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“The disaster that is Freeola”

written by andylaaauk on 07/01/2016

I signed up with Freeola (an entanet reseller) after previously being with ukfsn, with ukfsn I had a faultless service throughout, the only reason for leaving was the fact that we moved house and that ukfsn seemed to be difficulties. Now, Freeola, I signed up April 2015, at this point we were still in the process of moving, so the service wasn't used much, however I ran a quick speedtest and was pleased that we were connected at 17500kbps, however it was the following month the problems started to show, by this time we had started to actually use the connection properly and were greeted by constant disconnects, informed Freeola about the situation and was told to check all our equipment etc to make sure the fault wasn't at our end. Over the next week or two the connection had become almost unusable sinking well under 1mbps, at this point the phone line was becoming noisy as well which would point to a fault in the line, so contacted again to report the issue, again we were told to check at our end, which we did, finally Freeola raised a ticket with BT and organised a visit by an engineer. After one cancelled visit and one non show, the engineer turned up on the third attempt, plugged their device into the master socket and the fault was traced to a rotten connection in the street cabinet. At this point I was relieved and when we connected back up over the next couple of days the connection climbed to about 14 to 15mbps, which although slightly slower I was happy with. Thinking problem over, we started to use the connection again, and while not so frequent the connection would drop when using the connection to capacity. So contacted Freeola, again they told us to check at our end, which we did, then they informed us they could make some tweaks to make the connection more stable, next day or two, the speed again started to drop and drop, so I had to contact Freeola again to explain, anyway they said they would make another tweak and that seemed to garner a reliable 10mbps connection for most of the year. At this point I was reasonably happy with the service and happy with the customer care. Problems presented themselves in November when after most of the year having a solid 10Mbps connection, it dropped to 6.5Mbps, not a complete disaster but one that warranted contacting Freeola, this is when I found out the reality of the company I was dealing with, they simply fobbed me off with an explanation that was pointing to our equipment (which hadn't changed), at this point I left it to see if the connection would recover and in December it did, actually syncing at 11Mbps, this was sort lived but the connection settled again at 10Mbps and again I was reasonably content with the service, however right at the end of December to early January the connection has been in free fall, going back down to 6.5Mbps, then 4 then 2, then 1 and then it continued 500kbps and then down to 200kbps, at this point I wasn't a happy bunny, I had contacted them will the connection was dropping, informing them of the ever decreasing speed and again was informed in no uncertain terms that they had done their part and was nothing more they could do, and informed me to take things up with BT. It has been a nightmare service really from day dot, the connection has obviously got other underlying issues but Freeola are unwilling (or more likely), unable to help, I think they have reached the limit of any technical expertise they may claim to have. So in a nutshell, a company that is happy to take your money but is largely unwilling to help regarding the actual connection, the service you pay them for. Technical expertise and customer services have to rate at horrendous. Seriously, if you are looking for an ADSL provider, please, if you value your sanity above all else, look elsewhere.