broadband services ... dont you just love em?
interpolator
As I finally buy a new laptop to replace the pc that burnt out shortly after I moved house, and experience a few problems getting online ... it now turns out that t*scali are just getting round to switching my broadband from my old address to my new one. A full thirteen months after I moved
That's nice of them, isn't it?
Time to collect my refund and cancel, I think. Anyone recommend a UK provider who aren't a shower of clowns?
That's nice of them, isn't it?
Time to collect my refund and cancel, I think. Anyone recommend a UK provider who aren't a shower of clowns?
Replies
Im now on virgin broadband and it seems ok but I havent tried downloading big 1GB files much or anything because Im at a house with 3 people.
My advice would be to check the forums of the provider your interested in, if its busy and all the news is bad then its maybe not a good idea to join.
We've been calling their helpdesk for months now, trying to get their broadband set up. After some 50-odd hours calling them (much of it on hold, naturally), we've been told both our computers have faulty usb-ports, our registries are broken, we need to re-install windows, and they've tried to send us five modems, which I wish I accepted since I could sell them all now. After all these months (in which we also found out BT had never actually physically connected our line, which is fun since we paid a fine for leaving them before our contract was up) the top helpdesk-guy says we should just cancel. Great, we think, since Orange seemed the better option anyway, on second thought. But now Tiscali wont release our line, so we need to open a NEW fucking line with BT so we can move to Orange for our broadband (but not for our phoneline, because that'd mean paying BT that fine AGAIN)
I blame Indianboy. YOU'RE TERRIBLE HELPDESK MATERIAL!
Has anyone had any experience with Orange (in london?)? Their helpdesk hasn't yet outright lied to us yet, and better yet, they've not outright lied to us in English, which is nice.
Also, I hope you get that refund, danr, because we/ve been promised several by several people (by friday at the latest, I promise!) and never received anything, even after several attempts. Make sure they even ASK your account-number
I also had a really good experience with Blueyonder cable broadband up in Scotland, basically I signed up for the 2mb service, then a couple of months later they dropped the price, then they doubled it to 4mb, then they dropped the price again, then they increased it to 10mb... so that was nice.
just got a router, so broadband is not only faster, but never off.
I had tiscali and it was generally slow as dial up. utter waste of time
bottom line - providers are normally ok until you got a problem. then they all suck equally in my experience. been only through three or four in ten years tho.
never had any real troubles apart from they would often go down late at night and the email would occasionally be off.
day to day though they were ok.
While AOL speed and reliability were both good, there was a couple of downsides.
1) Couldn't get XBox 360 working wirelessly for love nor money (see point 3).
2) Unless you use AOL's own bloatware, you can't send more than 1 email per half hour or thereabouts. I use and like Outlook and AOL is a real pain in the ass in this respect.
3) The Indian call centers are a total waste of time and 100% useless.
So, after being promised that the broadband would be connected in max 8 days (on top of the year-plus-change) I wait adsl-signalless till day 12 and the saturday in which I can waste my own time rather than work time sitting on hold ...
So after 40 minutes on hold
"I'm sorry sir, it will take another 7-10 days to be able to connect you"
"No it won't, you will do it today"
"I'm sorry sir but ..."
"No, listen, I can put this phone down, get in touch with any of your competitors and they will set me up an account, switch on the line, deliver a free wireless router, and I can be online quicker than it will take you to switch on the line I am currently paying for. You will do it today"
"Ill have to pass you through to my manager"
20 minutes of hold later, the line disconnects and dumps me back at the main menu
So - select cancellation. The cancellation team aren't open on a saturday. So, onto billing. And although billing can see fit to take money for a service they aren't providing, they are somehow powerless to stop taking money, or in fact, do anything with my account other than give me the number of the cancellation team and the info that they're only open monday-friday 9-6.
Gobsmacking, really.
I'm thinking of doing the easiest thing and going with Sky broadband since I've always been impressed with their customer service regarding the satellite telly. Anyone have any experience, good or bad, with sky?
Edit - signed up to sky already: ten quid a month for 16mb, unlimited use, no set up fee and a free router - not even worth deliberating as far as I could tell.
Aye, I know I'm a moaning fucker these days, but when utility companies start pissing about, I just go right to the independent bodies and let them deal with it.
now, you have to remind me ... where does the internet keep the streaming pornography?
I'm terrified of what kind of broadband I'll end up having there, and what kind of restrictions they'll slap on my usage. I subscribe to all the shows over at Revision3.com in HD, so I'm sure that's enough to traffic shape my ass off, especially since they are delivered using bit torrent tech..
Anyways, any of you local (or in-the-know) guys have any advice on what to get? A few of the flats I've looked into renting can get Virgin broadband fibre, which -sounds- promising on paper..
Reflex cable wasn't even cable, it was 1 cable modem distributing the network as 100K to each subscriber. Optimum Online was slow and always down. I'd call you and explain about the outage and they would deny it.
no download limits, but if you've gone over your daily allowance they'll shape you between 4pm and midnight.
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how can you go over your daily allowance if there is no download limits? and "daily" not monthly?
I have no limitations here in Sweden so im just curious how stuff works (in other locations).
Good luck East!
From what I can tell it's common practice to have limits on the Internet connections in the UK. It probably partially is because of the really bad copper they have there, and the infrastructure as a whole. Even fibre providers seem to claim they have unlimited access, while, as Marine says, there's still an allowance.
I'm okay with that if there's an -actual- need for it, and not just an artificial, imposed way to keep costs down below a threshold for the sake of pure gold in the coffers.