Extreme lack of bandwidth, maxed out UBR

[Sebazy]

Hihi all, a rather sombre first post to start with but eh, pleased to meet you all

Now, for the last few months I've been plagued with a rather shockingly bad connection, to the extent where I'm really rather jealous of those people managing to get 4mbps. I first noticed my speeds being consistently substantially below what they should have been a couple of months back, but I was still getting around 300kps most of the time which was enough for me so I didn't bother reporting it to support.

Unfortunately now even on off peak hours I can generally expect to get below 100Kps even to VM's own FTP, at 2pm today I was getting 40Kps out of gamefiles.virginmedia.com, the 100meg test binaries from Zen internet were barely managing 10Kps. Now I'm on the XL package so I think I'm fair in saying that even with the lack of a real service level agreement, this kind of broadband performance is an insult for 40 quid a month

The real annoyance is, when I reported the issue 3 weeks back, the tech I spoke to was brilliantly helpful, the ticket was made and whilst he did make me pull my network to bits, he appeared to route my upstream through a different UBR which made a huge difference to my connection, getting me from ~80Kps at the time to a very acceptable 600Kps, this lasted for a week or so before my connection went down and I had to restart my modem promptly going back to the same issues again.

Second time I called in, I got another UK tech but this time he wasn't able to help insisting that it wasn't possible for me to be rerouted, again I had to direct connect but this time he wasn't able to do anything but insist that the problem was being worked on.

The next two calls were both picked up by overseas 'techs' and unfortunately both were little more than a waste of money with both of them not having the knowledge or ability to do anything beyond offer apologies and assure me that the problem is still being worked on.

About the only thing I know for certain is that all 4 calls confirmed that my UBR is the root of the problem, the TX channel on it is completely swamped, is there anything at all I can do about this myself beyond repeatedly wasting money on the support line? The first tech appeared to be able to reroute my connection, why can none of the others do it? Is there anything I can say to help coerce them into actually doing that again?

For reference, I'm in Plymouth on ubr08.newt.blueyonder.co.uk, even though I'm on the XL package I'm mostly concerned about gaming performance and connection quality, currently packet loss is low, but the connection is noticably 'lumpy' with packets often being significantly delayed and out of sync.

For reference:

[myriauk]

I feel your pain, my connection is just utter crap today.

[xkennyx]

Dude, im in the same boat as you there. Im on UBR 11 Newton Abbot and my speeds are awful. Today i am barely managing 500b/s. i just find it amazing how when the service was blueyonder/telewest it was perfect. 10mb all the time anytime, now VM have taken over they dont have a clue on what there doing. I had a tech out to look at my problem the other week, He said he was leaving VM because they are piling to much on him and they dont have a clue how to run all of this. Apparently there are 4 Technicians in Plymouth soon to be 3.


Kenny

[EYEZ]

Posted in the NewsGroups -

Work is expected to be carried out on this UBR on or around 16 October 2007
however this can be subject to change

Kind regards,
Sabri Barka
Virgin Media Technical Support

Im suffering the same .... maxed out connection = 28k d/load - 38k upload
And this work was supposed to be done by the end of Sept !!

So i wouldnt rely on this Date wud u ?

well lost 3/4 connection tonight and not even shaped

[Mr.X]

If its your UBR thats oversubscribed their should now be notes on your account confirming this. Speak to customer care .If they tell you to call tech support tell them that you have already spoke to tech support , they have confirmed this issue and tell them to have a look at your CC notes (all calls to tech support and the issues raised are logged) and and either request to be downgraded to M or L package. This type of issue is unlikely to be resolved in the near future.

They didnt swap your UBR around they've probably just changed your upstream channel ID which is not a fix but more of a temporary workaround as all the other channels on that UBR are likely to be heavily subscribed as well. Tell them you think you should be be compensated for the slow speeds you have had to put up with for the last few months. Your calls charges to tech support should also have be credited back to your account as the issue is on their end (you can confirm this with customer care). Hope this helps

Mr X how can customer care do this I have never seen this on the cc notes tech support can only look into this as customer care reps dont really know what a ubr is how ever we can only credit back when the fault has been resolved

[Mr.X]

Customer care dont need to know what a UBR is. It should be apparant from the CC notes left by tech support that the customer has an issue with slow speeds.

Tech support CC notes should be done in plain english so other depts can understand them. IE something like .....ahc called cust advised issue on UBR causing slow/intermiitent speeds.This is a problem on our end..........whats hard to understand about that?

As far as I'm aware its only advisory that we apply credit once the issue is resolved, its not company policy. Whatever way you look at it there should now be tech support notes on the account advising of the issue.

If it wasnt for the new ICSTIS regs and most importantly AHT it would be possible for Tech support to go through to customer care and explain the issue to them. Unfortunately the needs of the client come before the needs of the customer and until this policy is reversed customers will carry on getting sub standard support.

have u seen tech support they cant speak english let alone type english the comapny needs to rethink its policy

[Mr.X]

Putting ICSTIS regs to one side a minute, its AHT thats the cause of most of the issues. 610 seconds to deal with a technical call is simply not long enough. Scrap AHT and a lot more problems would be resolved to the customers satisfaction. Dont forget stray to far over AHT and your gonna be out of a job. I cannot think of another job where taking ownership of a call and going out of your way to help a customer is going to get you sacked.

[xpod]

Mr X how can customer care do this I have never seen this on the cc notes tech support can only look into this as customer care reps dont really know what a ubr is how ever we can only credit back when the fault has been resolved
__________________

When our first 3 month half price bb period was put in place back in June it was offered & arranged by the tech who i`d just spent the hour on the phone to at the time.

When i called up at the end of that three months period(because things were worse still with the new modem even)the tech eventually agreed with everything i told him & escalated the problem.....again.
The new call charges were now in place so what he could`nt do this time was arrange the continuation of the current half price agreement, as i was kinda expecting this time round.
He told me i would need to call retentions myself to have that current agreement continued though.They would see the notes ok he said so,thats what i did....

Retentions though tried to argue that because the notes said i was getting 4-12MB then they would happily give me another 3 months at the 4Mb price of £25 this time.....tch tch
Being the stubborn git i am and because i felt the speeds being the same should mean the price being the same i politely declined their offer and called up Customer Services instead....(the cheek i hear them scream)

The lovely lass at CS could see all the notes of everything that had taken place the previous hour or so and after reiterating our tale of woe she put me on hold,called up retentions and come back 2 minutes later with the continued half price deal for another 3 months.

But the issue still did`nt get fixed for couple of weeks


It dont matter what department i`ve called i have found that one person will tell you one thing while the next will tell you something completely different.
Especially when it comes to notes or asking to be passed to someone else.
I`ve had them blatantly lie to me on the phone,deny things took place,blame everything bar themselves etc etc etc......

Try anyway.

[Mr.X]

If is wasn't for AHT there would be no need to pass you from one department to another. In and ideal world you should only have to make one call and the agent does the chasing up on your behalf. Unfortunately that wont happen till VM changes their policy of giving agents a finite time on the call (610) seconds for tech support. But dont hold your breath.

[piggy]

It dont matter what department i`ve called i have found that one person will tell you one thing while the next will tell you something completely different.
Especially when it comes to notes or asking to be passed to someone else.
I`ve had them blatantly lie to me on the phone,deny things took place,blame everything bar themselves etc etc etc......

this is true of most big companys not just virgin......not a very good defence but in the modern call center world it will get worse before the public backlash makes things get better.

good old vm customer care I have found the most people that complain bout customer services are the ex ntl customers I feel sorry as vm is now the old ntl

[D_Skids]

I had a good argument with Customer Services about my crap connection earlier tonight.

I had finally had enough after days and days of either poor connection speeds or no connection.

The guy went through the normal procedure, bypass the router, turn off the firewall, reboot into safe mode. Basically anything where they can blame my kit and not theirs even though I explained nothing has changed at my end.

But I did everything they wanted and he said the modem looks OK and is reporting a good speed.

I then pointed out to him that whilst talking to him I had done a speedtest and it was running slowly (1.5mbps at that point I think). He then got me to download a file (f1test.notlong.com) which I did (at about 400kbps).

He then said 'Whoa that is really slow!'

No S**t! I then asked him why he was ready to tell me that everything looked fine before I had done the speedtest, surprisingly he couldn't answer that.

He has now promised to refund the 18 minute phone charge and an engineer will be out between 8 and 12 tomorrow.

What annoys me the most is the way they think they can con people who don't have a technical understanding of their equipment and assure them nothing is wrong when clearly there is (and charge them to tell them that!)

After the engineer has been out and whether or not he sorts the issue I will be contacting VM for compensation for the quality of the poor connection I am paying top dollar for.