Virgin on the ridiculous [Archive]

caph

11-01-2009, 00:40

moaningmags

11-01-2009, 00:50

It is a support group though, you rarely see a post on there saying Hi just wanted to let you know my connection is working fine.
And anyone who dares post something like that, the regulars who criticise people's spelling, use of the apostrophe and how many spaces between words can't get in quick enough to suggest the person has been paid by VM to promote their service.

I think if more non-technical people knew of the newsgroups and posted there you'd see a lot more speed issues, snr issues, etc.
The one that drives me nuts is the constant question of 'Have I been stm'd?'

chickendippers

11-01-2009, 01:04

It is a support group though, you rarely see a post on there saying Hi just wanted to let you know my connection is working fine.
Exactly, even if you did it'd get moved to feedback ;)

The one that drives me nuts is the constant question of 'Have I been stm'd?'
VM should provide an automated way of checking, Plusnet let me check my data transfer. But I understand something like that would take a long time to implement.

xocemp

11-01-2009, 01:49

homealone

11-01-2009, 02:25

You may also note that a percentage of those posts for slow speeds are related to a local issue and a service tech is dispatched to resolve the issue. Some slow speeds are also down to user equipment.

I'm with moaningmags on the topic of the N|groups Nazi's, they need to be removed or better managed.
I think I've said this before, if it were up to me I'd have the groups closed, both binary & text.

The nature of newsgroups means that they are generally unregulated/moderated - we get a little complacent in forums by comparison, in my opinion.

Notwithstanding, purely based on a subjective analysis, it seems that subscribers are more likely to get issues sorted out via the newsgroups, than the phone lines?

In which case, personally, I'd like to see them continue....

Each to their own, of course, & I don't mean to imply anything other than a difference of opinion - in an ideal world all subscriber issues could be sorted via the phone...

However while it is, again, anecdotal that doesn't seem to be happening 100% of the time & the newsgroups do seem to go some way to address the shortfall???

zantarous

11-01-2009, 02:28

Is there a guide on how to access these newsgroups, I suppose reading these forums I feel it is inevitable that I will need their assistance one day?

homealone

11-01-2009, 02:32

Is there a guide on how to access these newsgroups, I suppose reading these forums I feel it is inevitable that I will need their assistance one day?

yes

http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/newsgroups/setting-up.php

zantarous

11-01-2009, 02:43

Thanks, do you know if this works with Live Mail or whatever it is that MS bundle with Vista or alternativly Outlook?

xocemp

11-01-2009, 02:48

As you say Gaz each to their own.

As I see it, the few ruin a great service for the many.
Simple troubleshooting is missed/not done by a 1st line agent so as we see on this forum many customers are turning to newsgroups for simple support, this saddens me greatly for the customer. Highly skilled agents are now under more pressure to meet the SLA of 4 hours to reply to many more posts and if what I'm told is true, these group support agents will now be marked on a 'quality' basis; something they were never trained on and so could possibly lose their bonus. I may add that there are those that post on the groups who have stated that they don't wish to see the words " I apologies for the ..." and have asked that the "Retarded manager who thought this up should retract it and continue to give it to us straight as it has always been"

Binary service, used for the most part to download pirated wares. This is good for a ISP image?

I respect your point of view Gaz and thank you for respecting mine :tu:

@zantarous
http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/newsgroups/setting-up.php

love2learn

11-01-2009, 07:22

Just thought I'd say... my 20meg connections working very well. I get 2.4meg/sec download. 90k/sec upload.

Rik

11-01-2009, 08:52

so as we see on this forum many customers are turning to newsgroups for simple support,

Can you blame people turning to newsgroups for support when the tech support in India is soo bad?

It really is absymal and if you get a agent to deviate away from their script by asking a sensible question then they get the hump and start arguing with you or cut you off.

Of course if i am lucky enough to get through to a British location im a very happy bunny, Scottish and Welsh agents as well as English ones are all first class from my experiences over the last 8 years.

The Indian call centres really let the company down imo.

Milambar

11-01-2009, 10:18

The Indian call centers are a nightmare. If I hear an indian voice, I just hang up and redial, I don't even bother trying to explain the issue to them.

While the few times Ive used the NG's, the response has been rapid, the questions have been pertinent, and the results accurate, and fix arrives usually the same week. They don't fob us off with things like "I can see spyware in your PC, please reinstall windows" (not happened to me personally, but Ive read of that being a favourite excuse).

All India seems to care about is closing the call, without having to log an actual fault. I suspect they get bonuses based on how many calls they closed without logging a fault or how many calls they close as "Successfully rectified. No further action needed."

If it helps, the last time I used the NG's, they identified the fault almost instantly and arranged an engineer visit for the same week. Once the fault was fixed, I took the courtesy to email them back and tell them thank you, and that there was no further problems. Nobody went Newsgroup Nazi on me for that either.

xpod

11-01-2009, 11:18

"I can see spyware in your PC, please reinstall windows"

That`s even stranger to hear when you dont actually use Windows.
I`ve even had one say "Oh sir,i see your using a wireless router,can you please disconnect it and...yadda yadda yadda"
It wouldn`t have been quite so strange if i had actually owned a router at the time.

xocemp

11-01-2009, 12:19

Ok, I get where your all coming from, I to have been fobbed off and told to run a full spyware & virus check. On a UNIX like OS? I think not!
But letting this level of support is not the way to go, you should not have to turn to another source for support. You have the right to complain, speak to a manager, write a letter. The companies offering poor support are becoming well known it would seem Wooden Spoon Award (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1103283/Wooden-Spoon-Award-BT-Top-Flops-worst-customer-service-UK.html)

Milambar, when you hangup and redial you are helping the offshore agent. I know one of their scores are AHT ( average handling time ) so when you hang up the time for that call is great.
I can see why your issue was resolved quickly on the NG, from what I'm told the NG's are manned by a 2nd line agent. Having lurked in the groups its easy to see that it is only one agent that supports the groups.

So with the influx of more customers using the groups perhaps a 'better' way could be made to offer support such as a forum. However, you should still speak out and be heard for inadequate support, its your money, its their product, its your right.

Rik

11-01-2009, 12:57

Sadly a lot of companies are outsourcing the IT Support to external companies and im sure even more will be following suite this year.

xocemp

11-01-2009, 13:12

synner

12-01-2009, 12:42

Your just going to put up with poor support though, be that onshore or offshore?
The fuss you see kicked up here about faulty 'free' services like e-mail, webspace & usenet.

Oh well as Gaz said "Each to their own"
Personally I've gone past the point of using NG's, I now e-mail/write to the CEO's office, a little over the top maybe but perhaps someone will sit up and take notice when their office is flooded with requests for support.

Hi xocemp,

I have an issue which has been outstanding with the support newsgroup since September 2008 (and was originally logged in September 2007 !!). My UBR is oversubscribed and no-one can seem to get "IP Planning Department" to give any sort of update on when it will be upgraded.

Could you PM me the CEO email address ?

Thanks

Bri

caph

12-01-2009, 13:30

Thanks, do you know if this works with Live Mail or whatever it is that MS bundle with Vista or alternativly Outlook?

Yes, it's called "Windows Mail" in Vista and it works just fine (for me anyway!).

---------- Post added at 13:30 ---------- Previous post was at 13:26 ----------

Hi xocemp,

I have an issue which has been outstanding with the support newsgroup since September 2008 (and was originally logged in September 2007 !!). My UBR is oversubscribed and no-one can seem to get "IP Planning Department" to give any sort of update on when it will be upgraded.

Could you PM me the CEO email address ?

Thanks

Bri

Bri, as I understand it every uBR in the country is physically being upgraded between now and this summer and 20Mb users are being moved off the current 2/10/20 channel. Effectively this will provide relief for your uBR. I have exactly the same problem and have been told repeatedly as recently as the other week that there is no uBR relief date set for my uBR. However I've also been told by an engineer that my "exchange" (Basford, Nottingham) is currently being upgraded to 50Mb. So I guess what I'm saying is that even though you're being told that no upgrade is scheduled, you'll probably find it is and within the next couple of months.

Stuart

12-01-2009, 15:24

Has anyone read through the Virgin support newsgroup recently. I normally just go straight to my post and submit my reply but tonight I started reading through others.

It makes the company sound like a train wreck! Ridiculously slow speeds all over the place but more worryingly many reports are that the chronic speeds have been going on for over a YEAR!

While VM do have massive problems in some areas (I would be stupid to say otherwise), newsgroups and forums do give a distorted view. For a few reasons.

1) People rarely post to say they are getting an excellent service. It does happen though (although it's often a case of "but my service is fine" in response to a complaint from someone else).

2) People do sometime post under multiple identities. We have it happen here quite regularly and where we detect it, we do act quickly. Our forum rules state that you can only use one account on the forum. You don't have that on newsgroups (or some other forums). I've seen quite a few threads where the original poster has posted something then registered several accounts just to agree with him/her self.

3) Some people do get a problem with their connection and post a thread asking if there is a problem in such and such area. Other people may agree, despite the fact that they may be covered by a seperate head end (in the case of TV) or UBr (in the case of broadband). Other people then see this thread and assume that their is a massive problem in the area, despite that fact that maybe only two people on different networks are affected. Remember, VM's network areas don't necessarily match up with the physical areas. One UBR may cover multiple small towns. Equally one large town may be covered by multiple UBR. In extreme cases, one town may be covered by multiple franchise areas.

Broken Hope

12-01-2009, 19:08

Yes, it's called "Windows Mail" in Vista and it works just fine (for me anyway!).

---------- Post added at 13:30 ---------- Previous post was at 13:26 ----------

Bri, as I understand it every uBR in the country is physically being upgraded between now and this summer and 20Mb users are being moved off the current 2/10/20 channel. Effectively this will provide relief for your uBR. I have exactly the same problem and have been told repeatedly as recently as the other week that there is no uBR relief date set for my uBR. However I've also been told by an engineer that my "exchange" (Basford, Nottingham) is currently being upgraded to 50Mb. So I guess what I'm saying is that even though you're being told that no upgrade is scheduled, you'll probably find it is and within the next couple of months.

Which Basford UBR are you on? I've on a Basford UBR and have been getting horrible download speeds for months now, rarely do I get over 5Mb on my 20Mb connection.

caph

12-01-2009, 19:20

Which Basford UBR are you on? I've on a Basford UBR and have been getting horrible download speeds for months now, rarely do I get over 5Mb on my 20Mb connection.

I'm on BASF3 and I know what you mean. It's been atrocious for months. Dial-up speeds sometimes. For some reason it shot back up to 13-20Mb in the week before Christmas then they started upgrading to 50Mb and my upstream levels have gone way too high which is crippling my speeds again. I can't win! As far as I can tell they are upgrading the whole Basford exchange so if your UBR is there it's being upgraded (that's according to the engineer I spoke to at least).

Broken Hope

12-01-2009, 21:16

I'm on BASF3 and I know what you mean. It's been atrocious for months. Dial-up speeds sometimes. For some reason it shot back up to 13-20Mb in the week before Christmas then they started upgrading to 50Mb and my upstream levels have gone way too high which is crippling my speeds again. I can't win! As far as I can tell they are upgrading the whole Basford exchange so if your UBR is there it's being upgraded (that's according to the engineer I spoke to at least).

I'm on BASF1, and yeah sometimes it's down to below 1Mb speeds, it's horrible. I just wish they would fix it already.

Just run a speed test.

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:15:36 GMT

Test 1: 1024K took 3747 ms = 273.3 KB/sec, approx 2252 Kbps, 2.2 Mbps
Test 2: 1024K took 4643 ms = 220.5 KB/sec, approx 1817 Kbps, 1.77 Mbps
Test 3: 1024K took 6184 ms = 165.6 KB/sec, approx 1365 Kbps, 1.33 Mbps
Test 4: 2048K took 12578 ms = 162.8 KB/sec, approx 1341 Kbps, 1.31 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 1694 Kbps, 1.65 Mbps

Sucks to be on the VIP package and getting speeds like that.

synner

13-01-2009, 08:53

Yes, it's called "Windows Mail" in Vista and it works just fine (for me anyway!).

---------- Post added at 13:30 ---------- Previous post was at 13:26 ----------

Bri, as I understand it every uBR in the country is physically being upgraded between now and this summer and 20Mb users are being moved off the current 2/10/20 channel. Effectively this will provide relief for your uBR. I have exactly the same problem and have been told repeatedly as recently as the other week that there is no uBR relief date set for my uBR. However I've also been told by an engineer that my "exchange" (Basford, Nottingham) is currently being upgraded to 50Mb. So I guess what I'm saying is that even though you're being told that no upgrade is scheduled, you'll probably find it is and within the next couple of months.

Cheers for the caph.

So, as I understand it, the UBR oversubscription is not a case of too many physical connections on a port but rather too many connections on a downstream channel ?

The theory being that once new downstream channels are in effect and 20Mb users are moved to those channels then the current channel will have more free bandwidth ?

Thanks

Bri

caph

13-01-2009, 20:04

I'm on BASF1, and yeah sometimes it's down to below 1Mb speeds, it's horrible. I just wish they would fix it already.

Just run a speed test.

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:15:36 GMT

Test 1: 1024K took 3747 ms = 273.3 KB/sec, approx 2252 Kbps, 2.2 Mbps
Test 2: 1024K took 4643 ms = 220.5 KB/sec, approx 1817 Kbps, 1.77 Mbps
Test 3: 1024K took 6184 ms = 165.6 KB/sec, approx 1365 Kbps, 1.33 Mbps
Test 4: 2048K took 12578 ms = 162.8 KB/sec, approx 1341 Kbps, 1.31 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 1694 Kbps, 1.65 Mbps

Sucks to be on the VIP package and getting speeds like that.

Just out of interest, and at the risk of spamming this entire forum (I've just posted on this in two other threads!), could you post your upstream and downstream stats from your modem? I've been told that the whole Basford exchange has out of control power levels at the moment which is causing problems. Not sure about this though, it seems unlikely to me.

It might be worth checking your modem log to see if you're getting any unusual and/or frequent events occuring. It might not be simply oversubscription.

zantarous

14-01-2009, 12:33

Ok have the virgin newsgroup sub set up, which group on their deals with BB support?

Edit found it.

Joxer

14-01-2009, 12:37

virginmedia.support.broadband.cable

Turkey Machine

14-01-2009, 17:11

To those on the Basford exchange: would this explain why I'm getting such crap speeds on 10Mbit, whilst the 2Mbit modem I connect up appears to be fine? I had to connect up the other modem because it was so dire, and was trying to figure out why; even directly connecting it without the router didn't help. Granted, the power levels and SNRs are a touch higher than I'd expect, but still within the realms of normal usage...

Broken Hope

14-01-2009, 17:50

Just out of interest, and at the risk of spamming this entire forum (I've just posted on this in two other threads!), could you post your upstream and downstream stats from your modem? I've been told that the whole Basford exchange has out of control power levels at the moment which is causing problems. Not sure about this though, it seems unlikely to me.

It might be worth checking your modem log to see if you're getting any unusual and/or frequent events occuring. It might not be simply oversubscription.

Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 5
Downstream Frequency : 402750000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 5360.537 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps32Increment4
Downstream Receive Power Level : 3.6 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 41.0 dB

Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 2
Upstream Frequency : 29200000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QAM16
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 53.5 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2

caph

15-01-2009, 20:24

Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 5
Downstream Frequency : 402750000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 5360.537 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps32Increment4
Downstream Receive Power Level : 3.6 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 41.0 dB

Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 2
Upstream Frequency : 29200000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QAM16
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 53.5 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2

Thank for that, it looks like you've got a high upstream power level too (although you're the good side of 55, whereas I'm on the bad side). Coincidentally that's the exact upstream power level I get if I plug my modem directly in to the incoming cable, however when I plug it in to the splitter that also feeds my V+ box it jumps up to 60db. Is your modem connected to a splitter?

---------- Post added at 20:24 ---------- Previous post was at 20:21 ----------

To those on the Basford exchange: would this explain why I'm getting such crap speeds on 10Mbit, whilst the 2Mbit modem I connect up appears to be fine? I had to connect up the other modem because it was so dire, and was trying to figure out why; even directly connecting it without the router didn't help. Granted, the power levels and SNRs are a touch higher than I'd expect, but still within the realms of normal usage...

Hmmm, I can't see why it would make a difference. The 2Mb and 10Mb are both on the same DOCSIS1 and will stay so even after the upgrade. I'm stumped.