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Author Topic: Virgin service ??????  (Read 8787 times)

bogstandard

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #25 on: November 22, 2008, 02:41:59 am »

Until people realise that you don't get 'owt for nowt' you will be given a mediocre service.

If you want the best of everything, you have to set up each thing individually, and pay for it.

Broadband, tv & telephones.

If you want a 'lemmings' package, where everything is included for a fixed price, some area of it will usually suffer, and suffer badly. Most probably in an area that the supplier doesn't or hasn't specialised in before. Plus due to everyone scrambling for the latest all in one packages, the suppliers can't cope with demand, so terrible service usually ensues, and this is a merry go round, as each supplier tries to attract more customers, they change the packages as often as they change their socks, so over a very short period, customers are on different packages with the same supplier. The system soon breaks down into chaos.

I doubt many of you would have heard to words 'contention rate'. In the early days of broadband (only a few years ago), when you purchased your broadband package you were given the choice of contention rate, either 30 to 1, or 50 to 1. The 30 to 1 was more expensive because it meant you could in theory share your line with up to 29 other users, with the 50 to 1, with up to 49 other users. So the lower figure would give you better line speeds.

This has now seemingly gone out of the door, and they are piling more and more users on the same lines, hence that when the kids come home from school, you will find your rate drops to almost nothing, you are all sharing the allotted bandwidth on that line. Eventually the line starts to drop out because of overloading the bandwidth quota, so it then costs your suppliers more money to pay for extra bandwidth from say BT to get the lines up and running again. Once that is done, they start to put more people onto the line, so eventually it starts to happen again. It was a regular occurrence with my line going down every four to five months, then it would be fine until it started doing it over again.

Eventually, until the system goes fully fibre cable, the old BT wiring will collapse under the pressure of the continually growing number of computers accessing the internet.

The latest range of routers that they give away with these deals are great, usually four wired sockets and full household wifi coverage, until you realise what it is doing.

Are you buying the kids a new wifi laptop this Christmas, or getting the new game players that connects to the internet. If so, say goodbye to your bandwidth. Each new item that you put into your system will split your meagre allotted household bandwidth even further, so it then it isn't just the contention rate you have to cope with, the kids will pinch what little bit you have got left as well. The easy way around it is to buy an el cheapo router off ebay for about a fiver, these usually only have a max of two wired slots, one if you are lucky. You can then keep all your meagre bandwidth to yourself.
The kids can go back to playing Monopoly and Cluedo, unless of course, they just might mug you for your internet connection.

John
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bigfella

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #26 on: November 22, 2008, 04:27:29 am »

After reading the title of your posting,*** %)  %)

Barry M

Barry's so right, and we either all missed it or (like me) we were too polite to mention it. Alright, I missed it too!  :}

I didn't, thats why I got moderated :embarrassed: :embarrassed: :embarrassed: :embarrassed: :embarrassed:
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meechingman

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #27 on: November 22, 2008, 09:57:21 am »

With Virgin Mediocre I did get that teatime crawl, and it would last all night (or until constant reconnectiing of the internet session - NOT rebooting the router) picked up a decent connection for a while. With ADSL24 I get full speed up to 10pm, when offpeak time starts. There's then a dip - sometimes - down to about 2MB. At least you can check the status of the Central pipes, and see if you're on one that's near capacity. If so, a reconnect will often shift you onto a better one. And Entanet, for whom ADSL24 are a reseller, are doing quite well keeping up with the demand by bringing on new segments on the exisiting central pipes and new pipes when needed.

Occasionally the pipe 'balancing' - handled by BT - goes doolally, and the Olympics screwed things up totally (was everyone streaming it at work?) for two weeks. But it soon came back to normal after that.

Yes, you do get what you pay for and the bargain bundles aren't always what they seem, as my daughter and her partner just found out from Sky! She has an excellent line to the exchange, high synch speed, high IP profile, but crap throughput much of the time and frequent outages, and that's down to the ISP or the provider that they themselves use.

Andy
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malcolmfrary

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #28 on: November 22, 2008, 11:49:46 am »

If you are on a fibre optic line or a coax, you will be affected directly by the usage of the others on the same fibre.  With a copper wire pair to the exchange, nobody else can affect it at that point, but the length of the line does limit the top speed.  You will still be affected by whatever traffic is on the net as all of the broadband lines are grouped into nodes via the companion to those filters that you have hanging out of your phone sockets, which then behave just like the fibre/coax connection. 
I think all of the big low cost suppliers cause their customers similar grief because they all cut the same corners.  The big difference is in how well their customer service idiot sheet was written, and how good the guess of the planner was at just how much plant they would have to buy and have installed to cope with demand, both for service and what level of use was going to be involved.
If you have a noisy, spluttery, fizzing and/or buzzing line for phone calls, expect poor broadband.  The two follow the same path, and will be equally affected.
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catengineman

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #29 on: November 22, 2008, 07:37:49 pm »

I have the OLD copper wire connection  :embarrassed: and WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I return home from shopping to find the ADSL light shining bright  :}  tinternet here I come... well almost, have had to re do all the settings to accept the new speed ? whatever. but hey ho I got internet again.

Saddest part is now the nice new laptop is on the way back to the factory  >>:-( >>:-( >>:-(   I did see an advert for some homing pigeons  %)

Well spanner is off my back about the internet and virgin and I get to go back to work without a nice new lappy  <:(

r,
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FullLeatherJacket

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #30 on: November 22, 2008, 07:58:39 pm »

Funny isn't it? I put the "Virgin's Customer Service is Doggie-doo" proposition to Huw ACTionWeb - who is a serious network manager IT person - and he reckoned they are just fine........ Depends on who you ask, I suppose.

All I can say with any certainty is that Orange's Broadband Help page is anything but helpful. I resent having to pay 50p/minute just to wait three minutes for a recorded message which said (and I paraphrase here) "we know there's a server that's crashed but we're not sure which one or where it is and we can't even estimate how long it's going to take to fix but we're getting your dosh on DD anyway so - to be frank - we really couldn't give a rat's....." [Connection terminated here].

Virgin? Run by a notorious self-publicist whose only real contribution to the betterment of mankind was having sufficient faith in Tubular Bells to fund a record deal for Mike Oldfield (musician and R/C model aircraft flier).

Orange? Probably run by Hedge Fund Managers.

***Moderated***
FLJ
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catengineman

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #31 on: November 22, 2008, 08:11:20 pm »

*** off down the slippery slope at full speed***
***Moderated***


R,
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BarryM

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #32 on: November 22, 2008, 09:57:18 pm »

***Same slope***  :o  :embarrassed:
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tigertiger

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #33 on: November 23, 2008, 07:41:38 am »

After reading the title of your posting,*** %)  %)

Barry M

Barry's so right, and we either all missed it or (like me) we were too polite to mention it. Alright, I missed it too!  :}

I didn't, thats why I got moderated :embarrassed: :embarrassed: :embarrassed: :embarrassed: :embarrassed:

Lots of people didn't didn't miss it bigfella. But not everybody commented. And you realised yourself you were perhaps crossing the line  :o ;)




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The only stupid question is the one I didn't ask

tigertiger

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #34 on: November 23, 2008, 08:36:37 am »

***Note on moderation of this thread***

Dear Members
Mods are merely trying to head things off at the pass  ;)
But as usually happened, the snowball is off down the slippery slope.

I know some of the comments made by members were funny, but they were Virgin on being Moderated (boom, boom).

To avoid any complaint about not moderating this thread evenly, I have tidied things up now. Thus treating all off colour comments on this thread equally.
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The only stupid question is the one I didn't ask

catengineman

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #35 on: November 23, 2008, 11:33:02 pm »

Ho well lost my ######## again today so its back to the mobile dongle for my fun


How close to moderation am I ?


Ok I will end here and hope that the mr fixits will sort out the problem this time. and that is time for a new ISP me thinks.

R,
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bogstandard

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #36 on: November 23, 2008, 11:59:25 pm »

I am at the outer limits of my exchange and normally 1.5mb with Plusnet 8mb service was a good speed. But having continual dropouts.

Went over to these on unlimited ADSL2, cheaper than Plusnet, and now running at a constant 6 mb to 7 mb with no limits, and no sign of dropout.

https://www.bethere.co.uk/

John



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BJ

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #37 on: November 26, 2008, 02:34:44 pm »

Told the nice lady I will be leaving virgin no matter what and I request the MAC so that I can pass that to a new ISP that I find.
Again told her that is why I am leaving because virgin just dont know what they are doing

So I rang Virgin today and asked for my MAC number and was told "that your phone number is registered in the name of Mark ****". No says I, it is mine, my son was C&W (using a 132 dialler box) and then they wanted my security word. That WAS THE ISSUE! They had changed it and I had not got a clue what it was. So I was unable to use webmail. Nor had they replied to my email of 5 days previous raising this issue with them.
My worry is that my potential new provider gave me they wrong phone number for Virgin's support line!
I wonder if it is "out of the frying pan & ......"?
As for my son, well, left the U.K. 2 years ago and now works for TeleComNZ in sunny Wellington.
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bogstandard

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Re: Virgin service ??????
« Reply #38 on: November 26, 2008, 07:21:16 pm »

The way to get their attention is to cancel the direct debit or credit card payment. But make sure that you tell them beforehand what you are going to do, and the reason why. Just give them a couple of days notice, and keep a copy of the email or letter.

If they can keep you hanging on and stalled for a few days each time, they will get you into a new payment month, and so grab more of your money. Take away the financial source, and they will then very quickly want to get in touch with you.

With a new supplier, initially they usually want to set up the account with a credit or debit card, get the account onto direct debit as soon as you can. Direct debit is usually a lot easier to stop and start payments.

I had my mac number within a couple of hours of the threat of payment stoppage, and was with my new supplier very soon afterwards with hardly any down time.

If they still won't play ball, just cancel the payment scheme anyway, that can be sorted out later. Go to your new supplier and just tell them you haven't got a mac code and you are in dispute with the old ISP, but get the ball rolling getting your new line set up.

Don't think you are in a minority with this one, ISP's think they control the world, and almost everyone I know who has tried to change suppliers meets the same sort of stalling tactics. I should know, my son in law works for a support line that takes all your calls (if they advertise UK call centres), and monkees reading from script sheets usually sums it up nicely. In the case of my son in law, it is in fact a compliment, I didn't think he was capable of reading.

It seems the old saying 'The customer is always right' has gone by the wayside in the world we live in now. But if a few more of us stuck to our guns, maybe they would get the message and treat us with the respect we deserve. They are being paid to supply US with a service, if they can't supply the service we want, they don't get paid.

John
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