SSE broadband feedback

MYstIC_G

Well, so far I have to say SSE performance is absolutely awful. First day my service was just as good as my previous ISP (Plusnet) but oh my what a difference a day makes. I've gone from 52Mb/s to 4Mb/s.

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

seert

Did anyone in Northern Ireland manage to get this deal and if so how did you go about it

i put my info in and it said not possible

RangersPete

MYstIC_G wrote: »

Well, so far I have to say SSE performance is absolutely awful. First day my service was just as good as my previous ISP (Plusnet) but oh my what a difference a day makes. I've gone from 52Mb/s to 4Mb/s.

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

5 days in and my speed very consistant so far,

deanos

RangersPete wrote: »

5 days in and my speed very consistant so far,

speedtest is whitelisted gives false results, try these , and better still try downloading a big file


https://fast.com/
http://testmy.net/
http://speedof.me/

done a few seconds apart

RangersPete

I have downloaded a 550 mb file in jst over 2 minutes @4.2MB/s - 4.5MB/s according to my download manager? Which is the type of speed I've achieved throughout the weekend.
I do live in devon and have very low technical expectation as I don't even get a mobile signal where I live, so I am very easily pleased :-)

deanos

that's good then, wish mine was usable in the evenings

jmdnnlln

AndyPK wrote: »

So have you rang them up to cancel yet ?

Well I don't agree with my son about a 14 day cancellation period, but I may be wrong. No I haven't cancelled but I did get a call from SSE, I went on to tell them I wasn't happy but I had found a solution for my downloading.. He did inform me I may have a right to cancel if I'm not getting the 'advertised' speeds and for now I will monitor my broadband whilst using my seedbox and see how it goes.
Average speeds are approx 55mb/s according to speed testing sites.
Would I recommend?....NO!

seert

seert wrote: »

Did anyone in Northern Ireland manage to get this deal and if so how did you go about it

i put my info in and it said not possible

UPDATE

I eventually rang them and i can get it in Northern Ireland but only over the phone as i am not with BT

kemlynroader

Yesterday was my "go live" date. I've copied/pasted the email I've just sent over to the Head of Customer Services at SSE with regard to my experience.

Some feedback on a very frustrating experience on the 20th June. My account number XXXXXXX by the way...

I was present at my property as requested in your various emails between 1pm and 6pm. No engineer showed up.
My existing fibre broadband supply (from Sky) was deactivated at 5.30pm, leaving me without a connection
I attempted to call your 0345 678 0051 number just after 6pm on the 20th. I was on hold for well over 50 minutes with no answer. i had to terminate the call as my home phone was beginning to run out of battery at that stage.
I then called the 0800 048 2399 number. I was on hold for nearly 60 minutes at this stage. I spoke to male call handler at around 7.50pm on the Monday evening 20th june(I didn't take his name, I really wish I could remember. If you check my account number XXXXXXXXXX hopefully your records will identify the employee). He did well to pacify me as I was pretty angsty at this stage. He's going to wave my first month bill charge for the inconvenience. He did suggest that staffing issues were to blame for the long call wait. He then mentioned that as I'd already had fibre previously from Sky, it was unlikely that an engineer would have arrived but there was some form of breakdown in your processes which meant I wasn't informed of this. I eventually was able to set up my router myself and it is fully operational thankfully.
Hopefully, you can look into these issues and confirm the following?:

1) Thank the call operator who dealt with me. He did very well under what I understood to be some pressure he was under.
2) Provide some reassurance that this was an isolated issue and that your internal processes are tightened up with regard to the engineer not turning up (despite what was in your emails) . Fortunately, I work from home so was around without the inconvenience of having to take the time off to have been around for the appointment (Email quote : "An Openreach engineer will be visiting your home on this date in the afternoon, between 1pm and 6pm to get everything up and running for you to begin using our services.") Your call handler suggested this wasn't an isolated issue.....
3) The amount of time that I was waiting for my call to be answered. Call #1 approx 6.05pm 20th June to the 0345 678 0051 number for 53 minutes and my call went unresponded to. Call #2 made at approx 6.55pm to your 0800 048 2399 number which took pretty much an hour to be answered. I understand you're in the process of employing additional staff to tackle this. While inbound calling isn't me area of expertise so sorry if i'm talking out of line here, is it practical to have the customer automatically updated to say how long it is expected for a call to be answered during the wait (Such as Sky's automated calling system?)

Your fibre and anytime calls deal £21 per month is fantastic value and I headed over from Sky tempted from great feedback I'd heard from others about your service but this disappointing first experience yesterday has soured things a lot for me. Hopefully you'll prove to me this was an isolated issue.

voxmagna

I got connected a couple of days ago on their 'Ultra Fast Fibre Broadband' offer. We all know about dieselgate, well I think this ISP (Daisy) is up to similar tricks. When I was first connected I was getting less than 32Mbps download on their so called ultra fast fibre.

I am yards from the BT cabinet and according to their Infinity test BT promise no less than 65Mbps and a peak of 75 Mbps. Some web checkers use small file segments in their tests and I think these monkeys have figured that out. I'm now only relying on the BT wholesale tests. On day 1 it reported no more than 30mbps download speed but what was interesting was the second BTW screen after inputing my phone number, because that said my maximum download speed was about 33mbps. I sent off some correspondence to a black hole at SSE and as if by magic, later on some test sites showed a download speed of over 70 Mbps. That's what I expected and I could have been a happy bunny.

The surprise came when I repeated the BTW test again. Now it said my potential maximum speed was over 70Mbps, but worryingly the range of 'acceptable speed' was now changed to 40- 75Mbps. Guess what? The download test came back right at the low end, sometimes making 40 in the green but at other times making less in the red. I then went to a test site that could provide files of varying size sent from a CPU not a hard drive. I tried 100mb and 200mb files. The kind of sizes you download for Windows updates. Speeds returned were less than 30Mbps. I thought this was strange so I tried downloading a 200Mb Winzip file and used a stopwatch. Being compressed it wouldn't optimize well and the speed was equally dissapointing.

What I seem to have is an ISP who does well on short block file download tests using the OOKLA test site, but fails to provide the Ultra Fast fibre service that works well for the normal types of file you can expect to download. Can ISPs get their kit to recognise when certain tests sites are being used, then push up download speed to fool us, or is the type of test using short file block sizes easy to fool?

I'm getting no communication from SSE, no explanations or responses and now I need to dig myself out of this hole. If you are signed up with SSE and in the waiting period, I would seriously consider the commitment you will be making with them for 18 months. Their customer interface is poor, you find it hard to send emails to them unless you wish to cancel and there are 20 minute wait times to get calls anwered. They have no online management of your broadband service or communication channels within your account. Your online broadband account will look more like an electricity account and there is no chat or messaging facility to get problems sorted out.

If I get anywhere or they can do better, I'll re post a reply. BT say it takes up to 9 days for the line rate to adapt. I'm not holding my breath with SSE because on my previous ISP they started me off at over 65Mbps then adapted the rate down to 32 which was my contract. I've seen what 65Mbps over fibre can be like and this service from SSE seems to be falling well short.

If you are signed up with SSE/Daisy try different speed test sites including BT Wholesale. If you download large files from sites you know to have fast servers, you will know if your speeds are slow.