I am switching from eircom to UPC - anything I need to look out for?

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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I have not had access to eircom broadband for the past few weeks due to some equipment problems in the exchange, so I have decided, reluctantly to switch to UPC, where I have my TV and radio anyway.

Is there anything I need to watch out for?

I am paying €71 per month. €66 for The Essential Bundle and €5 for "anytime calls"

I have to pay €149 to eircom phone watch to install a "GSM adapter" , but upc will give me credit of €75 towards it on my first bill.

I am paying €45 for the engineer to install the UPC

When it's installed, I go onto the UPC website and fill in a form, and they will move my phone number and cancel my eircom account. They said that after I fill in the form, they will do the rest.

I presume I keep my eircom.net email address?

Anything else?
 
Brendan, your only real issue may be the wiring of phone points in your property. The upc phone line will come directly out of the router so if you have multipal points in your property you will need to have the UPC line connected into the existing wiring otherwise the only phone that will work is the one directly connected to the router.

I have had 100% UPC now for a few years and to be fair never had an issue. I work from home so broadband is a must and they have to date not let me down. It is faster than Eircom and generally as I said no issue.

You do need to keep an eye on your phone calls if you take out one of their packages as once you go over the minutes they charge a high cost per m.
 
The UPC phone should be cordless which may obviate the need for multiple wired phone points depending on the building (i.e. how much it attenuates the signal to the base station).

I would do a self install to save the €45 but that's just me. :)

I don't know if you have international calls included but bear in mind that it is probably not unlimited - I think it's a total of 400 mins to specific countries. There is no way to check usage online so you have to call them (1908 or whatever the number is from the UPC phone itself). On occasion when I have to make a lot of international calls I take care to stick within their limits and then switch to [broken link removed] for the rest as the local call to 13434 is already included in my bundle.

I'm not sure about the eircom.net address - if it's somehow linked to your account with eircom and you are leaving then it may no longer be available. But if this is simply a free email address that they provided years ago then it'll presumably still be available. You should backup your email just in case though!

I'm with UPC for a few years now for all three services (TV, phone and broadband) and bar one billing issue which they sorted quickly have had no complaints about their technical, customer and billing support - in spite of the bad rep that they seem to have in some quarters (maybe dating back to the NTL days or something?). Definitely a major improvement on the problems I had with voice and data when I had a landline anyway!

By the way - anybody who has been with them for a while should call their moving home/customer loyalty team on 1890940140 (or maybe another number if 1890 does not suit: http://www.saynoto1890.com/2013/02/u/) and see if they can offer a better deal. I did this recently and got an overall better deal for slightly less than I was already paying and they also gave me a small monthly discount for the next 12 months. This does mean entering into a new 12 month contract/minimum period which means a breakage fee if you leave them "early" but that suits me.

Hope this helps.
 
You do need to keep an eye on your phone calls if you take out one of their packages as once you go over the minutes they charge a high cost per m. KK
Click to expand...


I have anytime world.......as well as BB & TV.....100m/month phone ain't a lot


FREE calls anytime to local and national destinations and 400 minutes of calls to selected international destinations.
Cheaper calls than eircom to landlines and mobiles
No line rental
All the usual Phone features- voicemail, call waiting, call forwarding etc
DSP allowance included (if eligible)
Click to expand...
 
Brendan,

Presumably with the problems that you have been having you have had plenty of contact with them but I think it has been recommended on AAM that you ask Eircom what are the consequences before making any arrangements to move.

BTW it definitely pays to haggle with UPC

ClubMan said:
By the way - anybody who has been with them for a while should call their moving home/customer loyalty team on 1890940140 (or maybe another number if 1890 does not suit: http://www.saynoto1890.com/2013/02/u/) and see if they can offer a better deal. I did this recently and got an overall better deal for slightly less than I was already paying and they also gave me a small monthly discount for the next 12 months. This does mean entering into a new 12 month contract/minimum period which means a breakage fee if you leave them "early" but that suits me.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Their Loyalty Team have a direct landline number which is 061-272190 (see this key post). I rang the number the other day and it is still current. You are right to use the saynotto1890 option as this is where they make their money.

I have the Anytime World which as you say has 400 international minutes per month. Would like something with mobile minutes included but it is a pain having to watch the usage so haven't bothered to-date to check into this.
 
ClubMan said:
I would do a self install to save the €45 but that's just me. :)
Click to expand...

They don't like that kind of independent behavior anymore.
They now call it an "equipment activation charge", so you can't avoid it.
 
Brendan, you might like to check for yourself but I believe you will lose your email address. One of the reasons I am still with eircom.
 
I haven't been with eircom for years and I still have an eircom mail address.

Brendan, if you use Outlook for email services, you will need to re-set the outgoing server details (which you can get from UPC) in Outlook - this allows you to send your emails via UPC's server, while retrieving your emails from the eircom server.

If you use eircom's webmail service then you don't need to do anything.

The only issue I'm aware of regarding the email is that you won't be able to change or re-set your password, because they only make the menu option visible in the webmail service if you're on the eircom network.

Watch out for any rental you may have paid in advance with eircom (especially if they're looking for a 30 day notice period) - it might not be refunded automatically, be sure to ask for it.
 
We moved from Eircom to Sky broadband and Talk last month. We can still receive our Eircom webmail, but what Gipimann says makes sense because we cannot send mail (using Outlook). Must get that setting from Sky, thanks Gipimann.

Our activation date with Sky was about 2 weeks into our Eircom billing period, and to be fair to them, they only charged us 2 weeks then in lieu of notice. Approx €16 instead of the €30.49 we were paying for broadband only.
 
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Brendan I would check in your area to see if others are using UPC and the quality of the phone line.
I switched over from Eircom but UPC phone never worked properly. People would call me but the phone never rang. I would make a call and the phone would just lose signal. I got out of the contract as they admitted there was a problem in the area that they couldn't solve. I'm in Dublin north, my friend in the same area had the same problem
 
Berni said:
They don't like that kind of independent behavior anymore.
They now call it an "equipment activation charge", so you can't avoid it.
Click to expand...
Ah - OK - I thought that they offered self install still but maybe not? But maybe they might waive it if one haggles...?
 
With UPC's internet I get ************************* VoIP. So I use a Siemen's VoIP phone which is configured to use poivy.com for all local and international calls (which is practically free) and to use UPC's Anytime 100 for mobile calls only. This works out cheaper than poivy for mobile calls as long as I use less than 300 mobile minutes per month.
 
You may need to change the SMTP address of the outgoing email server (from eircom to UPC) if you are using Outlook.

Did the same as yourself some time ago - no problems at all.

Did not get any credit for the GSM unit though.
 
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