Have your say & ask the experts

Another forum that I'm on, not hi-fi has a broaband speed check thread, if you think our speeds are bad you should see some of America's. Better still move to Wales, I considered moving 5 miles away from where I am, the place I was considering moving to is less than 1/4 mile from a school, broadband speed 512k. Virgin and Sky couldn't even try to help me.

Well, after having three phone calls on Saturday, I not heard anything more.

Had similar problems with Sky who have beeen nothing but a pain from first contact of getting HD, Broadband and telephone to present day. They cancelled my set up date, day off work wasted, then they lost my telephone and broadband order, then requested access to my phoneline too soon and so request was declined by BT and so I ended being a BT customer for 2 weeks with no broadband available, while paying Sky for all these services and getting charged by BT for my calls and line rental at the same time.
Not to mention the errors from their techinical department about not having HD boxes for 4 months and the specs of the connections on the box.
All I really want is to get what I pay for when I am told I will be getting it.....
This seams to be a real problem for a hell of a lot of companies these days with shows poor customer service or any service at all.

I've finally joined Virgin. But there's a big problem. I'm paying for the 8Mbps service but it was explained to me that, due to limitation of my exchange and my distance from it, I can only expect 3.5 to 4 Mbps.

OK. Not ideal. But I understand the reasons why. So I accepted that limitation. Virgin checked other customers in the area (one in my street) and said that 3.5 to 4 Mbps was a recroded avergae speed.

Unfortunately, BT, who provide the phone line, don't see it this was. They have placed a limit on my line of 1 Mbps and don't seem to want to change it. They have said that stability issues could result. I used this BT site to establish the line limit.

My personal champion within Virgin hasn't been in touch just lately and it's this lack of communication which really annoys me. It doesn't take a minute to bang out a few words to keep me in the picture....and that's all it'd take to keep me happy.

If I don't get the speed I was promised, I'm not sure where I stand as it's an 18 month contract. I'd rather avoid the agro and am hoping that they just get it sorted!

I thought Virgin Phone lines were separate to BT ones. Is this not the case??

No. Well not in my case. Virgin provide the service. BT provide the infrastructure.

Messiah:

I thought Virgin Phone lines were separate to BT ones. Is this not the case??

They are if you live in a cabled area.

I'm with Tiscal and have been so for years and three house moves. The main problem I have found is dealing with the call centres where accent and poor phone line connections have caused misunderstandings. However, its a good price and all companies have mixed reviews.

Re connection speeds. I complained to Spotify and then Tiscali about Spotify cutting out, especially in the evenings. I was told it was down to BT throttling during busy periods and there was nothing that they could do. Oddly, since then I have had hardly any problems.

If you use the site identified above, it'll tell you the BT configured line limit. You can only use it once every 3 hours.

The speed check Tiscali referred me to is; http://speedcheck.ispconnect.co.uk/

The other site is the only one recognised by BT....it's a BT site.

hi

i have been telewest/virgin for several years now, and apart from different people telling me different prices when asked, i don't think you can fault it.  I am on the 20 meg and use a newsgroup server. i do get 20meg downloads but am throtled after about 5 meg each day.  So i have gone 50 meg 'cos there are no limits  

bobby

I have been with cable for broardband and landline for about 5 years ,and have no probs,online gaming x-box 360,and ps3 on upto 20 meg connection,use pc for streaming hd content with no probs,same for sky been with them since 1992,guess im one of the lucky ones.