I ordered Virgin cable broadband last week as I figured I'd give it a shot.
This morning a guy came and installed the modem and I thought all would be good. That was my second mistake (I'll explain the first mistake soon).
Tried the setup CD that they insist one uses but it refused to accept that my XPS laptop has any network ports. When I finially convinced it that it has one, it refused to agree that TCP/IP was active.
On to my second PC. CD works this time but I eventually get to a point where the program errors with "error 601". Phone broadband CS.
Broadband CS took me through a manual install and everything seemed to be OK until I realised that they didn't tell me what my username and password were, and that I was only negotiating at 4Mb not the 22Mb I paid for. So, back on the phone to broadband CS who told me my account wasn't active and I needed to talk to normal CS and have my "package" activated.
On the phone to normal CS who tell me only broadband CS can do that. Back on the phone to broadband CS again only to be told that the manual install that they did for me before had been done wrong and that they would have to cancel my entire account and start again from scratch. The - admitedly very helpful - guy tried to do it there but couldn't. He put me back to general CS. On hold for 10 minutes while I wait for a CS rep to become available.
No joy with normal CS so broadband support guy took the call back.
Back at broadband CS they try and create a new account for me again, but fail. Support guy puts me on hold while he phones normal CS to try and work out what's going on.
Back at broadband support they finally work out what is wrong and create a new account and register the modem.
Now on to the username issue. Guy is having some serious trouble with this and needs to escalate it as his system refuses to allow him to create the account.
So, now I have to wait until escalations call me back.
On the plus side, the connection works and it's stupidly fast. I'm downloading OpenOffice at 2.1MB/sec which is crazy for a home link.
The final guy that helped me was excellent and really knew the systems he was using. He was just foiled by those very same systems. My hat goes off to him for sorting this out, but my problem is that it should never have been an issue in the first place.
So, it would appear that my first mistake was thinking that the Virgin broadband serice would be any better than the shocking service I got from NTL 5 years ago.
This morning a guy came and installed the modem and I thought all would be good. That was my second mistake (I'll explain the first mistake soon).
Tried the setup CD that they insist one uses but it refused to accept that my XPS laptop has any network ports. When I finially convinced it that it has one, it refused to agree that TCP/IP was active.
On to my second PC. CD works this time but I eventually get to a point where the program errors with "error 601". Phone broadband CS.
Broadband CS took me through a manual install and everything seemed to be OK until I realised that they didn't tell me what my username and password were, and that I was only negotiating at 4Mb not the 22Mb I paid for. So, back on the phone to broadband CS who told me my account wasn't active and I needed to talk to normal CS and have my "package" activated.
On the phone to normal CS who tell me only broadband CS can do that. Back on the phone to broadband CS again only to be told that the manual install that they did for me before had been done wrong and that they would have to cancel my entire account and start again from scratch. The - admitedly very helpful - guy tried to do it there but couldn't. He put me back to general CS. On hold for 10 minutes while I wait for a CS rep to become available.
No joy with normal CS so broadband support guy took the call back.
Back at broadband CS they try and create a new account for me again, but fail. Support guy puts me on hold while he phones normal CS to try and work out what's going on.
Back at broadband support they finally work out what is wrong and create a new account and register the modem.
Now on to the username issue. Guy is having some serious trouble with this and needs to escalate it as his system refuses to allow him to create the account.
So, now I have to wait until escalations call me back.
On the plus side, the connection works and it's stupidly fast. I'm downloading OpenOffice at 2.1MB/sec which is crazy for a home link.
The final guy that helped me was excellent and really knew the systems he was using. He was just foiled by those very same systems. My hat goes off to him for sorting this out, but my problem is that it should never have been an issue in the first place.
So, it would appear that my first mistake was thinking that the Virgin broadband serice would be any better than the shocking service I got from NTL 5 years ago.
Fair enough as its a double up bill for last month and this month plus £25 install charge.
