It took 5 Virgin 'engineers' to install our line. 1 to do the work indoors, 1 to drill a hole through the wall outside, and 3 to do nothing.

Had no problems with the internet on my computer, yet my mum does, and we are on the same modem lol

and yes between 4pm and i think 9pm, there's a 350mb download limit (2MB connection 'pack') and once you hit that your speeds are capped by 50%, which is why I do most of my downloading in the morning before college or at the weekends lol... it sucks but you can get round it.

Haven't had many problems with VM with regards to their Customer Services, although we are being screwed in terms of costs. New customers get the 2mbit pack for like £8 or something, yet we pay £17.99 I think. I've asked for an upgrade on the connection to 8MBit i think... see if I get it

Quote from pb32000 :

3GB?! Christ I downloaded more than 3 times that yesterday alone.

Uhuh, yeah, as most of us do, but you're not my Mother....

Quote from beefyman666 :

It's not how much you download that caps it, it's the download/upload rate.

For instance if you're on the 2mb pack, and you go over more than 128kb/s (not sure if that's actual figure, but it's something around that) download rate, then it gets raped to 60-70kb/s

When I can find the website about all this I'll post it up, I lost all my bookmarks in a recent format.

Hmmm, Virgin Media website states otherwise;
Traffic Management (4pm - 9pm)

2mb service - Download at least 300mb and speed cuts to 1mb
4mb service - Download at least 800mb and speed cuts to 1mb
10mb service - Download at least 3gb and speed cuts to 5mb

caps last for 5 hours

SOURCE


If however it IS like you say, can they really get away with quoting something entirely different on their website?

What annoys me is that they sold me a 20mbit service for £35/month. However, if I use that 20mbit service that they sold me for all of 13 minutes, between 4pm and 9pm, they cap my service to 1/4 of the thing I'm paying for.

To add insult to injury, they call that service "unlimited". WTF!?

Wow, I just found the website and it says the same as Virgin's. I was pretty sure it was the rate and not the total amount. My memory fails yet again.

http://abcde.co.uk/virginmedia/stm.html - That's the site anyway.

Well, no problems here whatsoever (touch wood) - but a colleague who lives less than a couple of miles away from me (and is presumably connected to the same UBR) has had all sorts of connection problems lately. Maybe I'm just lucky too, as my services are pretty much rock solid.

Quote from SamH :

they kept me on the phone at extortionate prices

I thought they'd dropped the premium rate broadband support. I got an email about it and read it on digitalspy a fair while ago. You can call them free again (on 150 I think from a VM phone).

Quote from Ian.H :

However, god help ya if you rely on their mail platform in particular, but also DNS servers

Have to agree with you there. No connection problems but their email servers appear to keep falling over or suffering delays every other week. I still use my VM mail, but only 'cause it's just for personal, social mail - nothing business related.

Quote from SamH :

The service centres are specifically interested in throughput. All they have to do is answer your call and, if you're still on the phone after 20 mins, they have to get rid of you and move on to the next call. They'll tell you anything to get rid of you, and if you still won't go, they'll cut the call in the middle of a sentence. But what do they care? They're getting paid and the company you're paying has a call centre. Nobody except you cares if you're actually getting served by it, as long as you're calling and as long as you're paying your bills.

The Indian call centres are a ****ing joke, pardon my French. It's all very much down to the individual though as sometimes I've been put through to India and got excellent service from someone that was literate and obviously able to understand what I was talking about, other times I've been almost barked at by a women with a high pitched, very strong Indian accent. I think there's a knack to phoning at the tight time so that you get put through to Liverpool instead. Which, let's face it, is definitely the lesser of two evils.

Quote from Ian.H :

Don't know if you can still do it, but a couple of years ago, they introduced a 50p(?)p/m call charge to their "support" line. If you call their free number and start explaining your issue, they'll tell you it's not their dept. but they'll transfer you.... not costing you to call them.

Yes, you used to be able to dial the general enquiries (free) number, and they'd transfer you. I read that they'd stopped that though, and they told you to redial the premium rate number. Doesn't matter now though, as it's free again.

Quote from SamH :

What annoys me is that they sold me a 20mbit service for £35/month. However, if I use that 20mbit service that they sold me for all of 13 minutes, between 4pm and 9pm, they cap my service to 1/4 of the thing I'm paying for.

To add insult to injury, they call that service "unlimited". WTF!?

C'mon Sam, you work with the Interwebs, you know you're paying for a contended service. Want your own line with a 1:1 contention ratio? It'll cost you. The service is unlimited in terms of the fact that they don't stop you when you exceed the stated amount, they just slow you down. I can understand them doing it, and support it - stupid leechers that expect to run their connection flat out 24/7 can piss off - but as you say the STM kicks in rediculously early for the 20meg connection. I'm on 4meg and it's not so bad - with torrents I have to be trying really hard to get STM to kick in (although it's easily done with newsgroups). But although the 20meg customers have five times my speed, they don't get five times my peak-time full-speed download allowance.

Quote from STROBE :

I thought they'd dropped the premium rate broadband support. I got an email about it and read it on digitalspy a fair while ago. You can call them free again (on 150 I think from a VM phone).

Nope, not yet. If you use the 150 number, it tells you to ring 0906 2121111.. still extorting.

Quote from STROBE :

C'mon Sam, you work with the Interwebs, you know you're paying for a contended service. Want your own line with a 1:1 contention ratio? It'll cost you. The service is unlimited in terms of the fact that they don't stop you when you exceed the stated amount, they just slow you down. I can understand them doing it, and support it - stupid leechers that expect to run their connection flat out 24/7 can piss off - but as you say the STM kicks in rediculously early for the 20meg connection. I'm on 4meg and it's not so bad - with torrents I have to be trying really hard to get STM to kick in (although it's easily done with newsgroups). But although the 20meg customers have five times my speed, they don't get five times my peak-time full-speed download allowance.

The word unlimited is definitive. You can't use the word unlimited to accurately refer to something which has limitations. Capping download speeds after 13 minutes of usage, for 5 of the 8 hours that normal home users have access to it, is not by definition an unlimited service.

Selling that service, using the word unlimited as part of your pitch, is as much a breach of trading standards as selling "self-opening garage doors" to refer to garage doors that you manually open yourself. And, in case you're wondering, the standards authority stated that that was, without question, a breach of trading standards.

Quote from GFresh :

Uhuh, yeah, as most of us do, but you're not my Mother....

HOW DO YOU KNOW?!

But seriously, not taking a dig, just saying that yer, that limit is stupidly low. It's been said many times before, and I'll say it again, 'unlimited' internet really takes the piss.

Quote from STROBE :

[ snip ]

Have to agree with you there. No connection problems but their email servers appear to keep falling over or suffering delays every other week. I still use my VM mail, but only 'cause it's just for personal, social mail - nothing business related.

They (still) use M Sex Change as a mailserver IIRC.. an inherent problem before they even start. Thankfully I've never had to use their mail "service" (joys of own mail server) but I remember reading _many_ posts from pissed off punters on their newsgroups.

[ snip ]

Quote :

Yes, you used to be able to dial the general enquiries (free) number, and they'd transfer you. I read that they'd stopped that though, and they told you to redial the premium rate number. Doesn't matter now though, as it's free again.

That's at least a good move, IMO. They must know they're crap and know there's going to be an influx of doubly-pissed off punters if they have to pay for the "privilege" of reporting a (yet another) problem.

Quote :

C'mon Sam, you work with the Interwebs, you know you're paying for a contended service. Want your own line with a 1:1 contention ratio? It'll cost you. The service is unlimited in terms of the fact that they don't stop you when you exceed the stated amount, they just slow you down. I can understand them doing it, and support it - stupid leechers that expect to run their connection flat out 24/7 can piss off - but as you say the STM kicks in rediculously early for the 20meg connection. I'm on 4meg and it's not so bad - with torrents I have to be trying really hard to get STM to kick in (although it's easily done with newsgroups). But although the 20meg customers have five times my speed, they don't get five times my peak-time full-speed download allowance.

I had this discussion with many people over the years, mainly regarding web hosting and offer naming schemes. Some companies falsely advertise "unlimited bandwidth", "unlimited web space" or such and such. That's obviously bollox. Bandwidth _always_ has a limit, even if it's the companies absolute max capacity, it's a limit. Likewise with disk space, would they infinitely install more drives for you if you required 500Tb of space?

Maybe it's a little pedantic, but 'unlimited' was something I never added to any info with regards to services I offered. I never had quotas set for people's mail accounts for example, so in _theory_, as far as they were concerned, many would see that possibly as "unlimited", but it wasn't as I wouldn't be buying 50 new HDDs just because someone wanted a 200Gb inbox etc

Just my opinion on the term 'unlimited' in this respect.



Regards,

Ian

34 posts and no South park quote yet? I'm disappointed.

One thing I will say in NTBlueVirginewest's defence: Each time I've gone back to a BT line it has been for a minimum contract period and every time I've always gone back to cable wishing I hadn't bothered.

So IMO they're preferable to being with BT, but that's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

It looks like the problem has been sorted out now because my connection seems fine now, loads up all the websites I want to go on.

indeed but from what i read on other website and so on is that Virgin Media is "packing up" their services, meaning if you dont use their other services (phone, plane etc) your internet will be narrowed down and wont have the normal "freedom" access, this draws people crazy and alot left them for doing such bs.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... er.movielol.org/video.php

I think i am switching to Sky if they dont take any action...

Well that would them just being greddy wouldn't it. A Virgin flight can cost anything from 1k upwards to about 8k, then they want us to use their phones, I think trading standards could have something to say about it wouldn't they?

Quote from DevilDare :

indeed but from what i read on other website and so on is that Virgin Media is "packing up" their services, meaning if you dont use their other services (phone, plane etc) your internet will be narrowed down and wont have the normal "freedom" access

First I've heard of that. Linkage?

Quote from sam93 :

A Virgin flight can cost anything from 1k upwards to about 8k, then they want us to use their phones, I think trading standards could have something to say about it wouldn't they?

Erm, no, they wouldn't. What the sweet f*ck are you on about? Since when did telecoms have anything to do with airlines?

Quote from STROBE :

Erm, no, they wouldn't. What the sweet f*ck are you on about? Since when did telecoms have anything to do with airlines?

If you read DevilDare post he says if you don't use their other services such as phone or plane they will narrow down your internet and wont have the normal 'freedom', so if you had to go one their planes a ticket isn't cheap with Virgin, that's what I was on about.

Hmm. My internets just went off for a couple of hours. Has you given my internets teh aids?

Quote from beefyman666 :

If it was between 4pm and 9pm and you went over a certain download or upload rate, your rates get capped by half for 5 hours.

Thats crap. May i take this oppurtunity to say tiscali are offering 8mb superfast broadband for only £6.95 a month. And it's unlimited. It's what i have and it's quite good. New customers get a free wireless router iirc

Tiscali are worse than BT and Virgin Media. If something goes wrong, they don't know what to do.

If somethings that cheap, theres always a catch.

Tiscali acutally arnt bad for me. Ive had them about 1 and 1/2 years now. Never had a connection go down, Never needed to contact support. The speed is quick, Im constantly at around 6.5mb (8mb advertised, but meh). That said, I dont get to enjoy much of it with this stupid D-Link Wireless box..

Tiscali are the _pits_.

I'm currently working for the fella who founded / owned Nildram, which was sold to Pipex / Tiscali.. and a few employees have moved to where i work too now.. and have heard a "few tales" shall we say. In short, I'd sooner use AOL than Tiscali.. and that's never likely to happen either



Regards,

Ian

We had AOL dial up (6kb/s downloads FTW!) for some time before we moved onto broadband, and we chose Tiscali as it was cheap. AOL was pretty reliable, never had problems with it. Tiscali on the other hand was shit right from day one.

Yeh, Its alright where i am now.. My mum keeps thinking that im making it slow by downloading porn.. i cant get it into her head that it isnt me!

Quote from Jordan2007 :

Yeh, Its alright where i am now.. My mum keeps thinking that im making it slow by downloading porn.. i cant get it into her head that it isnt me!

Didn't you post on the forums with a porn folder on your desktop and talk about downloading more via Limewire that night?

sorry for bringing an old thread back (1 month old). it seems that this is now happening to me too i can't get on the lfs main site, lfs desktop of the master server. lfs is the only thing that's blocked though which is strange. with a bit of luck it should be sorted tomorrow (not a bank holiday).