pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

Got me thinking the other day, I wonder if I've ever spoken to any of you when you've called up for broadband support ??

I'm a rather nice bloke

Credited someones account the other day for the loss of his service, as he put the phone down I heard him tell someone that I was a really nice bloke.. I doubled his credit !! ( credit is down to the advisor so I didnt break any rules ) only £10 like but still... I checked his account again a few days later after our tech had been and it turned out to be his NIC, so there will be at least one Virgin customer that thinks highly of the service !

In my defence (trouble shooting wise, our modem wasn't offering an IP so I had to assume first off it would be a modem issue, I'd rather waste our tech than your time)

Now next time he calls he'll get India but at least he'll know there are some good people working for Virgin... who do actually care !

Pedro_79

I signed up with VM for my new house a few days ago. Don't think it was you though... it was a nice scottish lady It's getting installed next weekend.

Maybe i'll speak to you if my broadband goes haywire

MartinM

So I'm with VM and I'm being charged £25pm for Internet only which is a bit of a rip-off compared with other ISP's.

I don't want phone or TV, and don't have a BT line, so I'm held to ransom on the price.

So what can you do for me?

JackClark

I had the same deal, called to say I was leaving and they halved it.

myblackwrx

iTrader: (1)

Do you answer phone though saying 'Hello pimmo2000 how can i help you?' or if i have any problems could i ask for Pimmo

djuk

That is expensive, I pay virgin media £25 for phone, internet and tv.

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

We have to use first names so its HI your though you Pim ! How can I help ?

The point of this thread is to let people know that if they get through to someone they dont like, they can hang up and try again !!

Dont get the result you want? call straight back and start again !!

Iain Young

Hmmm, I'm paying them nearly £50 a month just for broadband and a phone (which I never use but was part of the package). Trouble is, I can't get ADSL, so can't threaten to leave.

I know I've never spoken to pimmo though. It's always worked, so I've never had to ring support...

myblackwrx

iTrader: (1)

Must admit everyone i've phoned up at Virginmedia/NTL has been helpful it's just your top boss who's a bit of a pr@t imo.

MattW

One month left then I've got to cancel (house move) but only issue I have is when there is a general outage, the tech guys never know so treat it like it's just me. 99.999999% up so good in that regard. this traffic shaping seems crap though.

Pimmo - just out of interest, i rang t'other day to drop from XL to M as gtg used to ADSl speeds, and I'm still on XL

MartinM

Thanks Pimmo - you might have done me a favour!

So I looked at the bundles and couldn't find one with Large Internet, so called them.

Large Internet is £7pm more than Medium - not that it says that anywhere on the web site (the CSA agreed)

So I can get TV and L Internet for £27 (£25 installation fee), whereas I'm paying £25 for just L Internet at the moment.

Cool

joey_turbo

iTrader: (26)

This thread just prompted me to call them, something I've been meaning to do for ages. I've now added a phoneline and tv, and upgraded my BB to 4mb all for an extra 9 quid a month!
It definatley wasn't you Pimmo, it was some lady that sounds a bit like Noel Gallagher.

MrShades

Just don't reboot your cable modem Matt....

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

LMAO Yeah that wasn't me,

I spoke to someone today with a wireless network called Scooby, I asked if it was the dog or the car... surprise it was the car and off we went I told him about this site and he said he'd pop in ! Keep your eyes out and if someone says they were told about this place via Virgin let me know !

Also invited him to the Scooby live thing

IanW

I wish i could still have VM for my broadband but since moving house they cant offer me anything other then analouge TV!

Sonic'

Shock Horror IanW finally posts in this millenium

Pimmo do you know if there were any problems in the WA area last night, my connections speed was so poor I had to use dial up on my mobile phone just to get pages to load

I did a speed test and it came back with very poor results, and 90% under the expected figures

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

I dont even know where the WA area is

People always do that phone up and say do you know if there is a problem is such an area, we monitor 3 million people... I only know when I look into it

Sonic'

LOL, WA postcode, Warrington, St Helens etc

Specifically St Helens

I think the figures I got were 69k upload and 152k download, Im on at least 1.5Mb I think

I have downloaded one thing in the past 3 months, so I cant see me being capped although it did speed up a little after midnight, but not by much

and AFAIK there are only about 4 people with Internet in my street too, and at least one of those is on BT

Iain Young

Think it's the postcode area for Warrington isn't it?

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

do you mean your internet speed should be 1.5mb ?

The speeds are 512 (yes some people still have this) 2mb 4mb and 10mb and the magical 20mb that never works

If your getting 1.5mb somethings not working

See the problem I have is the DPA (data protection act) I cant look into your account without a reason or you there really. If you give me you blueyonder email address I can find your connection but the best thing and the safest for me keeping my job, would be to get the MAC address from the back of the modem, I can connect to the modem using that address, see which connection your on and tell you if there are any problems. All without accessing your account!!

Sonic'

I must be on 2Mb then, I was on the 10Mb but never achieved those speeds, so dropped it back

I dont even know what my BY address is LOL, I dont think I have ever used it, is there a way I can get the MAC address remotely from the cable modem ?

I know the MAC address I setup for access (but that was my old PC)

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

No mate, the only other way would be for me to access your account which I'm not going to do. I wouldn't want someone on a forum knowing my details so the same things goes from me!

Give the support a call, they're a good bunch

joey_turbo

iTrader: (26)

Jsut had to call becuase my BB upgrade, that they said would happen in a couple of hours on monday, hasn't happened yet. After 10 minutes of repeating every word to an Indian woman, and not getting anywhere, I gave up. Bit of a moan, but I wanted to ask you something anyway Pimmo.

I went wireless a while back, it was you that helped sort it . But now I've got a free Netgear router my mate dosen't use. Thing is, on AOL, or regular phoneline BB, these act as the modem as well. But with mine being a cable connection, it got me wondering if there are any cable wireless modems about. Is there one that takes the cable connection ?
thanks

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

Yes mate there are, just look for a cable router ! Simple as that, Virgin dont offer supported kits yet but they will be soon !!

Did you get you upgrade issue sorted ? try dialing 0845 142 4422 it might get you to the UK call tree

Dr Hu

Have I ever spoken to you - NO - but I think I need to: (apologies in advance! - sorry)

I have been with Virgin pretty much since they started - used to be on dial up, changed to ADSL Broadband when it came out - the virgin bb speeds have always been poor - occasionally used to get an email purporting to be from Richard Branson, apologising for the slow speeds, "we are SO popular we are having to upgrade our servers" sort of thing, I was going to change ISP a few months ago, as I was getting racked off with the whole speed issue, but then you merged with Telewest/NTL and I though, hell I'll stick with them, it can only get better, maybe they'll invest in some serious backbone bandwidth - BUT.........

It's got BADLY worse - I SHOULD have an 8mb service (ADSL), my router (netgear 834G) reports an upstream speed of 5778 to the dslam, down is 498 - so as expected - a fast line to the BT box in the exchange, but the actuality is far worse - its pretty much becoming unusable, it was quicker on dial up, no joke!, I downloaded a driver or two the other day and the very best speed I ever managed was 22kb - an prog from microsoft who are usually pretty quick limped down at 11kb - I mean HELLOOOOO - what the **** is going on here....I'm a pretty patient bloke but this is taking the **** - I am definately NOT getting anywhere near the service advertised - any other industry would be up before Trading Standards on this - what's going wrong pimmo? - sorry for the rant, but its getting worse by the day.

My 4 yr old daughter uses Cbeebies sometimes in an evening and its a joke now, take minutes to display stuff, a 1mb song takes a few minutes to buffer - its a so bad its almost(!) funny.

Thanks for making us no1 broadband supplier - err yeah - how about rather than throwing a few million customers onto a backbone that already could'nt cope it gets upgraded to one that can? - Is that going to happen any time soon pimmo? - serious question as I'm gonna walk asap if not, 12 months contract or no.

I work in IT so I know what i'm doing too, god knows what joe blow thinks.

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

Its ADSL mate and Virgin.net the merge made no difference to them, get out ASAP mate!!

ADSL isn't the main aint any more its the cable now and the planned 50mb... 20mb took down half the network so the next logical step obviously is make it faster

mike1210

thats managment thinking for you

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

We at Virgin media would love to offer our customers the best, because of this we're going to increase our top package from 10mb to 20mb, based on testing and the fact that half the network doesnt work at 10mb we decided not to ask broadband support and to just attempt it.

In fact we're going to tell the customers that on the 1st MAy they will be upgraded... which is a lie, we plan on upgrading the customer area by area and when that fails, one by one dont worry we only have 3 million customers. Of course we wont give the phone guys any info so the angry customers get no info, but lets face it most get through to India and even if we told them they wouldnt understand !

So basically we ****ed up, now to make things seem like its your fault, we're going to introduce network shaping and stop people who loved our network as it worked for them, from downloading ! Also we aren't going to give the 1st line support a way of knowing the customer has been managed until doing all the normal speed checks and calling 2nd line.... ha ha

auto scooby

Pimmo,

This traffic shaping worries me a little. I am xl customer as you may remember. Is it correct that if my traffic is shaped it would only be dropped to 5mb.

Plus how on earth do they shape traffic on an individual host basis. My suspicion is that traffic is not really being shaped, it is an excuse for latency in the network caused by lack of network capacity at peak times.

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

Yes thats right, it basically works at the UBR, the connection is being monitored and if you break the limit it automatically limits you and flashes up on our 2nd lines screens to tell them. See we can see your current traffic at any time, all they have done is set a script if you like, if traffic amount equal 3gb then reduce to half speed... very unfair but I cant stop it