Why can't broadband tech support tell the truth?

[irishguymcr]

Hi

For 6 days I have been having problems with my 10MB broadband where it suddenly drops to just over 2MB.

I have called Virgimedia tech support and have been told that there is a fault in my area every day. I even called retentions 4 days ago and advised this not acceptable taking this long to fix, they put me through to English broadband support who said they would escalate to have fixed.

Everytime I called I asked am I being TRAFFIC MANAGED and was told NO.

Tonight again I was lied to being told there were engineers in my area working on broadband again.

I called back and demanded to speak to a manager who told me that I have been being traffic managed since my problem started and that they have changed their policy. This has never happened to me before and strangely I have not been downloading anything just using the streaming application Vidzone on my PS3 since Friday.

Strange thing is until they made 50mb available in my area this never happened to me.

Why can't virginmedia traffic manage their network like other companies fairly and not count streaming sites and only hit high downloaders?

I have been lied to, or as virginmedia say misinformed, by broadband India and UK support as well as retentions and as my contract is due to finish soon will be advising retentions that I will be leaving virginmedia as they can't provide me suitable broadband and HD tv channels to go with O2 broadband (they don't traffic manage) or SKY broadband as they don't punish people who use streaming services (they only traffic manage people downloading).

[Ed2020]

I've been in a similar situation getting false information from technical support about alleged faults in my area so I can sympathise with that, however:

What difference do you believe it makes whether you are transferring data from a streaming service, a binary newsgroup, or any other remote source? If I transfer 2GB of data from tvcatchup/iPlayer whilst watching streaming video or 2GB from ubuntu.com it has exactly the same effect on VM's network. They are both still examples of downloading.

This is from Sky's usage policy:

If you are affected, we will only slow down the speed you can get during peak times for applications which use a lot of bandwidth (for example, streaming, peer-to-peer and newsgroups).

Ed.

[Welshchris]

i think they like to play with peoples minds and see how much they can take before they lose their tempers and spout obscene things.

The last person i did that to his ears were burning, he asked for my billing details and password for account and said they were all correct and then said that even though they were correct i wasnt the account holder as i didnt sound male.. I went mental and said WHO THE **** do u think i am Captain ******* KIRK! and the air was blue lol

[neoapple]

dude i am having a simular issue right now with my 20mb connection. Was getting fluctuations from 20 to like 5mb, and it would stay at 5mb most of the day etc. even outside of STM!!!
Kinda impossible considering i did not download anything

[Bonglet]

Application throttling ftw :P.

[frogstamper]

I'm sure this has been mentioned before but why on earth don't VM set-up a system whereby you receive an automated e-mail if you trigger stm?
Surely that's not beyond them, and in a lot of cases people would then be aware why their BB is slower....simples.

[irishguymcr]

I've been in a similar situation getting false information from technical support about alleged faults in my area so I can sympathise with that, however:

What difference do you believe it makes whether you are transferring data from a streaming service, a binary newsgroup, or any other remote source? If I transfer 2GB of data from tvcatchup/iPlayer whilst watching streaming video or 2GB from ubuntu.com it has exactly the same effect on VM's network. They are both still examples of downloading.

This is from Sky's usage policy:

If you are affected, we will only slow down the speed you can get during peak times for applications which use a lot of bandwidth (for example, streaming, peer-to-peer and newsgroups).

Ed.

just been on the Sky usage policy page

http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/skyproducts/broadband/terms/usagepolicies

and got this

SKY BROADBAND CONNECT TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT POLICY

In addition to the monthly Usage Cap, this Traffic Management Policy applies to you if you take Sky Broadband Connect.

Excessive use during peak time

We will monitor your Sky Broadband usage during peak times from 5pm to 12am each day. This is when the majority of customers use the network and when speeds could be affected by the excessive usage of a minority. If we consider that your usage is excessive during peak times we may slow down your connection for the rest of the day so that it has less affect on others. Only a very small number of customers will be affected by this (less than 2%). If you are affected, we will only slow down the speed you can get during peak times for applications which use a lot of bandwidth (for example, streaming, peer-to-peer and newsgroups) and which have a negative affect on other customers. You will still be able to use Sky Broadband to do other things normally such as browsing, email, instant messaging and VOIP. There are no restrictions in place outside of peak times.

Traffic management of our Network

To ensure we provide a sustainable quality broadband service to our customers, we continuously monitor and efficiently manage the Sky Network as a whole. To do this, during peak times (from 5pm to 12am each day), we may slow down the speed that all Sky Broadband Connect customers can get on certain applications which we consider use up a lot of bandwidth (for example peer-to-peer and newsgroups) and which have a negative affect on other customers There are no restrictions in place for applications such as browsing, email, streaming, instant messaging and VOIP during peak times. We do not put restrictions on our network outside of peak times.

As you can see they don't put restrictions on Streaming

[moaningmags]

The first piece of equipment we use to check your connection tells us whether you have been traffic managed or not.
I have never lied to a customer about whether they were traffic managed or not, I see no reason to, I only tell you it's happened, I didn't implement the policy.
I can check when you were managed and whether it was for upload or download and when it will finish.
If the customer insists they haven't downloaded or uploaded, all they have to do is email in the evidence and it will be raised as a fault for investigation.
So as far as I can see, there's no reason at all to lie about whether a customer is managed or not.

Also if I see someone being traffic managed, it means minimum of troubleshooting, unless it's someone who has no idea how to use torrents or iplayer and isn't aware it's running all the time and using all available upload.

[irishguymcr]

I'm sure this has been mentioned before but why on earth don't VM set-up a system whereby you receive an automated e-mail if you trigger stm?
Surely that's not beyond them, and in a lot of cases people would then be aware why their BB is slower....simples.

I agree with you completely. Maybe even provide a way of checking on virginmedia.com whether or not you are being traffic managed or not or how much data you have used.

I've heard rumours recently that VM want to move away from Unlimited downloads anyway and restrict us to a Capped download monthly allowance.

---------- Post added at 00:48 ---------- Previous post was at 00:44 ----------

The first piece of equipment we use to check your connection tells us whether you have been traffic managed or not.
I have never lied to a customer about whether they were traffic managed or not, I see no reason to, I only tell you it's happened, I didn't implement the policy.
I can check when you were managed and whether it was for upload or download and when it will finish.
If the customer insists they haven't downloaded or uploaded, all they have to do is email in the evidence and it will be raised as a fault for investigation.
So as far as I can see, there's no reason at all to lie about whether a customer is managed or not.

Maybe you don't lie but the Off Shore broadband tech support definitely do and as far as this starting it only happened when I started using VM Extras backup programme ... I've now removed this as it was too slow.

When my speed dropped I called and asked was Traffic management causing the problem and I was told NO and a fault ... this has gone on for a week and I am not happy and I will taking this up with retentions in the morning.

[Bonglet]

Anyone know if we are all application throttled now then?.

Wouldnt mind knowing as this is a joke tbh.

[moaningmags]

Have you been managed since you removed the V Stuff software?
It's designed to use a small part of your available upload speed so that you can still use the internet normally, but if it's running all the time it would certainly get you managed.

---------- Post added at 00:55 ---------- Previous post was at 00:52 ----------

Anyone know if we are all application throttled now then?.

Wouldnt mind knowing as this is a joke tbh.

I use newsgroups on a regular basis and always get the full 2.2Mb/s.
Hubby until the last week or two was an avid WoW player with no lag issues or playing problems.
Kids ( I have 4 kids with laptops usually online at the same time) stream YouTube constantly and haven't moaned at me about slow speeds.

Based on all that I'm going to say No no application throttling.

[irishguymcr]

Have you been managed since you removed the V Stuff software?
It's designed to use a small part of your available upload speed so that you can still use the internet normally, but if it's running all the time it would certainly get you managed.

It was left running in the background because it was so slow and therefore to upload all the files I was backing up I had no choice.

Since I removed it a new application called Vidzone has been released for my PS3 that allows me to watch online videos, make playlists etc but doesn't download and I have been told that this streaming software is causing the Traffic management.

Most annoying thing now though is that if you get traffic managed at 8.59pm you will have to wait till 01.59am to be released. Another annoying this is unlike other companies VM do not differentiate between weekdays and weekends.

[Ed2020]

As you can see they don't put restrictions on Streaming

What I can see is that they don't put restrictions on streaming when they are applying restrictions to everybody's bandwidth, regardless of indivduals' usage.

When they are managing individuals who have breached the excessive use figure they do put restrictions on streaming.

Ed.

[Paul K]

That was the usage policy for the Sky Connect package, aka BT Connect.

[aphex187]

I don't think we are being lied to i just think that the majority of the time the person on the other end of the phone doesn't know what they are doing ie India BB Technical support which should be shut down asap!

The main problem with Virgin is that you never speak to the same person again, so say you have been talking to someone from the Liverpool BB team, you come off the phone and the problem you have still persists then when you phone back you are more likely to be transferred through to India! And this is where it gets annoying having to go through the same problem to someone that does not understand what you are on about, and as soon as you stray from their 'scripted' path that's where the trouble begins.

[Milambar]

Although I don't know this for certain, I would suspect that the Indian call center bodies are paid on a basis of how many calls they "closed", like almost any other call center. So "Area fault. Thank you. Bye bye.", means the call is closed in under 1 minute, and therefore, they get to handle more calls per hour, and therefore, paid more. Or they get to meet their "quota"...

I don't believe the Indian call center workers are stupid and incapable, I believe they just don't care about the customer. All they want to do is close the call, and get paid more or meet their quota (either or perhaps even both).

Which is why I use the newsgroups, or even just hang up and redial when I am forced to call, and hear an Indian accent.