We live in Gipuzkoa and have been with Jazztel for the past couple of years.  Our contract speed is for 1 GB and since we started with Jazztel its performed fairly well.

Our previous experience was with Telefonica. Horror story as I?m sure you?ll be aware.

For the last couple of weeks our download speed has been dropping dramatically. Currently at 120kps.  Jazztel has told us: its because we are 3kms from the central (owned by Telefonica), that the cables are aging and that we there is nothing that can be done their side. Jazstel requested the cabling to be upgraded in the cental but stated that this was at the discretion of the central.

We are between a rock and a hard place as only Telefonica and Jazztel service this village and really we would prefer not to go back to Telefonica.

I have thought of walking into the central and putting my case to them….kinda as a last resort.

Can anyone give me any advice…..whether legal or otherwise.

Many thanks.

I have thought of walking into the central and putting my case to them?.kinda as a last resort.

Central is ‘telefonica speak’ for the local automated switching centre. Normally it takes the form of a steel shielded cabin. It is unstaffed.

Think you need to talk to Jazztel again…you have contracted for a 1Mbps (not 1Gbps, no-one offers that, the technology doesnt exist yet…) service and they are failing badly. regardless of their excuses they are in breach of contract and you my friend are being fobbed off.

Telefonica own the entire telecoms infrastructure in Spain and companies like Jazztel merely lease space and bandwidth from T’fonica.

There is probably a degree of truth in what Jazztel are telling you, but as your ISP, it’s down to them to do something about it.

We have regular ADSL speed problems with T’fonica but an email to their customer service department (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) normally gets things back on track within 48-72hrs. The problem always turns out to be at ‘Central’ which in our case is about 200 metres away from the house.

I can’t remember just why it was you had problems with T’fonica and I don’t have time at the moment to go digging backwards through the threads, but it seems to me you’d be better off dropping Jazztel and going back to T’fonica. Deal with the organ grinder rather than the monkey…!

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Thanks FB. I?ve since emailed Jazztel customer services to see if they can do something. That was 2 days ago!

I?m beginning to get the feeling that Jazztel are learning the old habits of Telefonica.  Already 4 residents in the block have left Jazztel because for a crap service.

Maybe I?m being naive, but I was thinking of contacting Jazztel HQ in London to inform them of the situation with “normal customers” on the ground here. What do you think? If our block is in anyway representative of the rest of the country, then they?ll be losing customers at a steady rate.

I was thinking of contacting Jazztel HQ in London to inform them of the situation with ?normal customers? on the ground here. What do you think?

It will be interesting to see if they respond!

Basically I think all ISP’s are essentially the same. Draw the customer in with spectacular advertising promising something that they can only supply to about 5% of their customer base, hoping that they wont read the small print. Once they have got you ensnared they really don’t give a rats ass…

Telefonica have sub-contracted a lot of their installation and maintenance to third party companies; this has an impact on Jazztel customers who rely on T’fonica’s infrastructure. Where we live, the engineers don’t even bother coming to the house anymore; they know our system is clean; they go straight to the switching centre in the village and do whatever is necessary. It invariably brings in a new IP address. The repaired system then performs well for about 3 weeks the we have to call them again, same snag, low speed.

To be fair, the infrastructure maybe be sagging under the load, but T’fonica have always respond positively to our complaints. We gave up calling their ADSL helpline because they do not offer an English speaking service (not that I would expect them to; this is Spain after all). We email the central customer services centre. I normally make out the complaint in Notepad or Word, giving details of our phone number our contracted service and details of the fault, then run it through Google translate into Spanish Then I put the Spanish and English versions into the email. Sometimes I get a response in English, sometimes in Spanish but I always get a response. Invariably they pass on details to the Technical Dept and they in turn pass it on to the maintenance company.

One thing I note with interest; the other people in your block that have moved away from Jazztel might just have freed up some bandwidth at the local Central maybe your speeds have improved slightly?

One thing you could do as an experiment. Have you tried resetting your router? Not by just switching it off and back on again but by using the reset button on the unit? You could try that and see if you get an improvement. Note that if you do try this, if you are using XP you will have to reboot your computer because its unlikely that the computer will find the changed IP if you reset it with the computer switched on. If you are running Vista or W7 a reboot shouldn’t be necessary.

For XP…switch off the computer. With the router switched on depress the reset button for about 20 seconds then release it. The router will then resynch itself. After resetting, switch the computer back on and let it do its start up thing. it should find the new IP addy.

hope all improves…
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FB. I contacted Jazztel in London and they informed me that there was legal action being taken against Telefonica due to the number of their customers leaving. Jazztel customers are being given a sub-standard service.
So in the time being there is nothing they can do for me. Telefonica are moving their own customers onto a more modern network while leaving people like myself in the lurch.
Pity as I had been so happy with Jazztel.

So I?m in the process of changing companies. But will go back to Jazztel when things improve.

By the way, I tried your advice about resetting the router…to no avail.

Just want to say thank you for your kind responses. Really appreciated.

Read with interest…