Changing Internet Service Provider

[Frances_iom]

I use BT + manxTelecom - the latter is local, I can describe problems to a local techie who will phone back etc; BT is polite but based in India - not always understandable and if you don't run Windows then they are completely thrown - and as others have pointed out getting the problem raised to a level that can fix line faults etc can be a right problem - I also help out with a friend who being severely disabled has an alarm button - one techie came and fixed a new master socket as the internet connection had become significantly worse - he never checked that he had also disconnected the alarm ! however once I'd got thro to a supervisor they were very good and sent an engineer out immediately on a sunday morning to sort out the problem. They also found a bad external link in a nearby outside interconnection box as the probable cause tho the internal house wiring was also redone. I've heard too many horror stories of Virgin cable to want to use them but then a bad reputation lingers longer than most companies realise.

[mangerton]

I've heard too many horror stories of Virgin cable to want to use them but then a bad reputation lingers longer than most companies realise.

I may just have been lucky, but I've had Virgin cable for 9 years. I can count the number of service faults on one hand. They recently upgraded the service to 30 Mbps at no cost to me. An engineer visited and installed a new hub, and all (touch wood!) has been well. I checked a few minutes ago, and the download/upload speeds were 31.07 and 1.95 Mbps.

On the downside, while some of their helpline staff are excellent, others are less so, and their IVR messages are both patronising in content and in delivery.

[Lateralthinking1]

I may just have been lucky, but I've had Virgin cable for 9 years. I can count the number of service faults on one hand. They recently upgraded the service to 30 Mbps at no cost to me. An engineer visited and installed a new hub, and all (touch wood!) has been well. I checked a few minutes ago, and the download/upload speeds were 31.07 and 1.95 Mbps.

On the downside, while some of their helpline staff are excellent, others are less so, and their IVR messages are both patronising in content and in delivery.

Thanks mangerton and Frances_iom. I am still on the road to BT although there is time to change my mind. TT were unable to advise today whether I should transfer on the expiry date, the day before it or the the day after, or what would happen in each of those scenarios. I've decided to transfer on the expiry date itself as looking again at the commencement date of their contract, it implies that the expiry date is included in their contract. That should mean not getting cut off and reduce the penalty for early leaving to little or nil.

When I placed my initial order with BT ten days ago, and paid the 12 months of line rental up front, I realised as soon as I had put the phone down that I had got even the approximate commencement date wrong. I had asked for it to be 24 days early from the time I wanted the service to be transferred! I immediately rang them back but they said that they couldn't change it on that day as their computer system can only change the commencement date 30 days ahead of any new date provided. At that time we were 39 days ahead so instead they asked me to ring to change it today.

This I did but I was then advised that I should have been given more information back on 11 June, namely that if I wanted to change the date today, they would have to cancel the order, refund the money, and reorder as more than 7 days had elapsed since my initial call. Even in doing this, reordering was not possible today as any ordering has to be done inside a 15 day window of the new commencement date so I would have to wait to the start of next month to do it.

Fortunately they then changed their minds and decided that the change of date could be made today, that they would retain the money paid and the order would stand. Actually "should" stand. If anything goes wrong with their computer system and it starts to indicate that the original date still applies, they have made copious notes to ensure that I will not be billed for more than a month of not having the service at all. Obviously none of this would have been discussed with two-way understanding if there had been a language barrier.

[Lateralthinking1]

.....The last 24 hours - hell on earth.

[Frances_iom]

.....The last 24 hours - hell on earth.

why - withdrawal symptoms, poor grasp of Hindi or hassles with Nat West ? - or maybe just too many R3 breakfasts ?

[gurnemanz]

I was on an old BT tariff called Anytime until a year ago. Without properly informing me what was happening, they phased it out and put me on a new one (Total Broadband Option 1) with only 10GB per month, which I easily exceeded. When I complained by phone mentioning a potential change of provider, I got an apology and an offer of a free hub and going onto Option 2 with 40GB with the first 6 months free - which seemed fair enough. I can't compare with other providers but since then I have been quite happy. I recently also got a nice little HTC Wildfire Android smartphone, as a very light user on Pay As You Go and have found that can save a bit of money when out and about by going online using BT Wifi instead of paying for 3G. You just have to get to know where the hotspots are.

[Lateralthinking1]

why - withdrawal symptoms, poor grasp of Hindi or hassles with Nat West ? - or maybe just too many R3 breakfasts ?

Was transferred to BT 24 days earlier than I requested.

Then the internet wouldn't work. Stayed up all night - getting on for three hours of conversation with engineers, some of their accents quite broad and technicalities hard to understand, me following their advice and typing reams of numbers into the computer, changing and rerunning systems (!), then crawling on the floor dismantling wires, turning wires around, changing sockets, trying old modems, tearing my hair out, at one point losing all ability to cope.

In the middle of it all, an outage locally for four hours, which threw in a complete red herring. Mixed messages being given to me - it will take 3 hours, 48 hours, 10 days to repair. All the while continuous blue lights. They were convinced I had connected it up incorrectly. I said no and on that I was, in the end, proven right.

Ultimately got a helpful, clear assistant - the fourth - who spent ages on it but eventually gave up. Then onto his supervisor, also helpful and clear. She decided that my Lan port wasn't working and that I needed an adapter to connect via USB.

So then it was off to the computer shop to see a bloke who dodged the key question - whether he had the item in stock - three times. Instead he wanted me to transport the computer to him, he would open it up and install some other thing. After 20 minutes, I said thanks but no thanks and walked out. In a second shop, I bought an adapter for £30 - a complete gamble as I didn't really know what it was I was supposed to be buying or whether it would address the issue - but it has worked.

Had it not done so, I had made up my mind to ditch the computer completely. Problem was that I had already paid 12 months line rental in advance and no doubt faced an enormous cancellation fee too.

Now I need to find out what TT will charge for my leaving early. BT have said I can have this first month for free (apart from the line rental) which they hope will cover the penalty charges but obviously not the unexpected £30 as well.

[robk]

May be a bit tangential to topic but a man came from Virginmedia today and replaced my modem. He says I have a 60 Mb Broadband connection now which is nice. The modem is also a router which was fine until I tried to connect my Squeezebox Touch which couldn't connect.
His solution was to disable the router and connect my old one using the Virgin device as a modem only. This is a shame because it means two boxes instead of one and because my router is several years old and may not last much longer.
Has anyone solved this one?

[Anna]

She decided that my Lan port wasn't working and that I needed an adapter to connect via USB.

Lat, is your computer really old? When I changed to BT I was glad to get rid of a clunky Virgin USB connection and it was just plug and play with the Hub and an ethernet cable. It's not really recommended to connect via USB.

Apart from that, how's it been?

[Frances_iom]

Apart from that, how's it been?

I presume Lat is on a windoze box - which deliberately make it hard to find anything or to run diagnostics - the computer to modem/router should be easy to test as generally set up with controller on IP address 192.168.0.1 all you need do is see if you can access that in the browser (http://....) should with modern equipment require a unique PIN/password to gain access to admin page, now you can then check what IP address your computer has been given and at same time plug in any other devices and see that these are recognised - then try setting up any wifi devices then set up the external connection but always have a LAN cable you can trust to check out initial link. Unless you had a museum vintage computer with a BNC Lan connection it should work - as Anna says using a USB/LAN should be a last resort especially if you have an old PC the internal Lan cards cost less than £10. It is rare for Lan cards to fail so I'd double check you have plugged it into the LAN and not forced it into a modem connection and that the plug is sitting home properly. Iff all you have is a wifi connection then go buy a short bit of LAN cable as saves much hassle now and later when the wifi fails.

[Lateralthinking1]

Thanks Anna and Frances_iom for your comments and Anna, thank you too for asking about me. I've just had a sleep!

I think I bought my desktop computer in 2006. Don't know whether that means it has a museum vintage BNC Lan. BT denied the issue of incompatibility when I suggested it as they would do. They no longer do USB connecting routers.

I don't know whether the Lan socket ever worked as I don't think I have ever used it. The computer had a very major breakdown in 2009 - I couldn't even get into the start page. Somehow six hours of advice then from Dell and Tiscali with me following their instructions managed to get it on track but maybe something happened to the Lan at that time.

No windoze box I think. I was typing in 192 etc frequently last night among many other things. It never enabled me to access Internet Explorer. The ethernet cable clicked in at each end every time - I must have tried 40 times - but there were never lights where the ethernet connected at Lan. Only clear blue lights on the hub. Another ethernet cable didn't work either. The cd kept going to a page saying "plug in your ethernet cable" when it was plugged in and was stuck in an internal loop. I temporarily dismantled firewalls and tried the old modem too to no avail.

Some of your other comments ring true. The first shop guy just kept on saying that I should have a new internal Lan card - £10 to buy plus £11 to fit it unless I did the latter. He also mentioned a possible issue with faulty drivers? I didn't want to start opening up the computer. Also the latter would have taken time and BT were checking at 1pm with me to see how I was doing - I wanted to say more than "still not sure", and I don't have a car. The second shop guy said that he doubted it was the Lan socket as they rarely go wrong, hence a gamble. What I got from him was a Belkin wired gigabit ethernet USB network adapter. It plugs neatly into the USB at one end and links the ethernet cable with the hub at the other. It has a strong blue light and is up to 1000 mbps.

Is there any major reason why that should be a problem? I would be interested to know. More generally I am told it could take 10 days for the service to settle down as that is a common thing but it already isn't cutting out half hourly like TT did - in fact not at all, it feels fantastic by comparison, touch wood - although the phone signal is worse, ie rather faint and crackly.

[Frances_iom]

..st had a sleep!

I think I bought my desktop computer in 2006. ...Somehow six hours of advice then from Dell ....

a 6 year old Dell (unless built for the business market) is approaching museum or scrap heap time - must be running XP + dell are notorious for some non-standard features in hardware - quite likely a driver problem and you don't sound the person to be able to fit and install a new Lan card - you can buy reconditioned Dells of that vintage for about £60 or less (depends on how much warrenty is given tho I certainly wouldn't buy one as repairs will cost too much) tho I'd suggest putting money towards a newer laptop - the saving in electricty costs of a newer lower power machine would be at least £50 a year if not more.

[Lateralthinking1]

a 6 year old Dell (unless built for the business market) is approaching museum or scrap heap time - must be running XP + dell are notorious for some non-standard features in hardware - quite likely a driver problem and you don't sound the person to be able to fit and install a new Lan card - you can buy reconditioned Dells of that vintage for about £60 or less (depends on how much warrenty is given tho I certainly wouldn't buy one as repairs will cost too much) tho I'd suggest putting money towards a newer laptop - the saving in electricty costs of a newer lower power machine would be at least £50 a year if not more.

frances_iom - Thank you for your advice. It is on XP. I have my documents saved on memory stick. The cost benefits of a new laptop are useful to know and I will think about it although it is a big outlay. One thing that puts me off - am I really the only person who dislikes wide screen intensely? Ever since I got a TV some years ago with a wide screen, I've rarely watched it.

[Dave2002]

A flat we are about to buy in Scotland has previously been linked to the Virgin media fibre optic network. If we have broadband in that flat which is clearly fibre enabled, is Virgin the only option? I've no objection to Virgin, but it does seem anti-competitive if that's the only possibility. Mind you, compared with some of the ADSL providers it may be a blessing that we don't have to go back to using ADSL.

[Pegleg]

A flat we are about to buy in Scotland has previously been linked to the Virgin media fibre optic network. If we have broadband in that flat which is clearly fibre enabled, is Virgin the only option? I've no objection to Virgin, but it does seem anti-competitive if that's the only possibility. Mind you, compared with some of the ADSL providers it may be a blessing that we don't have to go back to using ADSL.

I'm no expert, but you could start by checking what is available via your local exchange at http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search