Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

I upgraded to Vivid 300 via the website last week, the new Hub 3.0 arrived yesterday. Upon plugging it in and activating it, it failed to register. Status pages were showing a 350mbit config had been setup.

Phone support insisted on an engineer visit, which was booked for today. Engineer phones as the 4 hour slot is about to end, says he's not coming, and he knows what the problem is: I can't actually have 300mbit. He's downgraded me back to Vivid 200 to get me back online, and advises calling CS to sort out the incorrect billing (now being way overcharged for a lower package).

Long story short, I'm now stuck on Vivid 200 and they refuse to give me my Gamer 200 back as it was before the botched upgrade. Worse still, until July of this year, I was out of contract, and only took a new one because I was forced to to upgrade from my old Vivid 200 onto the Gamer 200. So I'm now back in contract with a worse connection than I started with.

Seem to have hit a brick wall talking to CS, is there any other route I can take to get this resolved? Is it really not possible to put me back on Gamer 200 as I was before so I can have my 20mbit upload and no STM back?

Before the Hub 3.0 I had a 2AC with 8 DS + 2 US, with the new hub I'm seeing 10 DS + 2US. Assume this is why I can't get 300mbit?

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

Use the CEO complaints procedure.

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

yup, you can argue that they have defrauded you etc by knowingly drawing you into a contract for something which they are unable to provide.

The fact that there are only 10 downstream channels available in your area will be why 300mbits+ isn't available. Although it is a bit of an odd number, I thought they had to go in 4's.

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

After 8 most areas, BSR and 10k alike, went to 10. The 10k was stuck at 10 until it received a new line card, the BSR went up to 12.

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

Had a call back from customer relations at last today: removed me from contract and applied a bill credit as a gesture of goodwill, but reiterated that giving me the 20mbit upload speed was "impossible as it's not on the system anymore". Surely not if people are still on it, as I was?

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

Services that are withdrawn from sale are protected from any changes.

This means that people who are on it stay on it, but there is no way for someone to be moved onto the withdrawn service.

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

The confusing thing for me (and maybe Ben can help out with this) is that afaik a real person is the only barrier in stopping you from having a new tier. As an example, when I rang up for 350 in August they told me it wasn't available yet and there was no way they could put it through and I would get 300. When the upgrade came down though I was on the 350 tier. The thing which I don't understand is why you had the problem you did to start off with. As far as I am aware the cmts does not pick and choose which tiers it accepts. If the correct config has come down for the shub 3, even if your area hasn't had any upgrade/extra capacity added to support it (which is why they say your area hasn't been enabled yet), you should still be able to connect and do your stuff and you will get whatever speed you can and that is it. I may be wrong and hopefully Ben can provide some clarity. This is the first time I have heard of it happening.

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

The "correct" 350mbit config showed up on the shub 3, but the CMTS refused any connection using it. The errors shown on the hub were as if the hub wasn't activated for my account, even though it was.

---------- Post added at 19:00 ---------- Previous post was at 18:56 ----------

It's particularly frustrating because the 20mbit was about the only part of the offered speeds that I was getting: utilisation issues mean that I never see much above 60mbit unless it's the early hours of the morning. I was only taking the 300mbit upgrade thinking the extra channels on a shub 3 might improve my speeds a bit, but no such luck.

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

yeah, it is going to be because there are only 10 channels available to you but I still didn't think the cmts was capable of blocking certain tiers. The shub must have been activated and registered on the network for the new config to have come down.

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

No-one suffering from congestion will ever get around it by upgrading to a higher tier.

Your part of the network is still awaiting upgrade.

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

Surely upgrading from Hub2 to Hub3 could be of some small help, simply because rather than fighting for a share of 8 channels, he is now fighting for a share of 10, but yes the tier upgrade itself doesn't help.

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

That's what I was saying, however if there is congestion whilst CTMS or Hub end is awaiting upgrade you could still see no improvement with 10 channels over 8. It's called clutching at straws.

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

In my experience from watching this forum, upgrading the modem makes little difference. If there's congestion, there's congestion across all channels.

In a sense you're right, ultimately a human somewhere decided to stop offering that code on the system - but it's not the agent's fault, they genuinely are limited by what they can do on the system.

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

So who can put me back on the correct code? Presumably /somebody/ can, even if a first line agent/sales or whoever can't.

I was promised an email by the complaints manager putting it in writing that I'm no longer held to contract since they're not providing the appropriate service, but that hasn't materialised.

Also my direct debit was taken for the new plan amount, and the cost of a new Superhub 3, even though they were credited back and changed back. So a £72 direct debit taken even though I'm £90+ in credit. Madness... of course, nobody on the phone seems to know what to do and there's no way to actually get hold of somebody in the complaints department who called me.

Re: Botched upgrade to Vivid 300 from Gamer 200
 

There are two parts to any broadband service. The provisioning that the kit will accept, and the code that bills you for the service.

For those tiers that are no longer sold, the billing code is protected to stop anyone being moved onto that code. If you already have the billing code on your account, then the system will correctly provision compatible kit (and any replacement kit) for that service. That's until such time as Virgin Media completely withdraw that tier of service and decommission all codes for it.

In this case, the OP has been moved off a billing code and associated provisioning, and as it's no longer sold, they can't now be moved back on to it.