ROFL

[tech_guy]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7149931.stm

 

And you wanna go on a train or fly in a plane operated by this outfit?

[sidewinder]

Well they're only the same company in name, Virgin Media is essentially still NTL, who have always been a bit useless. To be fair though, outages are fairly rare

 

Mine was off for about 3 hours last night

[EduTech]

ROFL.... Sounds like one of microsofts routine maintenance procedures to me... after its complete problems have arrose everywhere

 

hehe made me laugh though i aint on virgin though so i'm all gd

 

James

[tech_guy]

Well they're only the same company in name, Virgin Media is essentially still NTL, who have always been a bit useless. To be fair though, outages are fairly rare

 

Mine was off for about 3 hours last night

 

Yikes!

[Andrew_C]

To be fair to NTL/Virgin (although I did loose mine last night) it is only the third glitch I've had in two years. One crossed line, a lost connection to Germany, and whatever went down last night. BT? Don't get me started... Why do you think I'm with Mr B's company?

[Joedetic]

My virgin was out last night and didn't come back on until about 9AM.

 

When my broadband was supplied by Blueyonder it was fine...since the move to Virgin it's been getting slower and slower and throttling speed and it's just rediculous now.

 

If I would afford to get a BT line installed at my house (my one at uni) I'd have ADSL because it's just rediculous now. I'm meant to be on 20meg, and whilst I don't expect anywhere near that, I expect better than what I get on my mother's 2meg line!

[maniac]

I didn't loose my broadband, but I did loose all my interactive services on the TV box, which also uses their IP network so I expect it was the same outage that was affecting that.

 

Like any communications network, it's going to break from time to time, generally I'm very pleased with the service I get from them, and it definitely has improved from when it was Telewest in my area. With Telewest I'd get constant problems with the interactive services, with virgin it only happens now and then, which I can live with.

 

Their broadband speed is awesome most of the time, except when they get tetchy with us for downloading too much when they limit it a bit, which is fair because there are 4 of us living here, and almost always one of us is downloading something big.

 

Mike.

[Oops_my_bad]

C'mon - outages due to routine maintenance are common place where i work

 

telewest/NTL/Virgin have had that much choppin and changin going on recently I'm suprised it all works at all

[webman]

My virgin was out last night and didn't come back on until about 9AM.

 

Oo-err missus!

[localzuk]

This seems to be a problem that happen to any ISP who has underwent any form of consolidation of infrastructure. Reducing the number of routers and dhcp servers is obviously a bad idea, as there will be occasions when the entire lot will suddenly request a new IP (like at the beginning of term in September when every computer in a school suddenly wants a new IP).

 

I can imagine other ISP's having the same problem sometime in the future.

 

Also, on the point of BT - the internet connection is nice and stable as far as I can see. It is the useless homehub that is the problem. To stablise it you have to turn the built in firewall off. :S

[Joedetic]

Tut tut webman. I see you're filling in for Jake?

[webman]

Yes, he's left full instructions

[mattx]

Been with Virgin since the days of Windsor Cable - anyone remember them ?

Bring back Wire TV & Screen Sport....

 

Anyway I have to say that since Virgin took over Telewest / NTL the service is nothing more than a complete and utter sh1t.

 

I had to move house for 6 months last year because my house had subsidence - the switch over to the new house took them over a week to sort.

Then the switch back after we moved back was a joke too. Took them a few days and even then the only thing that worked was the TV, I had NO phone and no broadband for a week. When the phone finally came back, the call back did not work and nor did the call divert.

Like I said - complete and utter sh1t.

 

Virgin have now lost some of the sky channels, they have put up phone charges, my broadband is up and down more times than a whore's knickers. They even have the nerve to charge when you phone them to report a problem with their broadband. They have also started to throttle IP traffic. One of their mail servers a few weeks ago was flagged as a spam sender so none of my mail would get anywhere - I filled in a support call / form for them and they did NOTHING - [ no surprise there really ]

 

So look up 'Virgin Media' in the dictionary and you will see a picture of massive pile of sh1t. [ Funnily enough they are between the Sophos and Apple entry ]

 

Now I have had a large ash tree removed from my real garden I may get a signal for sky - so unless Virgin improve within the next 6 months or so, I'll happily dump them. Branson should stick to planes or trying to get round the planet in another craft.....

[torledo]

Been with Virgin since the days of Windsor Cable - anyone remember them ?

Bring back Wire TV & Screen Sport....

 

Anyway I have to say that since Virgin took over Telewest / NTL the service is nothing more than a complete and utter sh1t.

 

I had to move house for 6 months last year because my house had subsidence - the switch over to the new house took them over a week to sort.

Then the switch back after we moved back was a joke too. Took them a few days and even then the only thing that worked was the TV, I had NO phone and no broadband for a week. When the phone finally came back, the call back did not work and nor did the call divert.

Like I said - complete and utter sh1t.

 

Virgin have now lost some of the sky channels, they have put up phone charges, my broadband is up and down more times than a whore's knickers. They even have the nerve to charge when you phone them to report a problem with their broadband. They have also started to throttle IP traffic. One of their mail servers a few weeks ago was flagged as a spam sender so none of my mail would get anywhere - I filled in a support call / form for them and they did NOTHING - [ no surprise there really ]

 

So look up 'Virgin Media' in the dictionary and you will see a picture of massive pile of sh1t. [ Funnily enough they are between the Sophos and Apple entry ]

 

Now I have had a large ash tree removed from my real garden I may get a signal for sky - so unless Virgin improve within the next 6 months or so, I'll happily dump them. Branson should stick to planes or trying to get round the planet in another craft.....

 

HAH! A WEEK ?? thas nothing, i've been waiting nearly a month for them just to activate my phone, reason being there's not enough capacity in my street (not enough clips in the cabinet, whatever that means). So we're in the ludicrous situation of waiting for someone else using the same cabinet to decide they no longer want their virgin service. Shouldn't have to wait too much longer eh readers ?

 

Same situation as you, cost me over 10 quid in mobile phone charges to phone their activation line (advise to beardy branson: ever thought people want a phone because they don't currently have an active BT line, so why the bloody 0800 and 0845 numbers just to ring your activation and support lines).

 

They're trained phone chimps promised to credt my next bill with the amounts, but lo and behold i get a letter in the post advising the dd will withdraw 23 pounds for the first months service from my bank account!!!!!.

 

I haven't signed the contract and am intending to terminate the package i ordered (phone+broadband) this week. What's the best way to go about terminating ? and should i also cancel my direct debit at the same time.

 

Virgin is shit, might go with the PO for phone service and later broadband....beardy branson should have stuck to being a record store hippy, the only good things about his empire are the hot cheese and mushroom rolls on his pendolino trains and that spaceship concept of his.

Everything else is sh1t. Ever get the feeling the wrong multi-millionaire ballonist went missing ?

[Joedetic]

Hopefully, in time, they'll get used to the merger and virgin will sort themselves out. Their network can't support the load so in my humble opinion, they don't really have the right to go offering 20meg.

 

But of course, as they were discussing on the gadget show the other night, there's the issue of wording...they have their lovely get out clause of "up to 20meg." They should consider a wording change.

[apeo]

Hopefully, in time, they'll get used to the merger and virgin will sort themselves out. Their network can't support the load so in my humble opinion, they don't really have the right to go offering 20meg.

 

But of course, as they were discussing on the gadget show the other night, there's the issue of wording...they have their lovely get out clause of "up to 20meg." They should consider a wording change.

 

Beginning to wonder we im paying more for a service thats not that great anymore.. and the "Up to" is really funny, i actually spoke to a sales person from Telewest (when it was still Telewest blueyonder) about that, and yeah i got him to admit that then can technically offer you under the bandwidth you should be getting.

[gwendes]

Knocked mine out

[tech_guy]

@torledo - ace post mate. Love the record store hippy/wrong missing balloonist bit.

[richard.thomas]

We're paying for 20meg Virgin in our house. Think that's going to get changed quite quickly as there is no way we're getting even 10meg in my opinion. When it stopped working monday night I thought that someone hadn't paid for it again

[torledo]

Hopefully, in time, they'll get used to the merger and virgin will sort themselves out. Their network can't support the load so in my humble opinion, they don't really have the right to go offering 20meg.

 

But of course, as they were discussing on the gadget show the other night, there's the issue of wording...they have their lovely get out clause of "up to 20meg." They should consider a wording change.

 

The whole up to 20meg broadband IS misleading, but the sp's are in a difficult situation, there aren't many other ways you can word it....

 

"anywhere between 2 and 20 meg depending on distance and line quality"

 

...doesn't look good on a marketing poster or billboard does it ?, they'd argue that's why they have the small print bit at the bottom in order to clarify the situation.

 

Didn't realise Virgin's cable internet service has the same speed/distance issues as ADSL. With their adsl service Virgin are in the same boat as all the other BT wholesale customers when it comes to the 20meg issue.

 

On a side note looks like beardy and his banking chums aren't going to get their hands on Northern Wreck now that the bank of england have decided to all but nationalize the failed bank. If labour and brown win the next election it will prove once and for all that we all live in 'dumb britain'

[tech_guy]

Ohhh, shame. I was looking forward to Virgin Rock or Northern Virgin as being the new name of Northern Rock......

 

....Branson is an irritating t*at.

[mac_shinobi]

Ohhh, shame. I was looking forward to Virgin Rock or Northern Virgin as being the new name of Northern Rock......

 

....Branson is an irritating t*at.

 

lmao @ virgin rock

[torledo]

Ohhh, shame. I was looking forward to Virgin Rock or Northern Virgin as being the new name of Northern Rock......

 

....Branson is an irritating t*at.

 

haha, Northern Virgin..now that would be funny

 

But no such luck it would have been plain old Virgin Money if beardy had got his way.

 

He could still get his hands on the wreck and satisfy his ego, but it no longer looks like a quick sale, which will probably work against him.

 

Anyone interested in knowing the favours Awarded to Bransons Virgin Trains and the way it's operated since 1997 should read this;

 

http://www.derbygripe.co.uk/virgin.htm

 

This i find hilarious and rather distrubing, from the article;

 

Under the plan drawn up at the time of privatisation in 1996, Sir Richard's rail interests should have been making contributions to the Exchequer, rather than the other way round. Virgin received £394m from taxpayers in 2002-3 and £514m in 2003-4 but the SRA hopes to cut the figure in the current financial year to £234m.

 

Now tell me you're not dumbfounded.

[Pottsey]

I use VM and get an odd service. Downloading programs is fine pretty close to 20meg. But webpage viewing often drops down to sub 28k modem speeds. It’s been down more then normal as well this month must be on the 6 or 7th downtime this month.

[tech_guy]

I wet myself laughing when old beardy squashed his nuts abseiling down that hotel in America recently.....