Virgin media and exploding cable modems

Well i could not believe what i was told buy technical support in a far off place called India today when i phone to sort out my cable modem.

To start off nice and simple i pay the old £25 for a 10mb connection and for the last few weeks have only been getting 2mb even after 12 at night. thinking at first i must have hit there cut off limit. But over the last few days i noticed my kids haven't used there PCs and ive had hardly any downloads or uploads for that matter going on. So after phoning there normal help desk i was put through to India broadband technical support.

Now after the nice fellow introduced himself as Steve (ill let that one go) and asked from my name "Mick". He went on to read his manuscript of how i must unplug the cable modem and re set it which i didn't complain about and just did it to keep him happy. I then re ran a test and saw i was still only connected at 2mb. Then he gladly kept reading from his screen that i must remove all my Cookies (cool this is getting interesting) and make sure my virus protector is turned off (now hes relay going some ware here) so i obliged him anyway. Then he told me to re test my line and he would check it from his end. Again still connected at 2mb lol.

Again after he came back after waffling a loading of Hindu speech to his mentor whom was sitting right next to him and then his mentor calling him Rujal (not steve) and me listening and him not knowing i understand a little Hindu my self he said "please turn off your cable modem else it may (now these are his words not mine) BLOW UP ..........."

what !!!!! he can blow up my modem all the way from India ... HOLY COW .... How can he do that .... Rujal ops i mean Steve can actually some how send a bomb down my line and blow up my cable modem or even send down more than the few volts than the line can carry and take out my modem and no one else in the street. How can he do such a thing. I started to sweat at this point and started to feel afraid that some how i have a time bob sitting in my living room waiting for some Guy in India (or is he supposed to be in the UK i never know) has a big red nob that he can hit at any time and blow up my home !!!!!!! I had to calm down and ask my lass to make me a coffee before i pee my pans with fear.

I turned round to Rujal on the phone and said "Steve were are you mate because im now worried that if i touch this bomb it might go off in my hands" he came back with im from Newport". I said "is'nt that near Newcastle ?" of which he replied with "yes its close"...... I then asked my lass to check my sleeping tablets to see if i may have taken to many .. you never know it could be just me. I then said to Rujal "Steve no offense mate but you have me very worried now that if i turn of this cable modem off it might blow up on me like you said" . He then calmed me down by explaining this could only happen if i leave it on while he runs some test's. So that calmed me down a lot now and here is me thinking that he could blow it up while i was turning it off.

So i unplugged the cable modem and told Rajal or was it Steve who resides in Newport that is near Newcastle that i had done what he had asked off me and that was to remove the fragile volatile cable modem from its power unit as he asked .....
He then told me to wait while he sends some commands to the modem and see's if he could solve this massive problem that i was having.

After about 4 min Rujal ops i mean Steve who lives in Newport near Newcastle who has the ability to blow up my cable modem in my house then came back and said "Miss Rungien" (i quickly check my genitals just in case this guy can now do gender exchange via some sort of mental telepathy or even over my cable modem line) can you please turn on back your modem (no that 's how he said it this nice UK citizen from Newport near Newcastle called Steve.....)

So i worryingly go over to my modem double checking that my genitals are still there and that my "Moob's" haven't suddenly grown into fully fledged boobs and plug back in the power supply all the while feeling a little unconformable about this simple problem.

I then tell Rujal dam done it again i mean Steve from Newport near Newcastle that has the ability to blow up my cable modem and give me a gender reassignment while all this is going on that i had done as he asked ... He then asked me miss Rugien to check my PC to see if it was now working.

I did this and holly cow its now working i have my 10Mbs back.

So i then turned round to Rujal ......dam done it again ..... i mean Steve on the phone "Thank you for sending my 10Mb Cm file and flashing my firmware on my new cable modem to what it was supposed to be, but do me a favor next time don't lie down the telephone Rujal it doesn't make your mentor who is listening in on the other end of the phone look Good and have a nice day over there in India bud" ......

........

why do they have to make up so many lies just to fix a 2 min problem ..............

Mick

Pure class!!! :laugh:

Gawd knows why they insist on lying about who and where they are. You'd think it would come from the powers that be, and if they're so embarrased about having call centres in India, why the hell did they move them there in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEPwSpvV9iU :p

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mehmeh

Pure class!!! :laugh:

Gawd knows why they insist on lying about who and where they are. You'd think it would come from the powers that be, and if they're so embarrased about having call centres in India, why the hell did they move them there in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEPwSpvV9iU :p

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lol at the film. I couldn't believe the rubbish the guy was telling me im considering sending this in a email to them. Virgin aint half annoying me lately with my speeds and the price.

Might switch because ive been with ntl before them for more than 10 years then since virgin took over we have had nothing but problem's. When they migrated across they lost all my info on our web page and locked us out of our email which took us 9 months (no joke) to get sorted.

To be honest it wouldn't bother me if Virgin went bust because hopefully a better company might take them over and do a better job ....

Has got a joke since Branson took over, dude, couldnt agree more. We're lucky down here, the network is solid and not over subscribed so we do see all our speed. But the STM and customer service has gone out the window. When I rang up to cancel, I was assured the max my phoneline will take is 6.5Mb, when I informed the lady about Be/O2 and ADSL2 in general she seemed bemused and I ended up actually explaining it to her LOL! Respect to her, she did leave the conversation saying she would do some research and might look at O2 herself cause she had a mobile contract with them. I should start charging. ;)

If your considering moving, just do it. My 10Mb line goes the 15th of March and 20Mb O2 line is already on order. With BT line rental factored in, its working out as near as damn it what I was paying VM, nough said. :)

yeh ill have a work because we will have to fork out that £120 for a line to be fitted on top. witch is not a problem but over all are the telephone calls cheaper.

thanks for that, was a chuckle to read :P

ha ha

Classsic.

well im going to let you read this -

quote from my email from Berkett, Neil Head of virgin media or some thing like that .. yes i sent it to him ...

Quote:

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thx for getting in touch; I will ask my office to review 2 things. Firstly to ensure you are now getting the service you should but secondly your concerns over our India operation. We do not hide the fact that some of our technical support is based offshore. Our people there are encouraged to use their own names (not Steve) and they should never lie about where they are based.

----- Original Message -----
From: lee wood <mlwood37@***********>
To: Berkett, Neil
Sent: Thu Feb 26 12:55:09 2009
Subject: Virgin media , exploding cable modems and lies !!!!!!

Well i could not believe what i was told buy technical support in a far off place called India today when i phone to sort out my cable modem. This is for real ..... Considering email them with this ....

To start off nice and simple i pay the old &#163;25 for a 10mb connection and for the last few weeks have only been getting 2mb even after 12 at night. thinking at first i must have hit there cut off limit. But over the last few days i noticed my kids haven't used there PCs and ive had hardly any downloads or uploads for that matter going on. So after phoning there normal help desk i was put through to India broadband technical support.

Now after the nice fellow introduced himself as Steve (ill let that one go) and asked from my name "Mick". He went on to read his manuscript of how i must unplug the cable modem and re set it which i didn't complain about and just did it to keep him happy. I then re ran a test and saw i was still only connected at 2mb. Then he gladly kept reading from his screen that i must remove all my Cookies (cool this is getting interesting) and make sure my virus protector is turned off (now hes relay going some ware here) so i obliged him anyway. Then he told me to re test my line and he would check it from his end. Again still connected at 2mb lol.

Again after he came back after waffling a loading of Hindu speech to his mentor whom was sitting right next to him and then his mentor calling him Rujal (not steve) and me listening and him not knowing i understand a little Hindu my self he said "please turn off your cable modem else it may (now these are his words not mine) BLOW UP ..........."

what !!!!! he can blow up my modem all the way from India ... HOLY COW .... How can he do that .... Rujal ops i mean Steve can actually some how send a bomb down my line and blow up my cable modem or even send down more than the few volts than the line can carry and take out my modem and no one else in the street. How can he do such a thing. I started to sweat at this point and started to feel afraid that some how i have a time bob sitting in my living room waiting for some Guy in India (or is he supposed to be in the UK i never know) has a big red nob that he can hit at any time and blow up my home !!!!!!! I had to calm down and ask my lass to make me a coffee before i pee my pans with fear.

I turned round to Rujal on the phone and said "Steve were are you mate because im now worried that if i touch this bomb it might go off in my hands" he came back with im from Newport". I said "is'nt that near Newcastle ?" of which he replied with "yes its close"...... I then asked my lass to check my sleeping tablets to see if i may have taken to many .. you never know it could be just me. I then said to Rujal "Steve no offense mate but you have me very worried now that if i turn of this cable modem off it might blow up on me like you said" . He then calmed me down by explaining this could only happen if i leave it on while he runs some test's. So that calmed me down a lot now and here is me thinking that he could blow it up while i was turning it off.

So i unplugged the cable modem and told Rajal or was it Steve who resides in Newport that is near Newcastle that i had done what he had asked off me and that was to remove the fragile volatile cable modem from its power unit as he asked .....
He then told me to wait while he sends some commands to the modem and see's if he could solve this massive problem that i was having.

After about 4 min Rujal ops i mean Steve who lives in Newport near Newcastle who has the ability to blow up my cable modem in my house then came back and said "Miss Rungien" (i quickly check my genitals just in case this guy can now do gender exchange via some sort of mental telepathy or even over my cable modem line) can you please turn on back your modem (no that 's how he said it this nice UK citizen from Newport near Newcastle called Steve.....)

So i worryingly go over to my modem double checking that my genitals are still there and that my "Moob's" haven't suddenly grown into fully fledged boobs and plug back in the power supply all the while feeling a little unconformable about this simple problem.

I then tell Rujal dam done it again i mean Steve from Newport near Newcastle that has the ability to blow up my cable modem and give me a gender reassignment while all this is going on that i had done as he asked ... He then asked me miss Rugien to check my PC to see if it was now working.

I did this and holly cow its now working i have my 10Mbs back.

So i then turned round to Rujal ......dam done it again ..... i mean Steve on the phone "Thank you for sending my 10Mb Cm file and flashing my firmware on my new cable modem to what it was supposed to be, but do me a favor next time don't lie down the telephone Rujal it doesn't make your mentor who is listening in on the other end of the phone look Good and have a nice day over there in India bud" ......


This is the sort of lies you Indian staff say to us users over the phone. I am not impressed really as i have to deal with types of cock ups when peoples modems don't work as a IT engineer. This was my own cable modem this time. Im considering from now on telling my customers to not bother with virgin media as a ISP because of the out right lies your staff tell and the really bad service that you are giving us over here in the UK.

ever since NTL got taken over by virgin the service has gone down hill. it took your company 9 months just to give me back my email account and they still haven't given me back access to my FTP account witch has now been over 1.5 years.

Ill be posting this in all the forums i can because im fed up with your company and they way ive been treated and lied to even though it was funny.

Michael lee wood





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P.s ill be framing this response !!!!!

i bet the guy forwarded that to his mates as its a good laugh

ops double post

Just a fyi, virgin didnt take over NTL. The name was already partially owned by NTL/Telewest before hand and since everyone knows virgin more than NTL they decided to switch which is why i dont get how the service has gone bad(it has).

My internet used to be fine but this week its been bad, cuts out every 10mins for about a minute but it happens for a few hours aday so if it happens again im ringing them :P. I hate the indian call centres, no affence to indians etc but i cant understand them and since they read off a script i cant get the support I need so its useless paying them crap wages for **** all help.

Id recommend threating to leave as im paying about &#163;12.50 atm for broadband and 12.5 for tv(x large tv and 10mb bb) this is due to a &#163;25 royalty bonus or something since we complained about the speed and that sky offer better(use sky as they will give you anything to stop you moving there xD).

This might explain why they have bad service this is taken direct from face book - this is there Global office at virgin Media ...

http://profile.ak.facebook.com/objec...36579_7076.jpg

Now i wonder if there looking for my sensitive modem down there some ware ...

The most annoying thing for me with Virgin was they would never accept that the problem was a network outage or something wrong at their end. Then there was the recorded message at the start of the call about doing all the basic checks and rebooting your modem etc. (As if people would not have already tried this).

Then I found when you eventually got thru to India they then read this same old 'spill' about rebooting the modem etc etc. And always eventually ended in the statement that my PC had Firewall, Antivirus, Cookie and spyware problems which were preventing me from having an internet connection.

When I asked how my computer being inflicted with all these problems could stop the whole street from having an internet service they had no answers!..... I did, I said you have a network outage in the area.

What with the always slow speed of 8.5Mb on a 20Mb connection and the frequent outages coupled with the impossibility of getting them to accept they had problems, I eventually gave up with them after being a customer for over 8 years.

Now with Be and I can only say I should have jumped ship sooner. Because I'm a distance from the exchange I can only get 8.5Mb. Its the same speed I got from Virgin but, £20 a month less. I already had a BT line so it is not like it is costing me extra for that.

As Hicks says above - "Virgin" is the same company as before, no one took them over, they simply changed their name.

This has been covered many times in this forum, have a search.

Who care whether they have been taken over or re named. They are rubbish and need to sort out the things that count..

But since they re named / re badged / re what ever they have done they have gone down the pan and slipped into the fire.

Virgin media Broadband is losing customer's very quickly and its no wonder why !!! instead of doing what they do best there expanding at a alarming rate into a section that is only good for downloading moves and multi media content at such a rate that is no good to any one. 50mbs does look good but come on who really needs that speed. 20mbs is plenty fast enough for 80% of the people out there. Yes you can have a movie in less time than it takes to make a cup of coffee but what good is that. Because after you've downloaded that movie and watched it you have to wait another 24 hours before you can do it again because you've been capped .....

First they need to learn to walk before they run. there not even walking yet and they still have the zimmer frame around them to prove it (and that they did them selfs). If they sorted out there customers problems, sorted out this capping problem, then maybe bring in 50mb broadband.

Other problems they have is they offer you "UPTO" 4Mb / 10 MB / 20 MB / 50MB

Yet they cap you at 4mb goes down to 1Mb, 10 MB goes down to 2MB, 20 MB goes down to 8MB god know what 50 Mb goes down to.

So shouldn't it say you can have a 1Mb to 4Mb / 2Mb to 10Mb / 8mb to 20mb ect ect, erm no they don't because it shows how really bad they really are ....

Let put it another you go by a nice chocolate cake it costs you £25. You take it home you decide stuff it im going to be greedy and im going to eat my cake now and im going to eat it all. Suddenly from out of the blue you wife walks in slaps you hand and gives you 1/8th of that cake and says NO you can have some more tomorrow ..... But she all so says if you fancy eating it all you will have to wait till i goto bed at 00.00 Hrs then ill let you have a bit more while i sleep ...

Or lets put it another way ..

There are 4 pcs in my house. Mine, My sons and my 2 daughters. Then there is a WII a Xbox 360 and a PS3 and my 2 x arcade systems. My son goes on UT 3 and puts up a server, My daughters go onto Cbbc and start's watching a some kids program, my other daughter decides she would like to hit Barbie world and all so send her mate a couple of photos she took that day, i decide to jump of you tube and have a laugh at the idiots that live in the world. then suddenly 10 min later my sons server dies, Cbbc decides to stutter like hell, my other daughter photo uploads keep canceling due to bandwidth problems and i just gave up on you tube all because we hit our bandwidth limit ....... Yet i am paying for a 10 mb line ...

Virgin media responds with the following, "well do it after 12 a clock at night" when every bugger is in bed ... But hold on my kids are in bed why should they have to wait till 12 at night. They are only on the net between 15:00 Hrs and 19:00 Hrs. Or if you phone India support you will probably get oh its because it raining out side and it could be effecting you line speed (trust me i have herd that a couple of time's from them) ...

Sorry but yeh the original post by me is funny but in a serious way its all so disgusting that Virgin media are a REAL bad broadband company in more way's than one and there bad customer service is just the start of it.

well i didn't get steve from newport today, nope today i had rocky from i don't know where. was just watchin some stuff i had v+'d and about 11 it just went dead, now i thought it may have been a box reboot as the online light was pulsing on/off. but it couldn't have been as the guide bar came straight back. looked over at the sacm and noticed the sync light going bloody mental, so checked the phone and dead.

so got online with my mobile dongle to check the service status, but there was nothing. so in a last attempt to find out what was happening i rang up.when this voice said "helloooooooooooo my name is rocky, how can i help" , i thought of this thread when i read it on friday. anyways it turns out that they lumped my old account and new account together without telling me, and thus instead of owing 1 months service which has just been installed, the new account has had the balance lumped from the old one (for which i've still not received the final bill on the old account) and cut me off.

"oi rocky, sort it out", so i've paid the bill for the new account to get my services back on, but told rocky/apollo/clubber t or whatever he is really called that i'm not paying the old account off until i receive the bill which has been nearly 5 weeks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mayhem

*Snip*Yes you can have a movie in less time than it takes to make a cup of coffee but what good is that. Because after you've downloaded that movie and watched it you have to wait another 24 hours before you can do it again because you've been capped *snip*

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Thats exactly the reason I have jumped ship. I know truely unmetered broadband for this price is a dream and granted most companies have policies in place so the minority don't bring the network to a stand still. What I object to is the way VM have choosen to implement the policy. Most companies give an indication of a set monthly allowance on the cheaper packages, the more expensive stuff just has the good old fair usage policy, even O2 and Be* have one of some form or another.
If you really extract the urine, you'll get asked to curb your usage, if you ignore that, sooner or later you'll get slapped with a throttle or cut off entirely I imagine. Virgin by comparison have choosen to penalise every single customer. Dare to download a game for Steam or the occasional big file and thats it, crippled! Very few customers hit the STM, hell, even I've learned how to work around it, but just the simple fact it exists is what annoys most people imo.

Would make far more sense to operate a policy similar to every other ISP and while there at it, stop this 50Mb headline grabbing rubbish, untill they are really able to deliver those speeds to the kinds of customers who will buy them, i.e Pirates! :D

While we're all having a rant. I was extremely disappointed with the upstream on the 50Mb package. 1.3Mb is common on 8Mb ADSL these days and if I understand the technology, cable connections allow for allot more?, where are the 1:1 connections, or even something a beyond the pathetic 512Kb you get on 10Mb. Internet is as much about uploading as downloading these days and imo Virgin are missing another trick. Offer decent uploads and the ratio loving pirates will come running and be happy to pay you a decent price for it too! (Then you do this thing they sometimes do in business these days, INVEST back into your infrastructure in order to maintain growth). Or you could just STM them all and if they say anything, threaten to report them to the F.B.Aye! :crazy:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mehmeh

While we're all having a rant. I was extremely disappointed with the upstream on the 50Mb package. 1.3Mb is common on 8Mb ADSL these days and if I understand the technology, cable connections allow for allot more?, where are the 1:1 connections, or even something a beyond the pathetic 512Kb you get on 10Mb. Internet is as much about uploading as downloading these days and imo Virgin are missing another trick. Offer decent uploads and the ratio loving pirates will come running and be happy to pay you a decent price for it too! (Then you do this thing they sometimes do in business these days, INVEST back into your infrastructure in order to maintain growth). Or you could just STM them all and if they say anything, threaten to report them to the F.B.Aye! :crazy:

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Would love 1:1 ratio connections. No one ever offers that and even if Virgin did from what I've read they also traffic manage the upload too :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by moogle

Would love 1:1 ratio connections. No one ever offers that and even if Virgin did from what I've read they also traffic manage the upload too :)

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Yep, no upstream limits during the daytime, but there is on an evening between 1500-2000 hours. As an idea, on my 10Mb/512k connection its 700MB. So unlike the downstream, you do have to put in some effort to hit the STM. Course no doubt all that would change if they provided more and educated/encouraged people to put it to use.

Shame, but there ya go. I'm looking forward to my 1.3Mb come next week so don't even care anymore LOL! :D

Sorry to reserect a slightly old thread....but this brings up an irritation of mine - Virgin's STM (Subscriber Traffic Monitoring) system. Talk about a sledge hammer approach.

I've been with Virgin (NTL before, Comtel before that) for a long while. I have very few problems with the service. It goes down very rarely (so rarely that I can think of few other things that are more reliable). Bandwidth stays consistent most of the time (given peak usage times and the problems you typical get across teh interwebs).

What annoys me is how STM is implemented. I saw on Steam this weekend I could play UT3 for free. I thought, "meh, why the hell not?" until I saw the download size - about 8GB. For my service level that would blow straight through the STM ceiling, and have me throttled to 25&#37; of normal bandwidth for 5 hours...and this was during the day on Saturday.

I think this is pretty ridiculous. As use of the internet increases, and demand increases as so much of our content shifts to internet based resources, more bandwidth is needed not less! This isn't going to get better, Virgin Media!

I'm not unreasonable, I know there is only so much capacity to go around, and that upgrading UBRs and cable modems is time consuming and expensive, but HONESTLY!!

It's only two weeks old so it ain't a big resurrection.

If you think VM's throttling is pretty ridiculous then switch. If you don't want to switch then let VM throttle you :P

Are you on Be/O2 now mehmeh? :)

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm switch!

Yeah perhaps I should just bite the bullet.

Email the Managing Director of Virgin Media Broadband, i emailed them about a random price increase seriously ****ty customer service. The guy i spoke to had a HEAVY and i mean HEAVY indian accent, i had to decrypt half the rubbish he spewed out. He was also very rude and unprofessional.

Had a response in the day from the MD and he personally said the guy would get a bollocking and i also received a large discounted price ;)

Mmmmmm i love complaining.

My 10mb line is constantly throttled no matter what time it is. Usually down to 2mb (which i paid an extra tenner a month to upgrade from) or 4mb.

Its an absolute disgrace. I realise they have peak times and fair usage policies but I can't use it when I'm in bed or at work.

Gonna check my contract because I'm cancelling as soon as I can.

Yhe just email the MD if you need his email ill post it on here. allso say ive been reading the thread on here about the Exploding modem and every thing it says is true lol ... Me im still on virgin for the moment as we cannot lose our telephone number just yet ....

Well, been told my 2mb is going up to 10mb free next month!!

Even if it goes down to 2mb now and again i will still be happy!!