Gripe of the day - What is yours?

[shiftin_gear98]

My Sky hub drops off fairly frequently - we thought about switching to BT.
They all sound as ****e as each other.

[ophic]

Originally Posted by shiftin_gear98

My Sky hub drops off fairly frequently - we thought about switching to BT.
They all sound as ****e as each other.

Sounds about right. It's more about how good an engineer you can get on the case - and if he "owns" it or it just keeps getting passed around to new people. Most businesses just fob you off.

Our "information superhighway" is more like a London commuter train.

[SV650rules]

Originally Posted by Seeker

I've been using Virgin media for the last 5 years because it was my Dad's house and I have not bothered to switch. They have steadily increased speeds and it's now supposed to be 100Mb/s down. I just ran a speedtest.net and got 10ms ping/85.03Mb/s down and 6.04Mb/s up using a server in Nottingham which is about 100 miles away.

Overall, it has been stable. Two years ago I went through a month long problem where my modem would routinely and unpredictably reboot which turned out to be a switch some distance from me. Other than this a signal loss has been a rarity.

I'm not enthusiastic on their help line which requires negotiating an automated phone system before dumping you in India (judging by the accents) but I don't know if any of the ISPs use a UK support network any more. The techs that came to the house seemed competent but it was irritating when a new tech came each time and it required me to explain the month-long ongoing problem every time. I pay about £55/mo which includes landline phone although I may stop that soon. They "gave" me a DVR but it's still in its box unused, I don't watch that much tv (and I only get freeview).

Overall, I would rate them pretty good.

When we first moved in 20+ years ago we had BT ADSL modem and about 1meg download and lucky to get 200k upload. Then about 6 years ago Virgin cabled our estate ( fibre to premises ) and we had 20meg and 1 meg to start with which over the years increased to 100 meg and 2 meg ( but price increased as well ) trouble with virgin was we used to get regular phone calls from India and neither me or her indoors could understand them - turned out virgin are very aggressive at marketing and you can easily increase your package on their website, but harder to decrease it and impossible to cancel the service (you can take pot luck ringing 150 on your virgin line and get India but in the end I had to write to them in Swansea, they do not communicate by e-mail). Had a hard time convincing them I was leaving and it was after we had been with plusnet for 2 months before they accepted we were no longer a virgin customer. We get over 70meg down and around 16meg up with plusnet over phone line, and anytime landline and mobile calls for about a third of the money we played to virgin. Plusnet call centre based in Yorkshire... Very happy with plusnet after over 3 months, I have done regular speed tests at all times of day and speeds barely drop at peak times.

[Bibio]

i'm seriously cancelling my VM contract in June and switching to Talk Talk who offer 50ish meg + tv with syfy, free phone to land and mobile for the same price as its costing me for just broadband from VM. i'll also cancel my VOIP contract as it will no longer be needed.

its a shame that VM dont look after their customers as i dont want to move due to the broadband being the best there is. i have been with "cable" (Telewest/Cableinet) since they introduced the £10 dial up deal (20 years?). i point blank refused before that as i had seen a few mates receive huge phone bills.

[admin]

I moved from bt to Plusnet back in June. I left bt due to gradual price creep over the years. I couldn't complain about the service but it was just too expensive. The move to Plusnet was painless and the service is just as reliable. They also offer cheap sim deals and btsport for £2.50 a month.

Sent from my Moto G (5) using Tapatalk

[ophic]

Glad they've learned over the years. We used a business line from PlusNet when I worked in Yorkshire, long before they became a nationwide operator. They were bl**dy awful. We had another (slower) ADSL line from another supplier that barely ever went down, so we had a good indication of just how bad they were back then.

[SV650rules]

Originally Posted by ophic

Glad they've learned over the years. We used a business line from PlusNet when I worked in Yorkshire, long before they became a nationwide operator. They were bl**dy awful. We had another (slower) ADSL line from another supplier that barely ever went down, so we had a good indication of just how bad they were back then.

Plusnet now owned by BT, means they use same openreach infrastructure and BT tech backup. Plusnet made move very easy and kept us in touch by text message and e-mail every step of the way, and a lovely lady with a Yorkshire accent phoned us to let us know our order had been processed a to welcome us to plusnet ( very different to virgin who we had been with for pretty much 7 years and couldn't be ar553d most of the time - just kept putting prices up on a regular basis) virgin are OK for TV ( their V6 box is great ) but other stuff can be a bit flaky - our newest model virgin hub would drop out a couple of times a week and need reboot - you would expect better from dedicated fibre network to premises, our plusnet hub has never once needed a reboot in 3 months so far, and speeds are better than they told us they would be by about 5meg, and hardly any variation during the day.

[ophic]

Originally Posted by SV650rules

Plusnet now owned by BT, means they use same openreach infrastructure and BT tech backup.

All ADSL lines were always BT anyway.

[Bibio]

Originally Posted by Bibio

i'm seriously cancelling my VM contract in June

maybe not.. ok all the exchanges in Kirkcaldy area are Fibre and i stay 1.5 miles away from the exchange and as far as i know they have just upgraded the system in the main box to fibre as i seen them do it but every provider is saying that there is no fibre in my area.... WTF

ooohhh well looks like i'll continue to get ripped off with VM.

[timwilky]

I have a 350mb VM internet, I am not happy and want more than the rubbish 20mb upload.

Looked for alternatives, Best I can get is upto 3mb on the aluminium cable BT ran to my house 30 years ago.

Yet they say for that I have to buy a Fibre service that they cannot supply. It is about time BT and the telcos did something for not spots instead of trying to protect past expenditure. If they cannot supply a fast internet connection on the current infrastructure. Provide a fibre to the premises solution. Good Internet connectivity should be a universal offering.