Chile Forum

I thought I'd share my good experience with VTR, after having a conversation today in which someone was saying how awful Movistar is at waiting times for installing internet services.

I only have my receipt for my carnet with my RUN on it, as I only got that processed a week ago, but when I went into VTR to say I wanted internet for 2 months, after looking at the piece of paper closely a couple of times and looking at my passport and visa they said no worries...

after I signed up I got a call within two hours to set a time for installation, and they arrived at our apartment at 4pm the same day to install the internet. So from 11:30am asking in the store I had home internet within 5 hours.

And this is in Arica, with its reputation for crap infrastructure! I was impressed.

two thumbs up, i had the exact same experiance, cable was installed the same day.... have since had problems with cable modem, logged a call, fixed the same day, changed my account last week to faster internet, and less tv channels, happened same day, VTR is perfect with their service...

Yea, there seems to be this cycle with all the ISP / phone companies in Chile. They will be really really crappy for like 2-3 years, and then they will be really good for like 2-3 years, and then they will over-sell / let their marketing department take over running the company and back to the crap pile they go for a couple of years.

I hated VTR when I first moved to Chile, then I loved them, then I hated them again. Same with I loved Telefonica del Sur, then I hated them, then they are kind of coming back in to favor with me ( sort of ). Telefonica / CTC / movistar (notice how they change their name every couple of years to match their service problems) was really good, then got really bad, and now I am about to cancel all my contracts with them.

Similar story with the cell phones.

The only real solution I have found to the problem is to contract them all, and use the one that works. Expensive, but keeps us able to function. I just hung-up the phone from a telemarketer asking me to switch their company. I said I already have your company and every other one (no vtr at the moment, but possible in a few weeks).

We must have caught VTR in a good mood the last 16 months, because their service has been pretty good (they've even shown up early for service calls, handily beating US cable providers).

Admin, that's hilarious, you essentially contract all the majors, then internally manage service based on providers' changing capacities. Wow, so if there's no true management in big Santiago companies, then what are all those fancy buildings that house cheap suits across the skyline in Las Condes doing? Must just be window dressing with near zero customer service/grasp on the market... It could be worse I s'ppose.

VTR has been working well for us these last couple of years. It's not even choking on video streaming from the US like it used to. Still expensive but fairly decent service.

KJS wrote:We must have caught VTR in a good mood the last 16 months, because their service has been pretty good (they've even shown up early for service calls, handily beating US cable providers).

Admin, that's hilarious, you essentially contract all the majors, then internally manage service based on providers' changing capacities. Wow, so if there's no true management in big Santiago companies, then what are all those fancy buildings that house cheap suits across the skyline in Las Condes doing? Must just be window dressing with near zero customer service/grasp on the market... It could be worse I s'ppose.

I really don't know, and don't care. All I know is I have learned the hard way to not bet my biz on their quality of service. I have never been without at least two connections (cells, internet, land line) at any time because of flaky nature of the service.

VTR burned us bad when we moved offices once, told us they could switch our phone number, and then come moving day and we find out that they will not have any more IP addresses to assign phone numbers in that area for another two weeks. I am about to do something similar again, with shuffling our phones around between offices, and I most likly will loose a couple of our numbers in the process because phone numbers normally can not be switched or moved in Chile.

Just my luck that the one I canceled for poor service (vtr) a few years ago is giving good service now.

Our experience with VTR was great when we were living in Santiago.

Just as an example the coax in the building was really low quality and didn't support broadband very well. So the VTR guy offered to switch everything out from right from the distribution node in the stairwell to everything in the apartment. No charge. We of course took him up on the offer.

And if that wasn't good enough when the poured one of the walls it snapped the conduit so it wasn't aligned 100%... the guy spent a good 3 hours trying to get it done correctly. Eventually we got the wire through and everything hooked up. I never would have expected that… if that happened here in Canada they guy probably would have told me to contact someone to bust of the wall and get the conduit fixed. On my dime before he would come back.

Personally, I have nothing bad to say about VTR at all and will hopefully be getting their services again when we move back.

VTR have been pretty good to us, v quick installation etc, apart from a couple of things:

At the moment, my laptop can't connect to any google related site, and some other random ones as well. I've tried in both Windows and Ubuntu and Bf's tried the usual fiddling around with settings and diagnostics. His notebook gets google fine. If we could get into the advanced settings on the router, we'd have a hope, but they've locked us out.
Our phone sometimes doesn't get a dial tone.
They ring early on a saturday to ask for small amounts (like 1,500 CLP) that we've already paid and then get a bit frustrated when we can't hear them properly because the line's so crap.

Anyway, we're moving soon (hopefully) so no point getting those things sorted, the move should iron it all out when we get a new connection etc. I hope.

So, i have been at home since 4pm, because 4pm - 7pm was the time allocated by vtr to change my cable tv channels, apparently a house visit is required.... its now 8pm, no show... Im now going to the pub!!!, so VTR = Good initial install, Fast response for borken THings, Changes to the account = BAD......

we have GTD for our work internet... only problems we have with them are arsonists burning the main fibre cable in quilicura last year, 3 days to relace the cabnet, a digger cutting the cable last week, and at the moment we have random emails being blocked by the spam filters for no reason, most the adds moves and changes we can do on their website... we have a account manager on call 24/7 to complain do when we want fast service... (however we have 4x sites each with 10 meg fibre) no


i think the moral of the story ... this is chile, those little numbers you pull outa the machines to take your turn are like lottery tickets, you are either going to win good service or bad service, there is no such thing as constant Good nor bad service!!!

Life in chile is just one big lottery....