[Retrovertigo]

I am getting annoyed at responses along the lines of "not everyone is getting a bad service, and that's why they stay".

I think we need to differentiate between people not getting a bad service, and people not knowing the difference.

My cousin has 20meg and he has moaned on occasion that it's very slow. But being an internet newbie, he has no clue about sites like this, or indeed what speed he should be getting.

In my area of Manchester, VM vastly oversubscribed BB and as a consequence I get no more than 600k of an evening now. I don't give a toss that I could get 20meg at 4am in the morning or whatever. That is no use to me. I use my net connection of an evening for various things including Xbox Live (which is now unplayable) so that's when I expect the service that I pay for to be working.

They shouldn't be selling it as (up to) 20meg when during peak times, it seems they can't maintain anywhere near that speed.

Manchester is a bloody big area and that's a heck of a lot of customers either ignorant to what they should be getting (ignorance doesn't excuse the poor speeds - or is it ok to rip people off if they don't know any better?) or know that they are getting ripped off, but are scared of jumping ship in case it's just as bad.

This is about the suppliers either cutting the cost of the service - seeing as they seem incapable of improving it - or being honest about what speed you are likely to get at the times when you actually want to use it. As I say, what use is 20meg to anyone when you need to be an insomniac to take advantage of it.

I hope the gadget show feature at least gets some serious response from VM and the like. But I fear a show like that will only highlight what those of us "in the know" are already aware of.