[ILUG] Re: Broadband providers

[Paul Mc Auley]

On Wed August 8 2007 17:19:43 Stephen McGuinness wrote:
(Quoting Tim)
|  > In my experience, it is possible to speak to a normal human being at
|  > eircom
|  > who is (a) in this continent, and
|  > (b) can settle any problems with Eircom easily
|  > (as eircom-eircom communication is quite good).

|  I believe Eircom sub-contract home support to an overloaded Stream
|  Communications call centre in East Point business park, with long
| queue times (pinch of salt, could be wrong).  I've personally never had
| problems with their business support.

That more or less tracks with my experience. I've had a largely 
hassle-free experience with them, although when I have bothered to try 
raising an issue with them I've encountered the sort of "follow the 
script, don't admit the possibility of a world beyond the script" 
behaviour which is obviously designed to send the likes of me storming 
off muttering impotently to myself.

So, for instance, if I ring to query a routing issue, the obvious 
diagnostic loop to stick me in is to unplug everything from the phone 
line, including the phone I'm on. Explaining that the phone I'm on is 
plugged into the main socket, the one which the Eircom mandated installer 
put there because we are on Phonewatch and that the DSL is thus split 
right there just ricochets off.

And the killer is I know the other side of the coin, I don't wield the 
appeal to authority stick because I know how it sounds. But that's slim 
comfort when I'm trying to use simple logical steps to demonstrate how I 
can see C from A and B from C but not B from A and the traces fail 
somewhere on their net.

When I haven't been inspired to beat my head off the phone support rock 
it's largely behaved itself, but that may have as much to do with me 
being outside the city and not battling the population of a major suburb 
for access.

Of course my understanding is that at least for the moment, even if 
another provider was billing me, it'd still be them there under the 
label.
	Paul
-- 
--- Paul Mc Auley <paulmc at peema.org>
--
-                         "The medium is the massage."
                                  -- Crazy Nigel