 months in advance and charge €10 late payment fee if not paid within 2 weeks of the bill date. Also charge €2.50 for not paying by DD. Dont think this is very fair???????
Twitter: jjbehan72gmail.com
2nd February, 2011 at 8:55 pm
just switched to upc feeling silly now as the smart I had was much faster and I never had a problem, have tv, phone and broadband with upc just over three weeks but will be contacting them tomorrow to cancel if they can’t resolve the issues.
Just did Upc speed test
http://www.upc.ie/broadband/speedtest/
I have a 25mg with them
download 13.17
upload 2.06
ftp files – your joking
============================
this what they advertise for 20 mgs
=============================
Downloading local maps, videos or photos? Then 20Mb is for you and with unlimited usage don’t be afraid to download again and again. Be free from wires with a free wireless router so everyone in the home can go online at the same time. It’s also over twice as fast as eircom’s 8Mb Next Generation Broadband. .
==========================================
read this
http://www.asai.ie/selfregulation/law.asp
The Consumer Information Act, 1978, makes it an
offence to publish any advertisement that is likely to
mislead and thereby cause loss, damage or injury to
members of the public to a material degree. At the time
of publication, under the European Communities
(Misleading Advertising) Regulations, 1988, it is open to any person to apply to the High Court for an order
prohibiting the publication of misleading advertising.
TAKE NOTE ALL YOU POLITICIANS, WHO ARE SCAVENGING FOR VOTES !!
Just a word of warning. Unlimited downloads don’t mean unlimited downloads.
When they rang up touting for business, I went for the 10MB package, with the specific promise from them that it came with unlimited download limits.
They installed it well enough and I was happy with the service overall, until I got a warning letter informing me that I had exceeded their “Acceptable Usage Policy”, and if I do it again, they will either cut off my connection for the rest of the month or bump me up to a bigger package.
Except they didn’t wait for me to do it again, they just put me on the bigger package. Now three months later, I find myself out of pocket to the tune of €90, despite the fact that I warned the other users to watch the amount of downloading they do. The service has also got worse, going down at some times, slow at other times.
Calling customer support was a complete waste of an hour as the only way I can find out what’s going on is through an email address aup@upc.ie.
I’m really not sure what to do now as the alternatives are not as good, but I don’t want to encourage this sort of predatory behaviour.
What a bunch of c.***** UPC are, just been passed onto Customer Loyalty at 5.30pm, left waiting, gave up dialed 1908 again to find out that Customer Loyalty closed at 5pm, they just didn’t want to hear me, all I wanted as a long time customer was to get a lower priced package, everyone else has taken a hit in their wages what makes UPC different. If I don’t get this sorted tomorrow. I’ll stop now. So annoyed
I am fit to be tied. I have tried all evening to contact UPC. I just wanted to ask them if the awful TV reception I am getting is because of all the work they re supposed to be doing. Their customer support site will not accept my name or account number even though I am a customer.
UPC should shut down. I am sick of hearing about their awful customer care and bad service.
Although to be fair I have read on another site that the products they offer are really good and the senior people at UPC are genuine. The person who said that was believable because he was saying that the offer of a free TV when you sign up with UPC was wrong because the TV could only be used as a monitor after 2012 and it was wrong not to point that out to the people concerned. Then a smug reply came from someone supposedly at UPC saying that their legal team saw nothing wrong with the offer and listed off a string of legal eagles. I think they were trying to scare the original poster but they were put in their place and that was when the poster said the good things about UPC. The poster also said that the person who was giving junk TVs as part of the deal were letting UPC down and getting it a bad name.
Well I want a job with UPC righ now. If UPC is really that good and if it is being let down in a really big way by the people employed there then they should employ me. I want to be paid a good wage like the useless crowd they are employing at the moment. I have no paper qualifications but I would represent my employers in a far better way than the people they are paying at the moment who should all be sacked and sent home immediately before they do any more damage to the good name of the company. I would be quick to learn all I need to know about the business and would attend to customers in a swift manner giving them all the help possible. UPC should take stock of their staff and sack those responsible for the bad image being sent out.
My TV is still out. It is out more than three hours now…but on the bright side…While I was writing this I had the radio on and I was listening to RTE Radio. They were talking about books and Mills and Boon in particular. Someone called Abby Green was talking and she has sold millions of books through M&B so I am off to start my first book and it will be thanks to UPC and their shoddy company if I make a success of it…..But first I will send off that email to UPC at the address I got here.
I’ve had the 20Mb for 5 days having had to make do with a 3G modem (another joke!). Goodbye connection problems, I thought. No such luck. It often drops for no reason, slows to a crawl, or worse, the modem spontaneously resets itself. This is very annoying as my SSID and NW key are reset & you have to remove the connection from your wifi list and re-add it. After reading the above stories, I think I’ll cancel the service. Such a joke and a shame that they can’t provide a reliable service. Now, where did I leave that 3G modem?!
ps if your wifi speedtest is coming in way under your wired connection, try changing the channel on the router. That’s what the technician did in my house. A lot of neighbours may be on the same channel as you’re on.
Verrry bad service. Costum supp is useless.
I’ve had upc broadband for 8 months. In the last one month it is an utter crap. I have to restart router hourly /average/ and that don’t work always either. Probably too many people fled from eircom’s lousy service to upc, and they are not prepared for that. Question is , are they building their system or simply share what they have between the costumers and thats it. Is there any authority in ireland who is oversees the behavior of com providers? Nowhere to go? outrageous
13.09.11