Superhub : 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

The reason CS caved in to polite or indignant existing customers was because treating new and existing customers differently is, regardless of common practice, against natural justice.

Is this a serious response? Like, for real? Do you genuinely think that the CS agents give a crap about "natural justice"?

Trust me - I used to work for Virgin myself, I assure you that the vast majority of people on the phone don't give a shiny ***** about natural justice or otherwise. Virgin has a lot of control over their internal systems, they can define as and when a "code" (which is what all the services are defined by) change requires a new contract. It has nothing to do with the agent's moral compass or whatever, it's purely down to Virgin.

I really don't get your issue. You say that virgin were terribly mean to you by treating you differently to a new customer, yet all you had to do was ask and you'd get the same tier as them before your area was upgraded and you'd get it anyway. So Virgin didn't roll the upgrade out universally and cripple the network overnight - that's a good thing and the right move by them. They also didn't block anyone getting the upgrade early if they really wanted it.

Some people are never happy.

[roughbeast]

Kush! Your acceptance that VM staff couldn't give a monkey's about natural justice, preferring instead commercial advantage, is jaw-dropping. Your description of VM's 'lack pf moral compass' , effectively makes my point. I also do wonder at their collective intelligences.

Until their 152Mb upgrade debacle over the 152Mb upgrade I did assume that VM had an ethical brain cell between them. Couldn't they just have stopped at offering new customers a lower initial prices, say for 6 months? You find this practice all over the commercial world. Instead they offered a whole new superior service solely to new customers. How morally dumb is that? They could easily have been upfront about the network considerations. Naturally, folk like me would take exception! People, like me, in the know made the phone call and got what they wanted. Those that weren't, didn't. How shambolic is that? Your accepting attitude, jaw-dropping as it is, is probably right in terms of commercial outcomes. It appears that VM are commercially intelligent, but emotionally and morally retarded. It appears that this culture has infected Virgin's staffs and its other enterprises.

I was once a member of Virgin Active, by default. Our Esporta gym, where we had been members for 15 years, was taken over. Within a year of the re-branding the main gym was upgraded with state of the art equipment and a luxury refurbishment. Many new members were taken on with low initial fees. Meanwhile those of us who used classes like body combat and body pump found classes being whittled down until their wasn't any choice at times people wanted. Trainers over the age of 50 were retired with just one week notice, apparently because older age didn't equate with the healthy, fit and fresh image Virgin required. Many existing members, including my family, departed for other gyms, leaving old friends behind. VM couldn't give a damn about existing members just as long as new members kept pouring in.

How is it OK to behave like this? People's feelings, preferences and well-being are placed well behind short-term commercial considerations. Just because they are a global corporation VM think they are immune to the need to provide a good service with continuity over time to new and old customers. Sadly, you are right. They are immune.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

Kush! Your acceptance that VM staff couldn't give a monkey's about natural justice, preferring instead commercial advantage, is jaw-dropping.

Woah, woah, woah - let's be clear here, there's a huge difference between what the bigwig execs at VM think and feel and what the paid-barely-minimum-wage CS agent thinks and feels. Frankly, they're not paid enough to give a crap about anything other than their phone targets. If it takes a few seconds to change a code on a system, that's one happy customer and a few seconds off their AHT - the only thing they really will care about.

Originally Posted by roughbeast

Your description of VM's 'lack pf[sic] moral compass' , effectively makes my point. I also do wonder at their collective intelligences.

I didn't say anything about Virgin lacking a moral compass?

Originally Posted by roughbeast

Until their 152Mb upgrade debacle over the 152Mb upgrade I did assume that VM had an ethical brain cell between them.

What debacle? Anyone that asked got the upgrade for free, existing customer or not, in contract or not and without having to sign anything. There was no debacle. You're quite simply wrong about this one.

Originally Posted by roughbeast

Couldn't they just have stopped at offering new customers a lower initial prices, say for 6 months? You find this practice all over the commercial world. Instead they offered a whole new superior service solely to new customers.

No. They. Didn't.

They rolled out that service to everyone without anyone having to lift a finger. It took time, some people still haven't got the upgrade, but all customers are getting it and anyone who phones up and asks can get it early and always could.

Originally Posted by roughbeast

How morally dumb is that?

How dumb is it that no matter how many times you're told, you're not getting it!

Originally Posted by roughbeast

They could easily have been upfront about the network considerations.

They were up front! They had an entire are of their site dedicated to the upgrade and when it would be coming.

Originally Posted by roughbeast

Naturally, folk like me would take exception! People, like me, in the know made the phone call and got what they wanted. Those that weren't, didn't. How shambolic is that?

What on earth would you rather they did? Roll out the upgrade network wide and cripple it for everyone? There's only so many ways you can roll out an upgrade. As has been proven repeatedly in this forum, the pace of the rollouts wasn't up to scratch and plenty of areas got congested due to too many people upgrading early. What you call shambolic would have been considerably worse had it been done any other way. The mere fact that the upgrades are still rolling out shows just how big a job it was and it's good that they had something in place to limit the uptake.

Originally Posted by roughbeast

Your accepting attitude, jaw-dropping as it is, is probably right in terms of commercial outcomes. It appears that VM are commercially intelligent, but emotionally and morally retarded. It appears that this culture has infected Virgin's staffs and its other enterprises.

As tempting as it is to make a comment on who or what is retarded, I'll say this - it's not a bloody moral issue we're dealing with here. There's nothing immoral about it, you signed a contract with them some years ago, that contract was for a certain speed at a certain price per month for a certain period. You didn't have to sign it, you weren't obliged to sign it but you decided those terms were fair and you signed it.

Originally Posted by roughbeast

I was once a member of Virgin Active, by default. Our Esporta gym, where we had been members for 15 years, was taken over. Within a year of the re-branding the main gym was upgraded with state of the art equipment and a luxury refurbishment. Many new members were taken on with low initial fees. Meanwhile those of us who used classes like body combat and body pump found classes being whittled down until their wasn't any choice at times people wanted. Trainers over the age of 50 were retired with just one week notice, apparently because older age didn't equate with the healthy, fit and fresh image Virgin required. Many existing members, including my family, departed for other gyms, leaving old friends behind. VM couldn't give a damn about existing members just as long as new members kept pouring in.

Virgin media has got nothing to do with the Virgin parent that owns the name......

Originally Posted by roughbeast

How is it OK to behave like this? People's feelings, preferences and well-being are placed well behind short-term commercial considerations. Just because they are a global corporation VM think they are immune to the need to provide a good service with continuity over time to new and old customers. Sadly, you are right. They are immune.

If you have a problem with it, then leave. Take your money elsewhere. This is how it works - you pay whomever you think can provide you the service you want at the best price you can get. When your contract is up, you can go elsewhere. This applies to all ISPs and, in fact, most businesses. This is why everything is geared towards new customers and you can take complete advantage of that by calling up retentions and demanding a better deal. You can get those same deals the newer customers get once your contract is up.

[roughbeast]

We are clearly not going to agree over this, and we are fast moving into being off-topic.

We started with a relatively minor annoyance over VM practice, but moved into a realisation, by me at least, that the Virgin brand comes with a culture that pervades all its associated companies. There is a price that comes with being able to operate under that name you know. This culture puts commerce before people, including staff and customers. This is by no means unique in the corporate world. Don't get me started!

Meanwhile I am not going to pick your responses apart here. If we wish to continue this conversation elsewhere, that's fine.

[General Maximus]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

There is a price that comes with being able to operate under that name you know. This culture puts commerce before people, including staff and customers.

I completely agree and they continue to demonstrate this to us time and time again

[SimonB79]

well I used LiveChat and got my 152mb upgrade!

(Sooo glad I never had to phone the Indian callcentre)

[mmm]

My 200Mb trial now over, I did have an outage just before 4am
My config now back to 100/6:-

Primary Downstream Service Flow
SFID	87834
Max Traffic Rate	112640000 bps
Max Traffic Burst	10000 bytes
Min Traffic Rate	0 bps
Primary Upstream Service Flow
SFID	87833
Max Traffic Rate	6320000 bps
Max Traffic Burst	16320 bytes
Min Traffic Rate	0 bps
Max Concatenated Burst	16320 bps
Scheduling Type	BestEffort

The Broadband ping monitor started working at least



At least I do get what I pay for - by wireless to E3000 wired to RT-N66U!

[mmm]

Spoke too soon, but doubt it due to upgrades? Couple of long outtages last couple of days

[MagicUK]

I've just commited to 18 months with Virgin in the new house, I couldn't talk to anyone about my mates rate deal, I'm paying the sane as new customers anyway, £48.99 plus line rental for big kahuna plus additional v box, £67.99 a month, obv I get XL phone but we don't use it anyway, did I make the right decision, I'm looking forward to 300mbs rollout, hopefully we get an announcement this year.

[Griffin]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

The next upgrade, at least the top tier, will come to new customers first most likely as it'll need new kit.

Hopefully they have learned their lesson and won't give existing ones whatever they want because they call into the retentions team and end up breaking the service for all in their local area.

Customers on 120Mb or 152Mb or whatever are getting what they are paying for.

Customers who sign up for an upcoming tier are getting what they are paying for.

There is no entitlement to free upgrades. Tiers changing and the previous versions of them being grandfathered is perfectly common, as is leaving people on the earlier tiers until they have arranged to receive upgraded CPE.

The next generation services, at least the top one, will have to be approached in a similar manner to the upgrade of tiers from the legacy modems to DOCSIS 3 kit.

I'm hoping the new top tier will be entirely new, not an upgrade, to avoid the disagreements and issues. The other two it's not such a serious problem.

Not according to what i was told when i signed up yesterday for 152mb broadband & big khuna sports & movies.
Eventually the tiers will be 100mb, 200mb & 300mb.
The gist of it is trying to get in line with Europe.
152mb will be upgraded to 200mb & eventually to 300mb with 100mb being the bottom teir.

[alanbjames]

Griffin part of what u r saying is right from what i am told by a principle technician.

60mb will become 100mb
152mb will become 200mb
300mb will be a completely new tier costing around £10 more a month.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Griffin

Not according to what i was told when i signed up yesterday for 152mb broadband & big khuna sports & movies.
Eventually the tiers will be 100mb, 200mb & 300mb.
The gist of it is trying to get in line with Europe.
152mb will be upgraded to 200mb & eventually to 300mb with 100mb being the bottom teir.

Keep in mind that the phone monkies aren't usually told much more than the public are, but they do hear all sorts of rumours and conjecture.

Originally Posted by alanbjames

Griffin part of what u r saying is right from what i am told by a principle technician.

60mb will become 100mb
152mb will become 200mb
300mb will be a completely new tier costing around £10 more a month.

Hmm, this doesn't sound right. 60 is becoming 100 as part of the last speed increase (Most people already have this), the current tiers are already 50, 100 and 152. Anything else is legacy, so to say that 60 is going to 100 as part of this upgrade makes no sense. Are you sure they didn't mean 50 to 100? Even if this were true, where does that leave those on 50? Are the tiers going to be 50, 100, 200? Doesn't seem like a big leap, really, not when they could drum up much more publicity going 100/200/300 by doubling everyone again.

I can't see them bringing out another tier, they seemed to go to great lengths to consolidate the 4 tiers into 3 before, why move people from a higher paying tier to a lower paying one, only to release a new higher-paying tier again?

[Ignitionnet]

The joys of asking HFC technicians questions about things that are in no way relevant to their job. Alongside listening to call centre / sales people discussing things they haven't been briefed on. I'd have hoped after all these years people would be using the appropriate quantity of sodium chloride.

Both are quoting from the rumour mill. Things are TBC.

[MagicUK]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

The joys of asking HFC technicians questions about things that are in no way relevant to their job. Alongside listening to call centre / sales people discussing things they haven't been briefed on. I'd have hoped after all these years people would be using the appropriate quantity of sodium chloride.

Both are quoting from the rumour mill. Things are TBC.

But if you was a betting man what would your money be on ha

[apb27]

My contract is set to expire at the end of August. I guess the time frame for this stuff is later than that?

Renegotiate and stick to 152 then probably.