Ice Brodband keeps its customers out in the cold

Tuesday June 30, 2009 14:37

by Irate Murroevian

Despite no mention on the company website this customer can confirm that the Ice Broadband service in East Limerick has been down for the past nine days and the company is stil not able to give any indication of when the service will be reinstated.

Despite many telephone queries by customers during the first day of the outage the company failed to make any contact with its customers until 17:25 on Monday 22nd June. A text message that gave no indication of the nature of the problem or when they expected to have the service restored read: “Due to a hardware failure the service is currently down an engineer is currently working to resolved the issue a further update will follow regards Ice”

The following day the company blamed a third party for the lack of service and again was unable to specify the nature of the problem or when it would be restored. Another text message read: “Dear Customer a 3rd party provider is working to resolve the issue at present we are currently waiting on an update about this hardware failure regards ice”

On Wednesday there was still no information available from the customer support staff just another bland text message: “Dear Customer, We are still currently awaiting an update from the third party contractor we hope to have a full update this morning. Kind regards Ice BB” At 17:05 that evening another message: “Dear Customer, Service will not be restored this evening, our 3rd party contractor is still on site, A full update will be sent to you by 12pm 25/06/2009”

On Thursday at 12:54 another text: “Due to a 3rd party complete hardware failure we are currently awaiting parts to arrive on site. A text will be sent later with a eta for normal service resuming” That afternoon a text message at 15:08 “We apologize for the inconvenience and interruption to your service, the services will be resumed by closed business tomorrow. Regards, IceBB.”

The service was not restored on Friday and the company never bothered to inform its customers. On Saturday morning at 10:30 another text “Dear Customer, we apologize for the inconvenience and interrupted service and apologize for the delay with the work in you area and will update you ASAP.

No further communication has been issued by Ice Broadband and despite several attempts on Monday to get information by phone by a number customers nobody was able to give any indication of when the service would be restored. The customer service staff are badly informed and know no more about the problem that the information relayed by text mesages. No one with any expertise or information about the nature of the problem was availabe to speak. Despite assurances that a member of the management would return a call no such call has been received.

Ice Broadband have shown total disregard for its customers needs, failed to keep its customers updated with any useful information and failed to have the service restored in an efficient and timely manner.

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Comments (4 of 4)

Dial-up is quicker than Ice Brodband

by broadbandmears

Tue Jun 30, 2009 22:08

After taking ten days to repair what ever fault caused the outage (of course as Irate Murroevian pointed out they didn't fell it necessary to burden their customers withe the details - any details) they finally managed to get the service restored this evening. But the speed is total crap, 0.06 mb/s down and 0.05 up with a ping of 1230 according to speedtest.net and I think that being generous at the dial was stuck for ages and the speed indiactor never dropped.

We need to get wee willie o dea out with his gun and stick it up this crowd of sheisters who should never have been given a licence to operate.

Ice Broadband is still crap

by M. O'

Thu Jul 02, 2009 11:11

this morning the download speed still hasn't improved 0.22mb/s. they have a hard neck calling themselves a braodband service. Customers should demand credit for the days (13 so far) that they have not got what they paid for

I know how it feels

by johnd

Thu Jul 02, 2009 14:28

Glad you brought this to the attention of indymedia readers. People out my way have ongoing problems with the T3 mobile network which is supposed to be broadband but usually is as slow as old cable connections before broadband. Unless you want to be on the computer at three in the morning when the service improves. The support line people say that it’s because the area I live in gets “too much traffic.” There would be less land line owners in this area of Dublin. It’s infuriating and the automated apologies make things worse - for me anyway.
People who live in posh parts of the city who have a mobile broadband connection get a much better service, because they don’t really need one; they all have landlines as well and so there are no problems with congestion.

sysadmin with soldering iron

by mufti_el_ping - irishwan.ie

Thu Jul 02, 2009 23:13

z at burren dot org

Ahish, Crusheen, Co. Clare

none

Don't keep waiting to be spoonfed by cowboys like IceBB, or the failed Birdhill scheme (J.B.Kennedy) or the incredibly brazen crooks at 'airwire.ie': underequipped, using hobbyist's equipment, and chronically underfinanced using the hookup charge to feed their pyramid scheme empires. Looking up their (non-existent) tax records speaks for itsself.

Why pay multiple times (between neighbours) for a connection that is shared anyway ? The infamous 'contention ratio' is basically nothing but a diluted service with dozens of people sharing a single line. The fact that one piece of equipment brings down an entire network says it all: you're all on the same modem.

Build your own setup: find some place with a bb connection and share it out via wireless or wirebound between neighbours. It's surprisingly simple and cheaper than a 'commercial' connection charge.

As long as it is neighbours helping neighbours, the taxman, comreg and all the other parasites can simply get stuffed in the face of basic grassroot cooperation. And it beats the cowboy operators who have jumped into the void left by a failed government and their corrupt telecom cronies. The unqualified amateurs thought they have been handed a licence to print money. Until something breaks.

There are several mailorder sources for equipment in Ireland : check out wi-pipe.ie or wirelessconnect.eu . 100 euro or less per client antenna gets you going, a simple 'base station' is as little as 250 euros. Everything can be put together with basic hand tools on the kitchen table. Don't forget to 'earth' the antennaI for lightning protection. I bet the cowboys did not do that either ...

Stefan Zalewski, Co.Clare

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Ice Brodband keeps its customers out in the cold

Comments (4 of 4)