NTL/Virgin Media
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I thought Branstons mission was to sort their shit organisation and cust services out! Clearly not working.
I was gonna get this in my new house when i move in, but probably just gonna stick with Murdoch. So whats the beef with them then?
In a nutshell:
No broadband for last 3 months. Being put on hold for 30 mins plus. Hundreds of phone calls where I'm passed from pillar to post. Having to explan my problem to different departments several times in same phone call. Being put on hold for 20 mins. IT helpers who can't understand/speak English. Rude IT helpers who get frustrated and hang up on me twice. Unkept promises for people to contact me. Not answering phone for 40 mins. Unkept promises for account credits for lack of service.
Come back Sky all is forgiven.
Virgin and NTL are legendaryily crap these days. I should point out that the Virgin brand in this case is nothing to do with Branson.
I can see this is going to come down to me taking the Tardis over to Horwich.
Yeah that wouldnt really endear me to them either.
I was tempted by the 4 for £40 deal where you get TV, Broadband, Phone and Mobile all-in, but then i reasoned that if i got them seperately and one provider was shit, it wouldnt be as big a deal.
One of the reasons the cable firms are such a bag of toss is that NTL appeared virtually overnight, swallowing up all the little local cable companies. There is poor synchronisation of working practises and technology between them. Then again this has been the case since 2000, so they cant really apply the bear with us and we will get it sorted soon tack
Doctor? wrote: Virgin and NTL are legendaryily crap these days. I should point out that the Virgin brand in this case is nothing to do with Branson.
I can see this is going to come down to me taking the Tardis over to Horwich.
Really? Hows that then?
To be honest Stevie my PC is 10 years old now and I've been thinking about getting a lap top and wireless for some time now.
Really It's just because I like to spend money 
Missy Jem wrote: To be honest Stevie my PC is 10 years old now and I've been thinking about getting a lap top and wireless for some time now.
Really It's just because I like to spend money
Well that brings 2 things to mind.....
What modern software have you bought that makes your machine obselete? I mean why change a working PC because of a busted exteranl service. It's like buying a new cooker cos there was a power cut. Of course if you've gained a sudden penchant for Supreme Commander or Medal of honor, then yes, you need to be spending 7-800 quid (and not in fucking PC world. Dixons, Curries, Woolworths or sodding Tesco neither), otherwise, keep the and save the money.
Laptops are good, buy straight from Dell and they will still sell you XP instead of forcing vista onto machines that cannot run it like everyone else (just built 2 3GHz-ish dual core 64 bit boxen, vista ran OK on one, and totally choked on the other, despute the only different being the CPU (AMD worked, Intel didn't) and motherboard). But wireless is slow (tho you will not notice this with the internet), and you have a choice for setting it up. You can either use WEP or WPA encryption, WPA is good but hard to set up, WEP is easier to set up but can be hacked in around 2 second's giving everyone the ability to download kiddie porn on your account.
WHY DON'T YOU JUST LIVE UP THE ROAD YOU AWKWARD COW :D
NTL have always been rubbish. I was with them about ten years ago and they were utter crap then.
In fact, the hold times mentioned here are better than I got, so there's some improvement.
Freeview is so good now, certainly for someone like me who watches hardly any telly.
Get a good broadband service like UKOnline - they've never given me a moment's hassle, the (free) support line is excellent and the service itself is never down.
I think it would be legally called a merger with Branson as a shareholder. Definately connected in a big way though.
Cant argue with the use of cunts and wankers to describe the organisation though...
:)
My computer is fine, but I cannot easily carry it from Dining table, to lap-in-front-of-TV, to garden, to bed.
I will keep my PC though. Even if it's just so you can maul with it on your next visit...
Yes Cambo - PIMP MY PC 
that's why I'm still on 512kbps with freeuk, it works, no throttles, firewalls or caps, cheap static IP's and when my bro DOES phone them about an outage it's hilarious....
Overhead one day:
"Errrr John, this bloke says he's not using windows but something called Linux, what do I do" From distance: "whatever he tells you to"
Missy Jem wrote: My computer is fine, but I cannot easily carry it from Dining table, to lap-in-front-of-TV, to garden, to bed.
I will keep my PC though. Even if it's just so you can maul with it on your next visit...
Yes Cambo - PIMP MY PC
Not too much can be done for it in terms of "hotting it up". More Ram is always good, and a new video card if you want to play games, apart from that, a damned good cleanout was all it needed when last I seen it.
I think your video card has a TV out....why not buy a wireless KB and mouse, the use that little RF relay box for your sky to relay your PC display to a comfy TV?
Of course if you want a new fangled PC of mass destructiodn, send about 800 quid this way and wait 2 weeks :D
PS
Inspiron 1501 PISSES all over the 1300 I bought in January, for less money and all!!!!!!
I'm very content with th 1300 too, at least in linux, it's a bit sluggish in Dos-XP, but that's more to do with all the cack Dell pre-installed. I'd format and fix, but I don't wanna touch the only legal copy of windows I own.
(remember, specify XP, not vista)
PPS, get the BIG battery too, with the small one, if the machine is doing more than smailing sweetly on the desktop, it's useful only when moving rooms, from power point to power point, honestly 60mins life under heavy load.
(and don't forget to untick the support options to get it at the published price....evertyhing that's likely to actually break on it is under normal warranty anyway...except when you rip the DVDRW door half off it when too sore to catch it as it slips 
)
Lordy my computer must be knackered, all I could read of your last post Steve was:
,.mclkjkoafjsio lkdfjsioa f.lkdmfljdsaio lfmakldfusui yl dfjsh fosyao lamnklfj ysa LAKjsd oyf oasf lssssfuiasd foya CHRISSY WADDLE laj;dfjdlsajf'asjkfi'd a'dfj'l fj'as ja
In Horrwichish.....
Buy t'laptop fromt Dell lass
If tha wants a new desktop I will build you a deathstar, a true beast for 7-800 notes, or a ruddy good one for 500 (mine has a silly motherboard (space for 14 hard drives! as well as being the only one I could find that can run 2 videocards at full speed, all the others run them at half speed, making it a waste of time and money....I only have one card, but have built expandability into this box) and videocard that you will not need)
Doctor? wrote: In Horrwichish.....
Buy t'laptop fromt Dell lass
If tha wants a new desktop I will build you a deathstar, a true beast for 7-800 notes, or a ruddy good one for 500 (mine has a silly motherboard (space for 14 hard drives! as well as being the only one I could find that can run 2 videocards at full speed, all the others run them at half speed, making it a waste of time and money....I only have one card, but have built expandability into this box) and videocard that you will not need)
I'll buy you one (1) top-spec laptop, kitted out with all the latest software for every person you can find in Horwich that can understand that.
Just nick one
BIGINOIL wrote:
Doctor? wrote: In Horrwichish.....
Buy t'laptop fromt Dell lass
If tha wants a new desktop I will build you a deathstar, a true beast for 7-800 notes, or a ruddy good one for 500 (mine has a silly motherboard (space for 14 hard drives! as well as being the only one I could find that can run 2 videocards at full speed, all the others run them at half speed, making it a waste of time and money....I only have one card, but have built expandability into this box) and videocard that you will not need)
I'll buy you one (1) top-spec laptop, kitted out with all the latest software for every person you can find in Horwich that can understand that.
Just nick one
Right, Hicksy, hit your It dept. send me names, and I'll split the lappers with you 50-50.
I think a PC's for NOOLers thread may be in order soon.
if you nick one BTW, scrub it, they can call home for help when they go online nowdays.
I was with Telewest, now Virgin. Nothing but good things to say to be honest.
Let me have it 
Took them a few weeks to fix the on demand function on the digibox but its works a treat now.Erm , that's it
Had broadband with em for 3+ years now and not had one problem
But of course i can't watch Sky One , Sky news etc after the fall out between Virgin and Sky.Only prog i was slightly fussed about was Lost but that was just getting silly anyway.
Got my landline with Virgin Media too.The lot for £30 a month
From what I have read, and from what's being said here, it seems that the problem is the infrasctructure that NTL/Telewest/Virgin have inherited from other telco's (as well as their own too), varies wildly accross the country, in some areas it simply buckles under the strain. Their throttling nonsense is obscene tho, if I pay for 2 million bits per second, I want two million bits each and every second. WTF is this, WW2.....imagine your telephone stopped working right between 9 and 5 cos that's when the network is busy, or your power browned out at teatime cos too may cookers were on. Throttling=3rd world internet, expecially since on MOST ISP's they also have a cap that means that two hours of internet tv, or one movie on demand and you can barely check your email for the rest of the month. Actually I worked out that the stanard admin traffic on our machines...mail server checks, DNS updates, googlebots indexing the webserver....would actually pu us over most providers' usage caps....before we use one single byte for downloading or surfing.
Welcome to backward britain yet again.
i got phone and broadband wi em, not the cheapest at £50ppm for both(too lazy to switch) ,but the broadband is superb 
Only prob i had wi em was that i wanted my tinternet connection moved from upstairs to downstairs,they wanted to charge me £75 
for the privelage,so i told em to fook off and moved it misen!
Told em i wasnae happy paying the £75 and that i was gonna fook off to sky,so got half price broadband for the next 12 months!
75 quid to move a modem and cable when all you needed was a longer wire (or wireless).
Unbelievable.
It's REALLY time I started acting as IT advisor to you lot to save you from scheisters and snake oil salesmen.
Jem's the best though....has a degree, will tackle her own walls with complex damp-sorting-out gear, but would buy a new PC to fix her internet connection, and I'm sure would suffer some sort of seizure if I suggested she upgrade her PC herself.
Someone asked me recently how I learned to build PC's (after all, it's not cheap to learn by error), especially given my (exaggerated) phobia of manuals. I replied that if one can handle one of those kid's toys, the red and blue balls full of yellow shapes, you pull it open, take the shapes out and try to get them in through the correctly shaped hole.....you can build a PC, really! The only bits I have bother with, are right at the start, putting the little screwthreaded "risers" into the case for the motherboard to screw into (10 thumbs, 2 left hands, what can I say), and right at the end when it comes to installing windos on it, easy to get a windows on....but getting one on that works and behaves in a grown up fashion is MUCH trickier (the "linux is hard to install" whiners are exclusively persons who bought PC's with windows pre-installed).
Doctor? wrote: From what I have read, and from what's being said here, it seems that the problem is the infrasctructure that NTL/Telewest/Virgin have inherited from other telco's (as well as their own too), varies wildly accross the country, in some areas it simply buckles under the strain. Their throttling nonsense is obscene tho, if I pay for 2 million bits per second, I want two million bits each and every second. WTF is this, WW2.....imagine your telephone stopped working right between 9 and 5 cos that's when the network is busy, or your power browned out at teatime cos too may cookers were on. Throttling=3rd world internet, expecially since on MOST ISP's they also have a cap that means that two hours of internet tv, or one movie on demand and you can barely check your email for the rest of the month. Actually I worked out that the stanard admin traffic on our machines...mail server checks, DNS updates, googlebots indexing the webserver....would actually pu us over most providers' usage caps....before we use one single byte for downloading or surfing.
Welcome to backward britain yet again.
Yeah, i used to work for them and this is pretty much it IMO. You might get great service on all levels, but your mate who lives 5 miles away is in an exchange area that belonged to a different telco before so his is shit. Everything from channels available to engineering practises to network quality (speeds, cabling used and so on)
Thing is, they (NTL) stopped taking over the world years ago (they were pretty much all done by 2001) so bar the merger with Telewest, they have had ages to sort these problems out, but they just seem indifferent/incompetent.
I alos worked for Sky when they launched Digital in 1999 and back then they could barely cope with the enormous increase in demand for installations, poorly tested/rushed out digiboxes, but at least (and i hate the company and everything they stand for) they fixed the problems in time.
Only prob i had wi em was that i wanted my tinternet connection moved from upstairs to downstairs,they wanted to charge me £75
Told em i wasnae happy paying the £75 and that i was gonna fook off to sky,so got half price broadband for the next 12 months!
Id have popped over and done it for £35 - Like Steve says though, it aint rocket science as you found out
Edd wrote:
Yeah, i used to work for them and this is pretty much it IMO. You might get great service on all levels, but your mate who lives 5 miles away is in an exchange area that belonged to a different telco before so his is shit. Everything from channels available to engineering practises to network quality (speeds, cabling used and so on)
Thing is, they (NTL) stopped taking over the world years ago (they were pretty much all done by 2001) so bar the merger with Telewest, they have had ages to sort these problems out, but they just seem indifferent/incompetent.
I alos worked for Sky when they launched Digital in 1999 and back then they could barely cope with the enormous increase in demand for installations, poorly tested/rushed out digiboxes, but at least (and i hate the company and everything they stand for) they fixed the problems in time.
In Belfast, where they had JUST laid fibre to the road (if not quite fibre to the kerb), their internet service was fabulous, fast switching times, good speeds, and the system was installed with a contention ratio in mind that was based on every house in the street being online, so it didn't go wobbly at 6pm. But in Bangor although their dialup was fine, they had no cable and refused to even get involved on local loop unbundling for broadband....doubly odd since they already offered LLU based phone services. Probably this was because BT were playing VERY dirty with LLU providers on dialup (they sent a lot to the wall by simply saying they'd offer the loops on such and such a date, watching all the startups try and operate their service as a loss leader to get a customer base.....and then delaying the release of the lines by almost a year, and billing the startups into extinction). Mind you, I never had any bother with NTL's tech support when I used them, at least not individually, but when major outages hit large areas....headless fucking chicken time.
These days you need to be bloody careful with who you sign up to. All in one packages are never as good as they look, the net's always capped and throttled to death, the phone service might not STILL make 999 calls, and how are you gonna call tech support (4 hours on a mobile?) when the whole connection keels over? Free=shite BTW
My bro and I were looking to upgrade the net a while back, and it took some serious vigilance to spot the "if we choose to arsefuck you, you may NOT request lube and we're feeling randy and you DO have a very cute bum" but in their T+C's. We found one package...... 2Mb/512kb (rare to find 512 up), no throttle, no caps, low contention(how they can promise this when working through a BT exchange I do not know). Four static IP addresses (hurray, no more NAT), a whack of webspace and stupid numbers of email addresss (both unimportant, we have our own web and mail servers), 24 hour support from actual geeks and other wonders. Downside? SEVENTY QUID A FRIGGIN MONTH!
just switched to talk talk, £20 a month for broadband, line rental and phone calls, not sure about limits tho, but i dont do downloads (remember kids"home taping is killing music"), does me fine for emails and browsing ebay for cheap gear, by the way, writing this on the wifes work laptop, dell, and never give us a moments trouble
