I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Im finished with cable, the new recordable box is another in a longline of crap they issue that doesnt work.

Hangs up
Channels go missing
Channels take ages to change
HEAVY LAG

CANT cable ever do anything that works properly? its been like this from day one?

Im soo sick of it, there not even cheap no more, the HD channels? WTF they dont have nothing. ANd you get so much more tv with sky, in the news channels alone, FOX NEWS, AL JAZEERA CNN etc etc.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

These things always happen with something new, they will sort themselves out as for the channels I agree virgin needs to get them all

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

But why? I want it to work soooooo much! I hate murdoch, but cable can't get their act together - ever

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

I've wanted to leave NTL for quite some time and if they don't sort out our broadband, hopefully I can convince my dad to do so. I know when I move out, it won't be NTL I'm going with for Internet in my first home.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Yes - WHY!

These things should be tested fully, including compatability, before they are issued, or is it a case of "thats good enough"?

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

...Sounds like Microsoft's Mission Statement...:cool:

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Thats My Whole Point - Cable Seem To Just Through Stuff Out Without Testing It - I Mean Its Not A One Off - Its Happens With Everything They Do. Some Fool On The Other Forum Said "dont Worry There Issuing A Fix For The Delay On The Remote Control" I Mean Is It Just Me Who Thinks The Damn Box Shouldnt Have Went Out If It Was Taking 1 Minute To Change A Channel - How Stupid Is That. Theres Just Greedy

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

I'm not an NTL lover by any stretch, but i'll NEVER go back to BT while there is an alternative.

BT are the biggest bunch of crooks i have ever had the mispleasure of dealing with :mad:


SKY - I ditched them with the proposition "you have to pay for a new digibox".....

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Dont forget sky+ wasnt perfect when that first came out.;)

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

*
Back when we had Sky before moving to a cable area our box started breaking down and Sky forced us to pay £65 for a new one. When that refurbished box started intermittently losing the satellite signal they wanted to charge us again for another refurbished box so we cancelled it. Then they had the gall to charge us for an extra month as a cancellation fee despite the box not being able to receive any channels by that point and us not even being under contract with them anymore.

Never again...

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Lol, yup, thast murdoch for you. I hate sky television with a passion, and if i could find a way, i would pay for the basic package and rip them off if you know what i mean. I went with cable for the reason i SKY are sheer greedy. however, cable seem to not be able to manage the basic function of offering the channels that work properly. Its making me wonder if its a ploy to discuise the fact that you get less with NTL than sky. But i think not. Even tonight, its around 3 hours channels have dissapeared, recording failed. ITS MAKING ME SO ANGRY - VIRGIN PLEASE FIX IT I DONT WANNA LEave.

BUT WHAT CAN I DO?

DONT MAKE ME GO WITH THE DEVIL, IVE TRIED TO FIGHT IT BUT YOUR GIVING ME NO OPTION!

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Complain to Virgin with a passion :)

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Daft question, but..........have you called faults?

It could be a signal problem, or a faulty box. Maybe both?

Either way, I'm sure they'll give you compensation.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

yeah, i've been onto faults since i originally joined ntl 4 months ago and they took £400 from my account for someone elses bill then disconnected me when i refused to pay another bill for £146.

Then when my partner ordered the new box under her name again when they said it would be free they didnt bother to call us to say they weren't turning up. "Im so sorry we dont know what happened, can you pay the £28 now anyway" - erm okay, then they come to install buy bring the wrong box. Wait another 4 weeks, then the box hadn't worked since we got it. I'ave had sky before not only does the box not look like its retarded, the black HD box, it actually works perfect everytime. I think NTL are actually the worst company ever. They thing is, it should be be the best, the whole idea behind cable is amazing, but it just doesn't work.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Im far from being a fan boy and i have had the odd problem with NTL/TW in the past but if i have ever had a problem they have always resolved it quickly and when my modem broke it was replaced within 48hrs.

I have to say the calls i have made to customer services in the past have always been handled well on their side and i would say they are the best customer services i have come across,i know that will come as a shock to many as i have read the various problems users have had with the CS team.

Guess it can be very hit and miss my only suggestion is if you call them and dont get the answer you want call again and again lol

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

I pass this on for a friend as she has had no NTL/VirginMedia for a week now.

I'm am totally frustrated by the way I have been treated this week one the phone which I add had to travel 4 miles to use the phone of a friend,

One week old and this for me.

11th Sunday All services went down due to a fire in the building I live in (high rise flats)
12th Monday After 3 phone calls I reported I had no NTL/VirginMedia service at all coming into my house, Normally I would have TV-phone-broadband.
13th Tuesday 8:15am had a engineer called and checked phone line and told me it wasn't working (I was shocked to say the least !!) He informed me that he shouldn't have been sent out and that it was being worked on at present. He also told me it would be fixed that day.
The NTL/VirginMedia box is on the landing on the floor I live on, No engineers that I could see there at all at no time on Tuesday.
14th Wednesday My son got married so I had no time to go find a phone to complain or ask what the situation was.
15th Thursday I sent a text message to a friend who had all the details of what was going on to the best of my knowledge asking for him to ring NTL/VirginMedia for me, He was told its being treated as an "outage" and was being worked on. ( No engineers that I could see there at all at no time on Thursday)
16th Friday First day I seen engineers and they wire replacing the burnt cables.
I asked the engineer at what point did he think my services would resume when he replied "before the end of the day"
17th SaturdayI rang yet again and was told the problem would be fixed at 4pm.
18th SundayNow I have been given two times Monday it will be fixed as I was put through from one operator to another 9am and 10am.

Not a great week for me at all, Although I feel like I have been all around India on Holiday this week Im not too happy and I am seriously thinking of changing back to BT & Sky as I had no problems with their company in the years I used them at a different address.

Elaine Allen.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

but the problem with you not getting services is due to a fire in your building not NTL/Virgin. I'd expect it to take a while to be resolved. I think your expectations are unreasonable.

Monday was the first day you contacted them - you said you first saw engineers replacing burnt cables on Friday - not brilliant but perhaps they were not allowed near the cables for a few days due to safety reasons or because the fire was being investigated. Also the fault was not due to NTL/Virgin's error so I'd expect other faults elsewhere to get priority over a fire.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

The thing that is annoying is she was told so many times when it would be fixed, different times I may add but different people, approx 40 houses are down im lead to believe.
If she had of been told on monday it may take a few days for reasons known or unknown to them that would have been fine IMO.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

that's probably due to you speaking to an Indian call centre person who I'd assume is working from a script.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

i hope you dont live to regret it,i know i did and boy was i glad to get back to cable,even the thought of getting hooked up with bt sends a shudder down my spine.good luck anyway.:erm:

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Its pretty much a knows fact that NTL customer services is amongst the lowest in the industry, its the main aim of the virgin rebranding, to hide get away from their bad image. Don't forget NTL bought virgin, not the other way round. Im just dissapointed they havn't done anything major to address the problem. They in my opinion, the worst company in britain, i even read a article in the Independent that said from 2001 to present their the most complained about company in the uk.. Their sheer scale of their errors astound me, out of hte blue one day someone came to take my box away? WTF??? I seriously wonder if their on hard drugs or something. They are intent on not refunding me for the money they took out of my account for the 4 months that i didnt get any NTL television? They don't seem to have the ability to comprehend the fact that they didnt provide a service.

I find it astonishing that they dont realise they need to provide a better more reliable service than sky, at the moment SKY rentention is 300% higher than NTL. They need to address this, upto 30% of ntl customer leave within the first 12 months and go back to BT/sky.


Im soo angry at them for the stupid mistakes they have made with every account i have ever had with them, and continue to do. Never in 28 years has my television stopped broadcasting ever, the whole glasgow network went down for almost 24 h ours recently, thats unbelievable, but people seem to stupidly accept it.? why?

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Glasgow and Belfast and again nothing to tell us why this had happened.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Interesting thread this. I at present have VM for BB and phone and Sky for TV. I realise I am paying more than I need to for this set up, but I am happy with the service I get from both.

Sky+ is stable and as importantly quick with the EPG. Also the picture quality is good. I used to be with NTL until about 4 years ago, and have never regretted the switch.

So my questions regarding VM are

1. Does is still take ages for the EPG to work
2. Do you get the interactive content with Sky Sports
3. Is the picture quality better than it used to be.
4. What is the new V+ box like. It is as intuitive as Sky +

Thanks in advance

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

The Menu System Takes As Long As Ever - The Box Is Ugly - I Think Picture Is Better And In General When It Comes To The Tv Ntl Still Havn't Managed To Catch Up With The Competition, Although I Believe They Have With Everything Else

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

it isnt now my 2 week old sky+ box is laggy and buggy, according to reports on digitalspy forums, the amstrad sky+ boxes are horrid yet are been distributed as if nothing is wrong with them.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

The amstard sky+ receiver is very loud the one i use to have you could even here it upstairs in the night after a week i got rid of it and got a pace pvr3,

Also the standard new pace ds440n (flow type) was recalled by pace due to PSU problems as the psu kept makes a very high pitch sound,

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Every post I read about how crappy Sky+ is makes me really glad I chose to buy a Tivo unit instead. Install a network card, upgrade the disk, install an ftp server, download shows to the pc, fast, responsive, seasons passes that actually work......

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

my amstrad box isnt noisy but is smelly and appears to run very hot inside.

If I leave it on overnight and walk into the room in the morning the whole room smells from the box.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

why when in uk ?? do you get put through to someone in INDIA >>??

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

It's a shame people almost seem to have forgotten that Telewest existed now as although they were prone to the same issues as every call centre based support they were always at the opposite end of the scale (to NTL) for customer satisfaction but since the merger people only think of the much publicised deficiencies of the old NTL as that was the name the two companies initially merged under.

Since the rebrand Virgin are investing heavily in their staff so any areas that previously had consistently bad service should hopefully start seeing an improvement now as they combine the best of both the old NTL and Telewest and discard the worst. If not then I cant see Branson sitting back and doing nothing as its his brand on the line if the company does not achieve. As with all things though, especially following a big merger, these things can take time. I guess the issue is whether those people who have had bad experiences in the past are willing to wait for the current investment by Virgin to pay off (depends on how many problems individuals may have had under the old regime I guess..)

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Stop whinging lol. With regards to your problems I think you need faults on that. The V+ is nowhere near how bad you say it is.

Mine hasn't hung...
No channels have gone missing...
Channels take around a second to change...
No lag whatsoever...

In my experience and numerous others Cable always have been, are, and always will be better than the bully-boy Sky. HD is still a developing technology, and as for no content, have you not visited the HD VOD section? The amount of programming done in HD does not warrant an entire channel on it. You say that Sky has more HD, but 75% of it is SD badly upscaled!

You may get more TV with Sky. A load of crappy +1 waste of space channels and more religious, foriegn, and shopping crap that you wouldn't watch anyway.

With your comment regarding taking up to a minute to change channels you have to stop making things up! That is rubbish and you know it. If it really is that slow get onto Faults. There's no point saying "My V+ is faulty so I'm going onto Cableforum to lick sky's 4rse."

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

As for your news channels your not missing anything worth watching.

Claire's folks sky plus box is slower than any ntl box and we must have had a 'not satellite signal received' thing happening 2-3 times a week when we lived there.

My brand new sky amstrad stb keeps losing the guide and has a fair amount of pixelation which I never had on a pace box.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

keep calling

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

I have sky+ & a standard samsung cable box.
I also have 10 Mb cable internet and ZEN ADSL
(I need multiple fixed ip addresses and that is not an option with cable)

firstly.. TIVO is better than any of the other current systems in just about every way except having multiple tuners.

sky plus? AtoZ listings? it is quicker to wait for the program to come on air than find it here!
series links? yea right! at least 5 failures a week! give me my tivo!!
no satellite signal! seen several times a week!
(I have two sky+ boxes on the same dish at any one time only ONE box says this so it must be internal to the box!!)..

Broadband...

cable 10Mb consistent day night day.. had a problem with the modem a few weeks ago.. got it replaced (within 24 hours) not one disconection since (connection monitord 24.7)

ADSL at least 5 disconects a day!
speed sync at 6.2Mb
download speed varies between 5.6 & .2Mb's! (yes that IS 200Kb's!!)

no complaints about my BT phone line..

so internet.. if cable where to provide multiple fixed IP addresses I would scrap ADSL in a heartbeat!

TV.. I would miss sky one.. but I would not miss the sloww buggy and unreliable sky+ box! it is more like a PC than a domestic appliance!
I am going to get v+ box to compare soon..
I just wish Virgin would do a deal with tivo to give us G3 tivo boxes
then I would kick sky+ in the head!

as a personal note I was never a big fan of NTL..
But SKY have done sooo much harm in the uk!
they have all but killed the independant satellite dealer (the way the sky deal works is a real pain for anyone with limited cashflow)
they killed uk tivo
they murderd BSB! (though that was pretty well doomed from day one)
and consistently worked to reduce the quality of both their transmissions and the majority of their programs!
I work in the entertainment trade (mainly projection TV) and the complaints we used to get after the switch from analog to digital was awe inspiring!
we dont get too many about this now.. not because things have inproved more just people have got used to it! (and it is relativly hard to see the problems with sky's quality when you are watching one of those ghastly DLP projectors LOL!!)

so if the V+ box is at least as good (from a hardware prespective) as sky+
I can see me ending my subscription with sky real soon!!
Just my prespective!!

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE Freeview and BT for me
 

Sadly, We had to terminate our Virgin Media contract. We've been with NTL for years. The main reason for returning to BT was that the Virgin Media telephone landline service is uncompetitive: the basic option for £11 offers a poor return for the customer, yes the connection was reliable but compare what BT can offer to customers: caller line identity (never an option with my VM landline); discount on friends and family; including the extra details available online, Virgin Media offers a very poor telephone deal. The TV epg is a joke appears when it feels like it. We could not go to Sky we have a great dislike for the Murdochs, we instead decided to go to Freeview.

If Virgin Media really wants to progress there must be a complete revamp of the telephone service which is frankly an out of date service.

:)

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Sky is crap BT is crappier... Virgin Media is the future, but we will always have moaners no matter how good a service is, moaners are never happy, they keep looking for excuses to well... moan.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

does anyone know what this phone number may be 001111, when check last recieved call. tried phone but am told dialled incorrectly:confused:

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

what a bunch of lies, sky's epg data is not delivered the same way ntl's is and thus you dont "lose" the guide unless certain things happen, and those certain things do not happen very often.

you clearly work for or are an ntl fanboy.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

hmm... thinks how man digiboxes with memory problems have I seen this week (especialy amstrad)
hmm 7 this week...
clearly this is very rare lol!

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

OK, you said:

Then you said:

OK, so is he telling porkies, or is the scenario you mention that "does not happen very often" be the actual problem?

:LOL: Could you have aimed anywhere else except your foot before you shot it?

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Isn't it a wonder how Bt have been caught napping? This company
was at the forefront of telecommunications for decades. Yet, it didn't
foresee the expansion of the broadband business, or VOD? And with
all those assets and prominent market position. I'm shocked that
their inertia has cost them so much. Incredible.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Erm, no. remember the failure to implement System X?

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Eggs hatch lee!

;)

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Pardon? Who's Lee?:confused::confused:

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

Are you moaning?

Can we have some constructive comments and without the colourful gutter language.

The reality is Virgin Media services are not good or as rosy as you think; it's not a matter of how good a service is, it is whether the customer receives value for money and frankly there are areas of service where Virgin Media is uncompetitive or is failing to provide a quality service and when it comes to telecommunications BT is still ahead.

We have Freeview not Sky after years of poor NTL service.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

I'm always amazed about people's tales of NTL and Virgin Media Customer Service. I had one problem before with a Pace box, the call was taken and an engineer arrived the following day with a swap which solved the problem.

When I called to book the visit to upgrade to V+, the service was really good. Each person I spoke to gave their full name (I had to deal with both V+ and also the change from STB to SACM). An explanation of the change in billing was given. A few days later I received written confirmation of the appointment for the engineer's visit.

I will admit that I am having problems with the VOD - but I'm putting that down to the old PACE box downstairs, and if I hadn't been changing to V+, then I'd have called faults and had it changed to the latest Samsung.

Re: I'm Finished with CABLE sky and BT for me
 

I was very happy with ntl but since the take over my svc has nose dived and dl speeds plunged into the down the drain. 4meg i have but dl speeds of 2-3meg, its sorryful now.