Manchester - the honeymoon period is over then - Page 2

caph · 13-10-2009, 19:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Retrovertigo

Well, quelle surprise - docsis 1.0

After all the fuss they made insisting I was being moved, and it is what had cause my problems when my modem needed replacing.

I give up.

Don't give up. Chase them to get moved back to a new 50Mb unit. I did and got moved, I now get 20Mb all the time. They promised they would move all 20Mb customers over and you should get them to honour that promise.

Sephiroth · 13-10-2009, 19:59

The frustrating thing is you don't know how it's gonna pan out.

I'm on a satisfactory 20 Mbps service which I would prefer to a flaky or oversubscribed 50 Mbps. Since we don't have a clue as to how VM try to load balance (I've tried to tease that out in another thread), I look forward to 50 Mbps with some trepidation.

RyuKokoro · 14-10-2009, 23:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Notingthat Retrovertigo now needs to sort out the subscription he has, I was reflecting on this university question.

When the kid gets home, it gets Daddy's nice 20/50 Mbps.

But when they're in their off-uni shared house, one of them will have an O2 mobile or something like that and set up a £7 8Mbps service or for a bit more dosh the 15 Mbps service.

I doubt that the proportion of VM uni subscribers is high.

Anybody else agree?

I have to disagree I'm afraid. I live in Fallowfield and VM had a pretty big door to door leafleting campaign at the end of August which was specifically aimed at students. Plus, when you divide the cost of VM internet between a an average of 4 students per house, the cost becomes manageable for a student. No other ISP leafleted around here so the first thing students will see on their doormat will be a VM leaflet and they'll probably sign up because there's a number on the back and it's easy. If VM have indeed advertised their service around this area without bothering to increase the capacity then it shows either an atrocious lack of foresight or a reprehensible amount of greed. I suspect a mixture of the two.

Ignitionnet · 15-10-2009, 00:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by caph

Don't give up. Chase them to get moved back to a new 50Mb unit. I did and got moved, I now get 20Mb all the time. They promised they would move all 20Mb customers over and you should get them to honour that promise.

They didn't 'promise' to move anyone over - how they balance the tiers across the networks is entirely their prerogative.

---------- Post added at 00:34 ---------- Previous post was at 00:33 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

I'm on a satisfactory 20 Mbps service which I would prefer to a flaky or oversubscribed 50 Mbps. Since we don't have a clue as to how VM try to load balance (I've tried to tease that out in another thread), I look forward to 50 Mbps with some trepidation.

Be happy to fill you in re: load balancing.

VM do have a fair few students, it's an uncapped service which they like. Unfortunately like most cable operators throughout the world the students take their toll on the network

Retrovertigo · 19-10-2009, 11:36

Yep, students are all hooked up here. Heck, where I now live in these flats, of the 9 flats, 6 are hooked up to VM.

As someone said, students sharing a house, getting supposed fast broadband, TV and phone for whatever money VM charge. A no brainer when the cost is split at least 4 ways.

Anyway, the area manager just called me and to say it was a disappointment is an understatement. He tried explaining how the system works and that where I live hasn't been upgraded at all, despite it being over subscribed. He himself admitted that the students hammer the system. So if proof where needed of how bad it is, you heard it there from the area manager.

He says they know what work needs doing - but, surprise surprise, no date as yet. He "hopes" it will be in 2-3 weeks. But we shall see.

I asked him why I was still being charged full price when they are admitting they can't provide anything like a decent service (and he quoted the hours of 4pm to after midnight as being appalling) but he pretty much ignored me when I asked about getting a discount until this is resolved. He just reiterated that they found the problem and need to fix it.

But that doesn't help when they are taking £30 per month off me and knowingly selling me short.

What did get on my goat was that I told him this had been going on for far too long now, and he said "we needed more evidence that speeds were bad before we could carry out the work". So it seems, me along with everyone else who complained, wasn't enough for them to take it seriously.

And that has been a problem I knew would happen. Why would a house full of students paying maybe a fiver a month each, care enough about speed issues to pick up the phone and call VM to complain, and they make up the majority of customers around here I suspect.

So, I'll give them 3 weeks then I will be banging on their door again no doubt.

Sephiroth · 19-10-2009, 15:52

[QUOTE=Retrovertigo;34893385]....
What did get on my goat was that I told him this had been going on for far too long now, and he said "we needed more evidence that speeds were bad before we could carry out the work". So it seems, me along with everyone else who complained, wasn't enough for them to take it seriously....QUOTE]

What a load of twaddle you've been given. Their routers provide perfectly good contention statistics and at any time they know (or can know) exactly what's what - and can plot it over time).

Agreed, Broadbandings?

spankysmagicpian · 19-10-2009, 18:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by eldoctore

Now quite anxious, new to all this. Due 50meg install tmoz, Eccles area, limited student population, but....... So what ought I to seek from the engineer before he goes, and anything I can easily check post oinstall?

I reckon Retro must be in Didsbury / Withington area?
My mate who I am renting a house to in Didsbury is lucky to get 3Mb or so in the evening when he should be on 10.

You should be OK in Eccles - I'm in Stretford and very, very rarely suffer speed issues.

Retrovertigo · 19-10-2009, 22:22

Close spanky, I'm in Fallowfield, just down from Owens park - and probably even worse than Withington and Didsbury to be fair.

And yeah Sephiroth, the manager kind of put his own foot in it by saying they needed more evidence and then a little later saying they could see statistics as to when speeds were down. Didn't twig at the time as I was getting annoyed at his excuses.

Lets be honest, they are going to do naff all about this. They won't care about me walking away. Easier losing the odd customer than spending money to fix the situation. It really is pathetic.

Retrovertigo · 21-10-2009, 23:23

I spoke to retentions today, and got nowhere, but was told that although they knew my area was over-subbed, the reason it hadn't been upgraded was likely because they couldn't get planning permission from the council to re-dig up the roads and pavements and replace the cables!!!

So there you go, Manchester council are to blame for the poor speeds in Fallowfield, and not as I had suspected, Virgin and their annoying practice of over selling it to everyone in the area

Their nonsense knows no bounds. The guy even told me he didn't blame me for wanting to leave and didn't try to convince me to stay at all. Although laughingly he tried telling me ADSL wasn't as reliable as it relied on distance from the exchange. Yeah, because VM's service has been soooooo reliable for me at the moment...sigh.

Mick Fisher · 22-10-2009, 11:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Retrovertigo

I spoke to retentions today, and got nowhere, but was told that although they knew my area was over-subbed, the reason it hadn't been upgraded was likely because they couldn't get planning permission from the council to re-dig up the roads and pavements and replace the cables!!!

So there you go, Manchester council are to blame for the poor speeds in Fallowfield, and not as I had suspected, Virgin and their annoying practice of over selling it to everyone in the area

Their nonsense knows no bounds. The guy even told me he didn't blame me for wanting to leave and didn't try to convince me to stay at all. Although laughingly he tried telling me ADSL wasn't as reliable as it relied on distance from the exchange. Yeah, because VM's service has been soooooo reliable for me at the moment...sigh.

That all sounds about par for the course to me.

qasdfdsaq · 22-10-2009, 23:13

Yeah, I've had the exact same problems. Got my own thread about this too, but short summary, nine months of complaining, they've claimed to fixed it, but no improvement. Except for a short period over the summer when the students all left and there were no festival guests. September comes around, speeds down to 0.5-1.5 meg again.

Finally had enough and just left them, very happy with my new DSL service. I'd suggest you check if any good ADSL2+ providers are in your area. BT Wholesale seem to majorly underestimate (at least around here) when predicting line speeds so I wouldn't worry if it predicted speeds aren't so hot. I've found it to underestimate by at least a factor of two in my city...

kibblerok · 06-12-2009, 00:25

OK so im into month 3 of my war with virgin media about the speed issues in south Manchester (M20).

They must have done something early November to placate things as my speed was around 2-3mb (enough for me even on a 20mb connection) and up from under 1mb in October. I had a modem swap which did nothing at all to solve the issue.

The last few days however have been ridiculous 25kb/s downloads - Today I refused to leave the phone before speaking to second line which they did their best to stop me speaking to them and said they'd call me in 5 days.

They relented and I finally, once again followed the standard procedure for what feels like the millionth time.

* Connect modem direct to PC
* Turn off antivirus
* Run a speed test (They have always asked me to do this yet when I report back the poor speed result say its not reliable!)
* Reboot in safemode - download a file from microsoft.com
* Confusion and blaming my PC ensues

They then confirm they will need to send out an engineer to check signals - even though I thought this could be done remotely.

As soon as I get off the phone my broadband acts weird and wont connect, the modem keeps rebooting and an odd sequence of flashing lights follows on the front.

I check the connection and i've moved from cpc3-with3 to cpc3-with5.

The modem is connecting - now at 50kb/s (double but still crap) average download but im now getting the following in my log files, the below sequence occurs on average every 20 minutes but as often as a couple in the space of a minute.

Quote:

Sat Dec 05 23:13:28 2009 Information (7) Downstream sync ok
Sat Dec 05 23:13:28 2009 Information (7) locked and synced to rescue CMTS...all is well!
Sat Dec 05 23:13:28 2009 Information (7) Downstream sync ok
Sat Dec 05 23:13:28 2009 Critical (3) SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Loss of Sync
Sat Dec 05 23:13:28 2009 Information (7) Downstream sync failed

I don't care much for speed, I just want my broadband to respond and deliver web pages - im not even after raw constant 20mb downloads, just a usable internet connection, which im not getting.

This is completely ridiculous to have to put up with - and im having to fight tooth and nail to get them to even acknowledge the problem.

caph · 06-12-2009, 17:52

Kibblerok it sounds like oversubscription. If you check your event log you'll see if you are connecting on DOCSIS 1.0 or DOCSIS 1.1. If you're on 1.0 then you are on old kit and need to get moved to a new 50Mb capable CMTS which, since you are a 20Mb customer, should already have been done.

The CEO's office told me back in May 2009 "... when Virgin Media releases the 50mg broadband this year the 20mg will be moved onto the same platform improving the service". That comment is on my case notes with CISAS but I can provide you with a copy if you it will help you get moved.

EDIT - I've just been informed that you are on DOCSIS 1.1 so you can ignore my above comments.

Good luck getting it sorted.

kibblerok · 06-12-2009, 18:08

Thanks Caph - its a 1.1 that im registering on.

I'm getting nowhere past the defences Virgin are putting up - I have started a newsgroup posting that I suggest others have a look at that are suffering in this area.

Issues in South Manchester - M20 on virginmedia.support.broadband.cable

They have confirmed that I was moved UBR - but that one also has a fault ticket open on it

And whats even more frustrating - the ticket for the slow issues I've been experiencing has been open on since the 7th October

Thats a ticket two months old tomorrow on oversubscription that Virgin know about yet are doing nothing to resolve.

Whats more is that i've been made to go through hours of calls to faults doing diagnostics and modem swaps and arguements when they've know there are problems all along.

Shambolic.

RyuKokoro · 07-12-2009, 20:55

The issue I had which I posted in this thread a couple of months ago seems to have gotten a lot better since then. I read somewhere (most likely on this forum) that in some areas, 20mbps subscribers were moved to an overflow tier to ease congestion. I don't know how widely this solution has been implemented (if at all; I could be mistaken.) Indeed, it can't be that widely implemented if M20 (the next district south of M14) is experiencing speed issues like the one kibblerok describes. I suppose VM internet, in a nutshell, is golden if it's working okay, but a nightmare if anything goes wrong (not because of the service itself, because of the people you have to deal with to get it fixed.) I feel sorry for the VM staff who actually make the effort to get a customer's query dealt with properly because they get tarred with the same brush as the lazy, script-reading idiots you generally seem to have to speak to.