Choosing A Broadband Provider
August 6, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Soon to be moving to Clontarf and need to sort broadband and phone. I thought I’d share with you the reason I’ve chosen Magnet.
Digiweb
I’m currently with Digiweb on 5MB download with a cap of 30G and no free calls. Imagine my surprise to discover that all their packages now have free calls built in, or higher download, or more capacity – and not once in the last 4 years of being a customer have they told me about it! I have been paying an average of €63 a month when I could have been getting what I was getting for €54.99. The package I’m on isn’t advertised anymore and the company hasn’t communicated to me that I could be on something new and save money. It’s not as if I haven’t been in contact with them – around July 2009 when I started Simple Assembly Me Hole, I experienced a good deal of telephone problems. Another negative is that they don’t have call forwarding.
So Digiweb aren’t getting my business because they have shown more interest in hooking new customers than in keeping loyal existing ones happy.
Eircom
I’m inherently against the Big Telco and its market controlling ways, but all those ads of speeding cars over bridges are doing their trick so I gave eircom a whirl. They’re not that competitive and their customer service still sucks. I telephoned because I had specific questions not addressed on the website and it took the Indian sales person 24 minutes to deal with my queries. He kept getting interrupted by colleagues, put me on hold 3 times and found it difficult to deal with someone who didn’t fall into the category of being asked whether they were a small, medium or large user. I’d be wary of the fact that they cap your usage at 50G because I’ve heard they hit you with big charges if you go over that. Plus I don’t support the way they are being reporting users of certain sites for being bad!
Wimax
I got a bit excited when I found out I could have unlimited usage, 7MB and unlimited landline calls not just to Ireland, but to UK landlines as well! Yes I can port my number, yes they do call forwarding which Digiweb can’t, and my new home is located not far from their station. I didn’t like the €50 activation fee, but I could live with that… but then I hit Boards and came across pages and pages of people bitching about their Wimax service. So that’s a no.
Magnet
Last but not least I telephoned Magnet to see if I could get that service in my area. Great news to hear that there’s someone else on my road using the service. And what a service! A whopping 24mb, no sharing, free offpeak landline calls and 100mins of international ones (which I probably won’t even use because I’m a heavy skype user), and free tv on pc. It’s slightly more expensive at €54.99 but the hard to please Boards people have nothing but good things to say about it. Phew! Even though the price is a little more than the other contenders, it’s still less than I’ve been spending with Digiweb, so I’m saving. Find out more.
I hope this summary is helpful to you if you are considering which broadband provider to use in Clontarf Dublin 3.
Comments (6 responses)
Hi Maryrose,
I’ve also been looking at switching to Magnet but hesitated at the last hurdle when I found out that only 1 phone point in the house will work on the new service and there is a considerable fee of €90 to have another phone line rewired.
Have you looked into this aspect of switching and do you know if there is any handy alternative to paying €90 to Magnet for a second phone line?
Hi Caroline
I haven’t looked into that aspect as I only need the one line. But I’m guessing that in cases where 2 lines are needed it’s for business purposes, and you know yourself – business charges are always significantly more, that’s where they make their money eh?
Hi Maryrose,
We’re moving to offices in Mullingar town so have been doing something similar to you with the old phone around. I have to say one commonality was terrible phone service, especially for business customers! A bit of efficiency and politeness in phone manner wouldn’t go astray people!
We discovered we could get UPC broadband of 20Mb into our new office within 3 working days! It costs 59/month includes phone (not that we need that either as we’re Skype lovers too) but doesn’t require a landline and it’s getting installed this morning. I use UPC at home and really very good.
Let’s have a recap in 3 months!
Got Magnet 2 months ago have nothing but problims since I got it. Customer service is very bad everything must go back to Dublin Also just found out that everytime you phone Magnet you must pay for the phone call you make to Maggnet it`s classed as a premium, call what a joke.
I applied for broadband and phone line switch from Magnet and I did not even get a reply when I queried the delay in it being set up! Im glad I found out about the poor customer service for my self before I was drawn into a contract. Needless to say, I canceled my application.
I’m with Magnet now for a couple of years. The package I’m on includes a whopping 100Mb download speed, great phone package (unlimited local/nat calls, 30 mins to any mobile/month), and TV (with multi-room viewing). They also now provide Irish channels free for your computers (works outside the house!!). I sound like a sales person – but here’s the thing… I too was on an old package for about 2 years before I called and asked and realised I could make massive savings – by doing nothing. Every time, I try to adjust something (like add Sky Sports), it may take up to 7 phone calls to get sorted out. I am a service manager in a multi-national so I know a bit about customer service and I can tell you that their customer service is appalling. They advertise extended hours for support, but the numpty left working after 5 has no technical ability. They also have a web based control for recording channels – but the site is crap, and full of errors.
At one stage, I went through their official complaints procedure – I never even got a reply. I really wanted to like them because of the broadband speeds but if I was giving advice to someone, I’d stay avoid magnet if you have any viable alternatives.
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