Advice needed!

[AledJ]

Right around March time my dad bought the t-mobile we n walk stick. He was told that this would be able to replace our existing broadband (2mb line with virgin media) and get speeds of up to 7.2 mps. Now we have been using it for a few months and its been painfully slow. Speed test show ranges from 300 kbps down to 50 kbps. Now in one day when i was using to search for jobs the speed went up and down 10 times at least. It drops connections even though it shows a strong signal. Now i know that this mobile stick thing uses the mobile phone network, but this was not explained to my dad.

Last week we give t-mobile a call to try and sort this out. We go through different setting in the web n walk program and no better. So we get sent a new modem stick! Works ok from around 11am till about 2pm and then back to the drop outs and dial up speeds.

T-mobile are refusing to cancel the contract!! Is there any advice on how to get out of it?

I mean this product has been miss sold completely. How can it be described as a broadband service? At best its a dial up service!! Speeds are dreadful! And it was sold to us on the notion that it could replace our cable broadband.

Any help would be appreciated!

[Stringent]

The key statement here which is used in all broadband contracts is 'up to', which covers their bums. IMO wireless broadband is worse than a wired one.

No idea how you get out of it, I doubt you will be able to. If you can go down to a lower tariff then do and get cheap wired broadband again.

[chicken]

It might be worthwhile asking your local Citizen's Advice Bureau as there's been a lot of fuss over mis-selling broadband in general recently so they might have some procedures in place to help you cancel your contract by now.

[AledJ]

We never got rid of our normal broadband thank god!

Will give the Citizen's Advice Bureau a call tomorrow.

Oh and a bit off topic- anyone know if virgin media have sky one back on their channels? I'm going to be lost without Prison Break lol (sad i know)

[Stringent]

No there is no Sky One on Virgin still. Probably won't be.

[AledJ]

No there is no Sky One on Virgin still. Probably won't be.

Bummer! ah well will have it recorded instead.

Anyway, i can't believe how dumb t-mobile are! My sisters mobile is out of contract in a month and my dad said to them cancel the broadband stick and he'll take this 18 month contract. But no instead of having £30 a month for 18 months they want £12. Now i'm no business person but that's just daft.

[Lucio]

The key statement here which is used in all broadband contracts is 'up to', which covers their bums. IMO wireless broadband is worse than a wired one.

There's also a secondary provision on that, there's a minimum defined speed that the service must be capable of meeting and sustaining for it to be advertised as broadband. Atm I believe it's 300kbs so if the service is constisantly failing to meet that level, you can argue that what has been sold isn't broadband and thus was misadvertised.

[CaseyV9]

I have T-mobile thingy. I connect to the net with my mobile phone.
And it can be a very crappy service. I got a letter at the begining of the month from them.
Apparently I have gone over my 3GB data limit. They won't charge me for it but if I do it again they will cut my connection speed to 65kbps. Bloody hell, I thought to myself. I'm lucky if I can get it running at 50kbps.

How the hell I went over 3GB I'll never know. I don't think there are enough hours in the month to rack up that much at the speed it runs.

The other thing being is keeping an eye on it. On the My T-Mobile account it does list what you have used. In KB. So one week in to the month there are pages and pages listing everthing. the only way to find out would be to add up pages and pages of it. Even calling them up was useless.

Luckily I'm near the end of my contact and have the option to pay of my contact early.

[Gerrard]

I once got a letter stating I had used 1.7Gb in a month, and if this happened again I would be limited. The only problem was that I was on the 3Gb package! However, in their defence, when I phoned I got an English guy straight away who explained their was a bug in their usage monitoring system not recognising the 3Gb package properly, and to ignore the letter as the throttling system was separate and I wouldn't be throttled.

I used to use T-Mobile WnW when I was waiting for BT to get its act together and install a phone line (7 months it took them!). When I could receive a 3G signal (which was most of the time), I was getting a fair 400kb connection. Then they upgraded the area to the HSDPA, which in theory would allow 2Mb. However, the complete opposite happened. In the evening, I wasn't even reaching dial-up speeds (my phone was compatible). During the day it was fine though and I was getting the higher speeds. Luckily, I only had to put up with this for a month.

[CaseyV9]

That's the benefit of having internet as an extra on top of our phone contact - only about £12.50 for internet and the use of your phone as a modem for your PC. You an easily stop it.

Trouble is finding another phone company who can deliver.