Hi

I wonder if anyone could help me with a question about upgrading our Telefonica internet package from 1mb to 3mb. I spoke to Telefonica (1004) and they say they have arranged the upgrade, but said something about switching the box off and about 72 hours. The phone connection was so bad (also reported as a line fault!) that I’m not sure if the guy meant it would take up to 72 hours, and we had to turn off the router to pick up the upgrade, or if he meant we had to turn the box off now and leave it off for 72 hours. Has anyone else done an upgrade and knows which of these it would be? I know I could call back and ask, but the line was so bad I can’t face it, and hoped someone here might know the answer.

Thanks.
Lee

This is my personal opinion.

Telefonica is undoubtably the worst company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. Customer service non existent. Phone and internet service diabolical.

That aside, first check if you can actually receive 3Meg in your area. I think you can do that online somewhere.

We changed to Jazztel (which is cheaper). Great customer service and our internet and phone service has been perfect ever since.

Save yourself the hassall. Forget about Telefonica if you can.

Just Landed,

Thanks for your reply. We can get 3mb here, I’ve already checked. Due to the problems with our phone line we probably missed a call from Telefonica to offer the upgrade from 1mb to 3mb (we’re already paying the same for 1mb as we will for 3mb). It’s my own fault that we haven’t reported the line fault, as we don’t use the phone very often we just put up with it.

I know that loads of bad stuff has been written about Telefonica, but (so far anyway) we haven’t had any issues that haven’t been down to our laziness! The guy I spoke to was really helpful and polite, so now I just need to wait and see if we get the upgrade. My problem is just not knowing if we have to do anything more than just switch the box off at some point over the next 72 hours to get the upgrade, or whether it should be off now, and for the whole 72 hours. I suspect it’s the first one, but hoped someone might be able to confirm if that’s correct.

I’m not sure about Jaztel, when I looked into this some time ago there wasn’t anywhere I could find out if they covered our area. It seemed that we had to actually apply to have it changed over officially, and then wait to see if they would tell us if we could have it or not. I’d rather be able to find out in advance and then apply if the cost was a lot better, not go through all of that just to be told we can’t have it. Maybe they’ve upated their site now (this was over a year ago I think) so I might go and have a look.

Thanks again.
Lee

Has to be said that in the three years we have been with Telefonica we have had good service from them.

Our original service was their Rural ADSL at 256Kbs which was hopeless but the best they could offer at the time given our fairly remote location. Rural ADSL terminated about a year ago and was replaced by a 3mbs service. No action of any description was needed on our part…one day 256kbs, the next 3mbs. So I don’t think you need to do anything; if the line drops off for a while leave it for a couple of days before reporting it as a fault, but other than a sudden increase in line speed I doubt you will notice the changeover!

We don’t actually get anything approaching those speeds however because again where we live although in a remote village the are a large number of subscribers being serviced from a relatively small switching centre. If 50% of the subscribers go on line at the same time say in the evening when the kids are doing homework or chatting on line the line speed drops dramatically.

Telefonica’s call centre on 1004 is essentially a sales centre but they do try to help out with telephone line problems and whenever we have experienced problems they have been attended to quickly and courteously.

The ADSL help line (902 357000) is the only area upon which I have a minor beef…the people at the help centre handle all enquiries in Spanish, but since this is Spain it is only to be expected. In England I wouldn’t expect English BT Connect techs to speak Spanish…

I have found that a mix of Spanish and English is enough to convey details of ADSL problems to the people concerned. We recently had an ADSL fault which took out the whole village and most of the surrounding area. After reporting the problem, a recorded message, in Spanish of course, was the only response to further calls. The message simply translated amounted to “We are aware of the problem in your area and are working to restore the service; we apologise for the break in service…”

A more recent fault needed to two calls to the help line; our router failed and would not connect. It took 24hrs but we were visited by a Telefonica engineer who installed and set up a replacement router and ensured that both our computers could link to the net.
After he left we had no less than 5 calls from different Telefonica centres all wanting to know if the fault was fixed.

So far from being the worst company, I would have to say that I have no problem with them. We are promised an upgrade to a 6mbs service at sometime in the future; like our existing 3mbs service this will be uncapped with no hidden ‘Fair Usage’ clauses so beloved of most ISP’s and phone companies.

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Thats Telefonica for you. They offer 3Mb MAX under optimum conditions, and their obligated minimum is a joke.
I have 3Mb myself and can hardly ever download at that speed. Of course the speed also depends on the webserver you are accessing, their contracted upload bandwidth with their ISP, location and the internet traffic.

Yes def be careful with Telefonica. I know many people who have paid for the upgrade and yet have never received a faster internet connection. In some cases they do for a week or so and then it goes back to the same speed as it was previously, yet they still pay for it !!