Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

Maybe. If I do take the gamble it will probably be via Plusnet for the UK based support. Mind you O2 support was UK and they upped the margin to 12dB and then wanted to swap the router which they sent out to my old address. Quite how either was going to fix the noise on voice which is what I actually complained about I'm far from sure.

Who knows maybe VM will honour the price they agreed 2 months back, fix the congestion, and give me the 100Mbps upgrade in July 2014. Of course I probably stand more chance of winning the lottery than that happening and I don't even buy a ticket...

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

Not long moved my parent's ADSL connection from o2 to Plusnet, I've spoken to them a few times and each time they've been helpful and known what I'm asking for and seem to know their stuff too. Only way I could fault them is their long waiting times to their call centre, but if it's not urgent they can make changes etc on their community forums too.

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

yeah with BT I had to report a fault last week, took me 2 hours to get them to escalate it, india made me reboot my router nearly 10 times. After it was escalated they did fix during the night after I called it in. Was a fault inside BT wholesale network.

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

I called in my Infinity/Phone fault on 15-Nov and it wasn't fixed till 23-Nov with an estimate of 21-Nov. And it affected 4 lines.

I'll never get 150 meg on BT aluminium!

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, for all Virgin's faults, their tech support is miles ahead of OpenReach.

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

Very true. BBC Watchdog had it once complaints about BT Openreach impossible to get it fixed or impossible to get in touch from isp's or customers. Openreach is very hard to trace it with a fault. They do often closed the fault without doing anything.

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

Not only that, but the whole "If there's no fault found, we're going to charge you a year's worth of line rental" is a joke, especially when "No fault found" is usually "Tech couldn't be arsed".

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

Thought that charge is only for SFI (Special Faults Investigation) & SFI2 (Special Faults Investigation 2)?

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

They'll charge for a broadband type callout if they find nothing wrong - that's why ISPs are so loathe to call them out because it's them who get billed and they then have the unpopular job of passsing that charge on to the customer.

As my fault was showing as noise on voice I reported it that way because they couldn't say no fault found - you could hear it. The trouble with that is you don't get ADSL trained engineers and they don't have the best kit for tracing faults. That's why I had 5 callouts and no fix. The last one was smart enough to notice that if the router was off there was no noise and made me report it through the ISP who went through a load of of garbage but didn't call out OR. In the end I lost patience and moved to cable.

VM may have lots of faults but getting them to fix physical cable faults doesn't seem to be one of them. I have had several power level issues and they came out and fixed them every time. Mind you they shouldn't have happened in the first place if installers didn't just move you up and down the cabinet connection apparently at random so they can get a new install done (OK totally no proof of that but I do know one power level shift occurred on the morning I saw a scruffy looking bloke with a VM logo near the cab)

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

openreach actually use the fault system as a cash cow.

They been playing cat and mouse with isp's for years.

Initially it was just charges for not been in.
Then it was you get charged if a fault found with your router/lan cables etc. Of course the engineer would always check this stuff first 'before' checking the BT side. So aaisp always told customers to hide all their lan equipment making it impossible for the engineer to find fault.
Then it became you got charged if the engineer could not find a fault, so basically they dont have to prove isnt a fault, they just have to not find a fault.

However these charges would never stand up in court so all one has to do is is make a threat of legal challenge and BT will drop the charges in a second. Engineer visits done by the BT exec office by default will have all charges waived.

There is also rumours abound that this is why by default on FTTC services the stats are hidden on the modem's, openreach just want to hide the information from the end user so the end user has less ammo to say its a fault, and also why speed estimates are very low. My view is if someone orders FTTC and they get the same as their estimate, they probably have a fault or extreme crosstalk, a fault free line will be way above the estimate. However BT retail now reveal some of the stats on the home hub 5.

On another forum I am a member off a BT engineer posts there, his point is that his remit is only to do a quality pair test, if it fails, do something about it, if it passes its not openreach's remit to do anything, apparently the engineers are trained to not check things like noise margin and error rates (even tho they do). I asked him who's remit is it when the line is faulty but passes the pair quality test, I got no answer.
This pair quality test will pass many dodgy lines tho, software will do what you tell it to do.

What I try to tell people is that what openreach's contract is with the isp is completely irrelevant to the consumer, the consumer's contract is with the retail isp. So eg. openreach contract with BT retail may be specifically that they only have to do quality pair test and if it passes the visit is charged. However BT retail's contract with me states if BT find no fault I 'may' be charged. That is extremely vague. A court of law would expect BT to do extensive checks to 'prove' there is no fault, A software test designed to pass faulty lines is not extensive checks and hence why BT will always back down when pressed on the fees.

Luckily for customers, FTTC lines are not as bad as ADSL lines in general as they have much lower average attenuation, yes is some serious crosstalk issues but the average FTTC line still syncs way higher than the average ADSL line and on average is much more stable.

Also to point out with me having to do 20 router reboots, I got BT retail as my isp, I am aware they got an india call centre, someone can easily choose someone like plusnet or zen who have uk based support. Most customers wont even be ringing tech support.

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

I used to be with Zen Internet in the past with ADSL. When Virgin Media isn't available in my old property that time. I found Zen the best customer service (always answer me, help me through and also Zen also very good to get openreach out first thing to do my line fixed) as I am now with Plusnet on ADSL2+ the support at Plusnet can take longer (72 hours for a fault to be fixed and a further 5 days before BT fixed it) and Virgin Media tech guy come out is free of charge. BT been charged me twices with Zen & Plusnet but Zen waive the fee of £129 by BTWholesale because they found nothing wrong with my line. Plusnet only waive the fee half of it. So, overall, Zen are the best but they are expensive to pay for broadband but u get what u are pay for. The other isp AAISP (offer fixed for free)

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

Conversely, our office is currently with Zen and when we had a fault a few months ago, they were incredibly unhelpful. They essentially refused to have a BT engineer come out, despite the SNR of the line falling through the floor.

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

Sound like Zen had different management now as I used to be with Zen in 2004

---------- Post added at 11:46 ---------- Previous post was at 11:06 ----------

lol, look at that, very lazy BT Engineer is not needing at the property from Jan 1st 2014, self - install for one off fee of £49.99 but how on earth will the customer get FTTC without openreach modem?

Stupid BT. http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6...d-of-year.html

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

Erm, it's in the article:

Re: Virgin Media 150Mb Coming 2014
 

The second part of that quote made interesrting reading for me
Of course the difference between a hub on FTTC and one on cable is that on FTTC the customer gets to choose the hardware so if they need something better than cheap and cheerful or their initial choice turns out to be a buggy PoS they can fix it with a credit card.