Anyone with Gigaclear?

[Scott C]

Here's a top tip re Gigaclear.

If you phone up their customer support team and talk very nicely to them, they will sometimes give you a free speed bump, maybe for 3 or 6 months. Occasionally they forget to turn the bump off

Get your sob story worked out in advance

They bumped me from 400 to 600

I’m actually already on the 900 package…wonder if they’ll bump me to 10gig

Unfortunately they haven’t been able to fix it and they’ve had to escalate it as it could be an issue with the cabinet…

 

[Scott C]

Well the specialist engineers came out the other day, respliced the fibre and I believe removed some unnecessary splitters that would have been just causing signal loss for no real reason and everything has been behaving since

 

[sad099]

Hmm, I'm moving home and the provider I have selected is Gigaclear - this thread doesn't fill me with hope.
Also experience to date has been a little hit and miss.
Ordering was fine, we don't move until 8th Feb, they agreed they would come and do the prefibre work (lay cable from road to my home) on that day and next day 9th have someone connect up the service internally.
Just had a call from a engineer today who turned up at the property to do an inspection with a view to have the pre fibre work done in the next day or so ?

Called up Gigaclear, who says there's nothing noted on the account re installation dates I agreed, only connection date of 9th noted, and now they say they may not be able to get the installation dates as we are too close to the connection, so may have to push connection back.
So they may have to do pre fibre on 9th onwards and then connect me later, usually connection is 2 weeks post pre fibre work. I may not now get internet until end of Feb
Awaiting a call back - so have fingers crossed they can accommodate me

Hopefully this isn't the start of a nightmare trying to get connected

 

[Rroff]

Gigaclear pushed back work through where I live to the end of Feb now, from early Jan though it does seem to be progressing, but was supposed to have been by Sept/Oct last year "at the latest", so doesn't look like sign ups will be until March at the earliest in reality. They have sent detailed information about the roadworks they will be doing though which is a change, maybe due to some of the criticism as to alt net providers and half-arsed roadworks lately :s

On the other hand had Wessex suddenly phone up today out of the blue after spending the last 4 months trying to get any response out of them, saying they want to come tomorrow and dig through our property to put the fibre in... we told them no and go away as it is a total joke now how much of a shambles dealing with them has been and the only time they seem to suddenly take an interest is when one of the other 2 alt nets who are developing the area starts making actual progress...

EDIT: Wessex branded vehicle collected some kind of machinery from the end of our road today, so guess they were hoping to dig through today rather than entirely being stall tactics but what a shambles, personally think this situation with alt nets is going to end up a massive cluster **** in a few years down the line.

 

[KIA]

Gigaclear appears to have capacity issues in some areas.

Gigaclear - packet loss in the evenings :: Other Providers (without dedicated forums) :: think broadband

 

[sad099]

Gigaclear appears to have capacity issues in some areas.

Gigaclear - packet loss in the evenings :: Other Providers (without dedicated forums) :: think broadband

Just had a look, thanks for that, seems to not affecting the area I'm moving to, so fingers crossed !

 

[Scott C]

Hmm, I'm moving home and the provider I have selected is Gigaclear - this thread doesn't fill me with hope.
Also experience to date has been a little hit and miss.
Ordering was fine, we don't move until 8th Feb, they agreed they would come and do the prefibre work (lay cable from road to my home) on that day and next day 9th have someone connect up the service internally.
Just had a call from a engineer today who turned up at the property to do an inspection with a view to have the pre fibre work done in the next day or so ?

Called up Gigaclear, who says there's nothing noted on the account re installation dates I agreed, only connection date of 9th noted, and now they say they may not be able to get the installation dates as we are too close to the connection, so may have to push connection back.
So they may have to do pre fibre on 9th onwards and then connect me later, usually connection is 2 weeks post pre fibre work. I may not now get internet until end of Feb
Awaiting a call back - so have fingers crossed they can accommodate me

Hopefully this isn't the start of a nightmare trying to get connected

Since the engineers sorted the issue with the initial installation, which to be fair they did very quickly, mine has been performing very well…very happy with it

 

[Rroff]

Had engineer out for pre-install survey - they aren't very optimistic - they want to bring it in on poles here but lots of trees in the way apparently making it difficult for complying with regulations. Not really feasible or a great idea to be chopping a load of them down.

 

[Scott C]

Had engineer out for pre-install survey - they aren't very optimistic - they want to bring it in on poles here but lots of trees in the way apparently making it difficult for complying with regulations. Not really feasible or a great idea to be chopping a load of them down.

(Just to be crystal clear I don’t actually condone this )

 

[Faded]

So Gigaclear have just started digging up our street to install their cables in my area. Does anyone know how soon after this is done that it will actually become available to order?
Also, does them installing the cables open the area up for other ISPs to offer their services?

 

[sx_turbo]

So Gigaclear have just started digging up our street to install their cables in my area. Does anyone know how soon after this is done that it will actually become available to order?
Also, does them installing the cables open the area up for other ISPs to offer their services?

Our was around a year...

 

[Faded]

Our was around a year...

Wow, really? Looks like I'll be staying on fttc for a while then.

 

[sx_turbo]

Wow, really? Looks like I'll be staying on fttc for a while then.

Yeah they lay the cables, put notes through your door to register interest then take around a year get around to getting it live.

 

[KIA]

Our was around a year...

Same.

 

[Rroff]

They've put it off and put it off here, was supposed to be installed on the 16th this month but now looks like it could be another 6 months if they can be bothered at all due to some complications. People have posted on Facebook in the nearby town that they put the infrastructure through, did events in the local village hall and leafleted people saying it was now available, etc. then took nearly a year before anyone actually started getting connected.

The other two altnets who are active in the area are just as bad though - one gave my brother the run around for about 4 months then wondered why he lost interest, then made a big deal about digging through to our neighbour, made a bit of a mess of their garden weeks ago putting the fibre through, and still haven't actually done the last bit to make the connection live.

EDIT: Just a few from my local Facebook group who've been given installation dates by Gigaclear:

-Installation date Dec 2022 still waiting (as of Feb 2024).
-Installation date August 22, installation Oct 23, still not working as of March 2024.
-Gave up after 8 months, went with another option.
-Still waiting from Jun 2023 (as of Feb 2024).
-Installation date November 2023 (still waiting as of March 2024) x2.

 

[sx_turbo]

Yeah they will **** about the installation dates, once it's up and running it is and the staff are very good, but it's getting it running

 

[Jacksonn]

Currently awaiting my second part of the installation with GC.

First part getting the cables to property was subbed out to local firm and they where brilliant.

Been without internet at new house for 3 weeks and only get 1 bar of 4g when hanging out the window.. rural life!

 

[Jamauk]

I had installation issues with them. An installation date was set, however after waiting all day for them to arrive, not even a phone call I contacted them several times to get various excuses ranging from the van had broken down on the M40, then that the van was stuck in traffic on the M40, a previous installation had taken longer than planned, one of the installation team had gone home sick and they had to stop installations for the day. After repeatedly trying to find out what was happening as they had missed the install date and didn't seem interested in arranging an alternative date, I had to wait a further two months because they were fully booked and could not arrange anything sooner, the final excuse was that the driveway was longer than the average UK driveway and so it would require a specialist team to pull the fibre cable through. I took to Twitter after that and instead of waiting two months there was a cancellation and the installation was scheduled for two weeks.

My contract gave me 6 months free, after the complaining I managed to get a further two months free. There have been several outages since installation, each lasting a couple of days, the last however I can understand that it wasn't their fault, but they kept up with the excuses, firstly telling me that there was no fault in the area and that my router wasn't correctly plugged in, advising me to get different network cables, eventually I was advised that it was a modem fault and it would need to be replaced, the internet was disconnected for 5 days. The final excuse which I believe to be true is that Openreach had been doing work in the area and cut through a cable disconnecting 4 houses in the local neighborhood, the person doing the repair work was really good, after day 3 of being disconnected the engineer came to the door and explained that they were identifying the fault and not to be concerned if I saw someone walking down the driveway with a metal detector type device, he came back later that day to tell me that they had identified the issue, explaining what it was and that it had been found at four other houses, the same guy came to the door on day 5 to check that my house had connection because I was the first to report the fault.

It has been faultless ever since and there have been a few emails advising that various upgrades would be taking place overnight between 23:00-06:00 and that there may be minor disruption and disconnects, everything has however remained connected. It is a very good service once you get through the first response customer service who seemed to be very good at providing random excuses, I don't know if it is just repeatedly calling them that gets them to take things seriously, or if it is taking to Twitter to get them to take it seriously, but once it does get taken seriously things get dealt with quickly.

 

[Rroff]

Total shambles with our install so far - there is someone at Gigaclear who seems to be taking it seriously but basically engineering team hasn't given them any updates and they can't force the issue for 90 days apparently... I'm not one generally given to childish nicknames but I'm starting to think of them as Gigaunclear in my head.