Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

I'm wondering if he's that Schrodinger chappy, he had a cat, kept it in a box apparently

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

The bigger issues probably relate around user names and how to merge them. There are plenty of ways of dealing with that though and again that could have been worked out without closing the fora.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

When merging forums, the merging of accounts is normally based on email address.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Yes, exactly, because although usernames could potentially have been duplicated between the VM and O2 fora, email addresses are globally unique.

Surely they must have realised that potential for duplicate usernames and worked out some means of mitigating against that beforehand.

Like you said before, migrating and merging fora is not exactly a completely new science, yes there are always outliers and a few gotchas, but VM and O2 have apparently been preparing for this for months, so why it has now become ‘difficult’ is hard to comprehend.

Unless, and let’s use Occam’s razor for this, they didn’t actually do any preparatory work, because they never intended for the fora to come back. Or, let's be less cynical, senior management ignored advice from their respective technical people and simply didn't allocate enough resources to the job.

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which is the more likely!

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

surely dupe user names with different emails could simply be suffixed with a number like windows does with files ?

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Different systems use different methods.
The last one I did appended "_1" to one of them.
So yours, for example, would have become "Jaymoss_1"

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Maybe if we look at the example of the VM / O2 user account merger exercise some time ago, should we be surprised ?

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Agreed - that was a real pita to get my accounts merged (as my VM was @ntlworld and my O2 was @hotmail) - it kept getting stuck in loops, as it wouldn’t recognise the other email, then I couldn’t access either account by their original logins.

It took a 70 minute call and clearing of caches and cookies to finally consolidate them into one login…

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

It's now been, what four-five, months on to this ‘temporary downtime’ and still no functioning forum. I suspect the Russian (one week max) Special Military Operation will end before VM and O2s forums actually work.

No I’m joking, they simply aren’t coming back, ever, are they?

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

No, that was always the plan.

The rif raff will soon forget about it, and VMs many issues more hidden. They need to control the 'narrative' , not some oiks who can post their recurring same issues for all to see. Its bad karma for them.

Still, its more business for this forum ;)

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

You perhaps should look at there Facebook account. The best way I have found to sort things out

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

I'd rather do without a VM forum than be forced to have a Facebook account, but that's just me ... ;)

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Surely it is possible to use Facebook, without exposing yourself to them. Not taken it up yet but surfshark seem to offer a work around. Not signed up to it yet , so not sure.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Don't have an FB account and never will. The point of a help forum is that your issue and the solution is there for those with a same issue too see. Towards the end of the forums demise, the VM staff insisted on resolving issues via private messages, which helped no one else. That was the beginninng of the end.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Quite right, similarly I will never, ever have a FB or X WhatsApp account, so although you may be able to view a limited number of existing posts, to report your own fault and/or ask a question, you absolutely need an account. So any VM customers in either of our positions now have little option but to sample the delights of VM’s award winning* telephone support provision, and so have to deal with the relentless upselling strategy.

*for some definitions of award winning.

Yes excellent Mr K :)

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Yes but except, unlike the ex. VM forum’s VIPs, anyone on here has no sway with VM. Although posters on here may well have knowledge of how it works and can give advice or how to proceed, but, ultimately, it’s about as useful as posting on X. It might be picked up and dealt with, but I wouldn’t bet on it!

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Its unlikely to be picked up and dealt with from this forum, afaik we have no members now who are active VM CS agents.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

I wonder what happened to Benmcr, he was very helpful.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

I haven't seen it mentioned on here, but last week ispreview had a story in line with this:

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...um-merger.html

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

SO, back to the drawing board, albeit with new Forum software. Some interesting comments in that ISP Preview piece.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

What happened? Did it turn out that NTL/Virgin had actually been stringing him along & only offered him a job to get him to close the Nthell forum?

Did he then start this forum as an alternative way to bring it back (or wasn't this forum anything to do with the situation?)

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

I don’t understand what is causing such a huge problem. Why don’t they just start a new forum from scratch? Talk about making the job harder!

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Not exactly, the owner of the original nthellworld.com site, sold it to NTL back in, I think around 2002, and was briefly employed by them. In its then form, the forum was closed by NTL about a year later.

In an amazing display of not understanding how websites work, NTL failed to realise that this person also owned the domain nthellworld.co.uk, and a forum based on that domain name was set up - because who could possibly have seen that coming!

That forum then became the precursor of this forum, it was renamed and relaunched prior to NTL and Telewest merging to form Virgin Media.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

True, they might aswell start from scratch, most will have forgotten their passwords by now anyway.

However I still doubt how genuine they are about resurrecting it. More likely VM were hoping the punters forgot it existed. What happened to the VM staff running it? Are they still employed, or are they suddenly going have to recruit new staff which seems unlikely.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

The forum staff also doubled as ‘helpers’ on their various social media platforms, I assume that is still the case, although there was a suspicious mass-exodus of forum staff in the months before the closure.

So make of that as you will.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Forums are now considered old hat, it's all about social media these days.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/show...highlight=Paul

Paul owns cable. Those beliefs are hilarious :rofl:

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

no, he (and Richard) are right, people would rather ask on Farcebook, twitter and tiktok than join a forum.
Lots of gaming communities have also now descended to the depths of Discord :(

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Reddit is the other place where a lot of conversation has gone.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

absolutely nothing stopping VM having a discord channel. In fact it makes sense too. They could even have support in there and the costs to them minimal . Same as nothing stopping them having a legit presence on FB however there is a plague of people making up support names now FB allows nom de plumes and I am sure stupid people fall for it but all the same I have had support off Octopus for example on X Tesco and Asda on FB.

I feel it is good to be able to post in public and hold them accountable where more people will see it as to get quicker support. I have always been of the mind a squeaky wheel gets the grease

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

I always get decent support from Asda on FB.

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Which is good, but there is an obvious problem, you need to have a FB account!

Admittedly, we are in a minority but there are people who will never touch FB with someone else’s bargepole, let alone our own - even if I think I’ll only use it for VM support, Zuckerborg will absolutely hoover up even more of my information - ditto for Instagram, WhatsApp; and the less said about X the better.

I don’t want, and refuse to have, any sort of social media presence (membership on here probably doesn’t count); so am I now denied proper support?

---------- Post added at 20:47 ---------- Previous post was at 20:43 ----------

Conversation, maybe, but official help?

Unless VM employees are hanging out on Reddit threads, interacting and offering to help, then it’s fairly pointless.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Are you referring to Asda ? In which case you can just ring them.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

No, not specifically Asda, but any company which simply assumes that everyone has a social media account and can, or is willing to seek help using such a method.

So, you have to resort to phone support, fine, but many companies are running that down, dumping it onto offshore call centres where the people are not trained and can do nothing more than simply follow a set of cues on the machine in front of them.

It’s almost as if they don’t really want to provide support to their customers.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

I've perfected the ultimate 'stare' when I buy something and the person at the till asks me if I have an email address

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2026/06/5.gif

They probably think you’re having a stroke*

*and not in a ‘nice’ way;)

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Not bothered what they think, I just know they don't need my email address just because I've bought an electric kettle :D

edit: that's a fairly close likeness Hugh . . apart from the hair colour ;)

oh, and at my age any kind of stroke could finish me off :rofl: :naughty:

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Me I say none of you business :shocked:

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

The problem there is that the poor person in front of you requesting your email address, has, no doubt been told/ordered to get the customer's address, OR ELSE.

Just make something up, bonus points for looking up the name of the CEO of the company, taking a guess as to what his or her email address is and supplying that.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Or…
No, thank you…

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

If asked I just say "Sorry, its private", no one has ever had an issue with this.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

I have a "spam" Gmail account for stuff like this so it's not a problem.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

So I'll change to none of your companies business.

---------- Post added at 12:10 ---------- Previous post was at 12:08 ----------

Why would I want to thank them for asking something that is not for them to know.