What is it with ISPs?????

[catgate]

After asking questions on WF about the quality of alternative ISPs and also looking at several uSwitch type sites I decided that Onetel should get the chop, and since I do not need 8M and and 2Gig I would go with either Virgin or Tiscali. Neither of them seemingly were "out of the top drawer" but seemed to be in the upper quartile in the customer satisfaction stakes.

I spoke to Sanjeev's sister at Onetel and aske for a MAC. She offered me a £12.99 per month fee in place of our current £19.99 per month (for the same contract) but I explained that cost was not the real motivational factor. I got a MAC in an email a couple of days later.

I tried to sign up with Virgin "online" only to find that, like the man who could not swim but fell in the sewer, I could only go through the motions. Whenever I hit the return key to send the completed form I was presented with a new blank form. I waited a few hours and tried again. Same result. So I rang their help line and got a chap who sounded to be in the Orkneys. He told me that what was wrong was that I had not had the Num Lock key down. So with this helpful advice I resolved to sign up by 'phone. I tried but was told that the office was closed and I should try the following morning.

I tried the following morning and after going round the roundabout of "if you want this press that" a couple of times, and then being dumped out onto the pavement I decided that I did net really want that sort of service either. I was trying to get away from that. So Tiscali was the next port of call.

I did not try any fancy "online" stuff I just rang them, about last Friday, and got a very nice polite helpful young lady who did not appear to be the usual Tiffany or Sharron.

I gave her my name and address, and as usual, because is is not Smith of 1 The High Street, Leeds, I spelled it out for her. She said, "Oh you not related to xxxx, on TV are you?" "No, but you are not the first to ask.." etc, and the rest of the transaction was carried out apparently efficiently and smoothly.

I was told I would be transferred in a couple of weeks or so.

On Tuesday of this week I got a letter addressed to someone whose name has several of the letters that appear in mine. His address likewise has the words "The Orchard" in it but the rest was but only distantly relative to fact. What they had managed to get right was the bank account number and sort code (surprise surprise). The letter asked me to check that the details were correct and if not "get in touch as soon as possible" and they kindly gave me an 0870 number to ring (bloody cheek).

Now I am not really bothered if they have me down as the Queen of Sheba (well OK ..King then) but I was worried that they had not got me down as "unlimited ..20Gig ..£200 per month" so I decided to ring them (thank heaven for "SayNoTo0870").

After three quarters of an hour of riding the Tiscali roundabout, and being dumped on the pavement so many times that my sitting muscles were sore I did eventually get to a real live person who said she would try to find the person I needed to speak to..." Oh I'm sorry he is not there. Do you mind waiting a minute till I try to find him?" At that point I said I did mind because I had just spent what seem like the last twenty years of my life fruitlessly pouring money into their 0870 kitty (fib really because I had got a geographical number...but it was still costing me a shed load of cash). She said she would get someone to ring me back as soon as possible. An hour and a half later still no call, and having spent all morning ringing and waiting for Tiscali we had not gone to do our scheduled shopping. So I rang them again. I only went round the roundabout a couple of times and only fell off once before getting a real live meat person, to whom I explained, again, and said I would like some action, but due to the mornings pantomime we would be out from then until 4.00pm, and if action was not forthcoming I would be off down to the bank, like rat up a drainpipe, and cancel the DD.

Needless to say there was no action and so that evening I wrote a letter to the woman whose signature facsimile and name appeared on the bottom of the letter, and whose claim to a seat on the right hand of the chairman was that she was "Head of Billing Operations". I again said that I wanted confirmation that my contract was as agreed and not altered in line with the hash that had been made of the name and address part.

Obviously there has not been time for me to receive that assurance yet, but yesterday I received another letter from them with again the same wrong name and address (but it got here) telling me that "You can expect to receive your Broadband installation kit, including modem, within working 10 days. We will be contacting you during this process via your contact email address above. Please check this regularly for updates."

"within working 10 days." Sanjeev's sister again?

This afternoon we came in from a trip out....we went to Hornsea mere...sad pair aren't we? Well we've never been before and it was such a nice day here. When we got our tea poured out I sat down to see if a message I was expecting had come, in only to find that we had suffered an outage,, or an uppage or perhaps an onage, on this machine. So I went and booted up the 98SE machine and that was the same. I could not decide if this was Onetel operating as normal or if it was something more serious. However after a couple of hours it was still the same so I began to wonder if I had been MACed and not notified. But how could I have been switched without being informed? And anyway I was not any where near my working days 10, and if I had been on dial up I would needing be of my Broadband kit installation which not have was I got.

So I went into the router and switched to my new persona electronis and damn me I am on Tiscali. The whole thing is like being afloat on a raft with no smoke on the horizon. Onetel must have cut me off , because I can not get on there, yet I can still receive (up to half an hour ago) emails sent to my onetel email addy. All truly Christian...in that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing and some one somewhere is making money from the collection. I feel sure both ISPs will have theirs fingers in my wallet at the same time.

Watch this space.

[Scarecrow Man]

http://www.dslreports.com/

Reviews on almost every ISP.

EDIT: Sorry Most of this site is North America only. But they do have a UK forum.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/ukbb

or

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/

[artist]

I swapped from Virgin to Tiscali a few years ago and have no bad problems with them. It's very easy to change packages and if there seems to be a problem it is on their forum for you to see why.

(It's a good forum too)

I've got the 2Mbps with evening and weekend telephone calls free. The speed is a constant 2.3 - plenty for me. I am happy with them for the moment.

It usually comes quite high on any list of customer satisfaction.

I couldn't sleep - started the morning with a laugh after reading your list of problems. I'm sure they see you coming, Catgate!

:D

[Watchful]

I'm the same as artist, sleep-wise, and your long post has given me the first smile of the day. Thanks for that

It's good how a sense of humour gets you through life's little complications isn't it?

Being serious for a moment, I began with Tiscali and dropped them for inefficiency; likewise Orange. I am now with BT at £8.99 per month for a limited time and the whole thing was set up over the 'phone by a nice young lady, very well-spoken, and, touch my head, have had no problems since.

The whole package is tied in with your phone bill though and you don't receive the benefit of the low charges until the year end but I now pay a fixed monthly sum on DD for the duration of the initial contract which I think is 18 months and you are credited, hopefully, at the end of it. They work out your monthly payment according to your telephone usage.

I'll work it all out and see whether it has been value for money at the end of that time. Fingers crossed B)

[Watchful]

PS Catgate, nothing wrong with Hornsea....I've been there once

[artist]

PS Catgate, nothing wrong with Hornsea....I've been there once

Bit far to go from here for the day.....

[andsome]

I thought that I had started reading a novel. :lol: :lol: Funny the bother you had with Virgin. We are satisfied on their 4 MB service, always getting well over 3.5 download. We have a telephone package with ALL geographical calls and standing charge for £20 per month, and over 100 TV channels for £1 per month, (special offer ).

[CurlyWhirly]

Funny the bother you had with Virgin. We are satisfied on their 4 MB service, always getting well over 3.5 download. We have a telephone package with ALL geographical calls and standing charge for £20 per month, and over 100 TV channels for £1 per month, (special offer ).

Perhaps they are talking about Virgin's ADSL service which is reputed to be dire.

Their Cable service (which your on) generally has a good reputation.

[catgate]

Perhaps they are talking about Virgin's ADSL service which is reputed to be dire.

Their Cable service (which your on) generally has a good reputation.

You fill me to the brim with confidence!!!

The only saving factor is that no matter how bad it is it will be impossible to out do Onetel.

[andsome]

Funny the bother you had with Virgin. We are satisfied on their 4 MB service, always getting well over 3.5 download. We have a telephone package with ALL geographical calls and standing charge for £20 per month, and over 100 TV channels for £1 per month, (special offer ).

Perhaps they are talking about Virgin's ADSL service which is reputed to be dire.

Their Cable service (which your on) generally has a good reputation.

We have been on cable since the earliest days of NTL round here. The backup used to be awful, but we have no problems now. All in all I am very satisfied. :D

[catgate]

Perhaps they are talking about Virgin's ADSL service which is reputed to be dire.

Their Cable service (which your on) generally has a good reputation.

You fill me to the brim with confidence!!!

The only saving factor is that no matter how bad it is it will be impossible to out do Onetel.

Well I was wrong. It looks as though Tiscali can out do Onetel...though they do it for slightly less money.

Apart from the first honeymoon period, after a week or so of being partially on Tiscali and partially on Onetel (don't know how) things seemed to be Ok. But then the BT line went down ...again. (A six monthly event resulting in us being on first name terms with most of the OutReach chaps). Eventually after a fortnight we were up and away again. All seemed well until I got a bill from BT for the next quarters line rental in advance. They insisted we were still with them despite my having received letters from both BT and Tiscali giving the date of my switch over, which was at the end of the preceding quarter. When I checked with Tiscali I was told BT were correct. Just quite how they could both send me confirmations that were duff is quite beyond me.

However the nice "upto 2Mps" has now become ""less than 2Mps" a.m. and "down to 200kps" p.m.(lateish afternoon till bedtime or after").

The purpose of this post is to ask if anyone else is having Tiscali-ism. It looks to me to be down to Tiscali because my set up is obviously quite happy to deal with 2Mps in the morning.

Traffic Shaping. It sounds like some euphemism thought up by one of Gordon's advisers

Could I be MACing again?.

[CurlyWhirly]

Traffic Shaping. It sounds like some euphemism thought up by one of Gordon's advisers

Yes Tiscali do traffic shape quite heavily :(

Source: http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/caps.htm

[catgate]

Thanks for the link, Curly.

It looks pretty dire to me. It has certainly got much worse over the last few weeks. I thought at first it was Christmas traffic, but it has not gone away as I hoped it might.

[Watchful]

Thanks for the link, Curly.

It looks pretty dire to me. It has certainly got much worse over the last few weeks. I thought at first it was Christmas traffic, but it has not gone away as I hoped it might.

All I can say about Tiscali is that I would never go back to them after bad experiences and their helpline was abysmal

I'm with BT now.

[artist]

I have absolutely no problems with Tiscali at all! I'm on 2Mbps and constantly get 2.3.

Have only had one small blip when I couldn't get connected. The forum people there were very helpful. It turned out to be a computer problem in the end.

In the computer mags I read Tiscali is always up there in the top 3 for customer satisfaction.

Previously I had been happy with Virgin for 3 years.

[Watchful]

I have absolutely no problems with Tiscali at all! I'm on 2Mbps and constantly get 2.3.

Have only had one small blip when I couldn't get connected. The forum people there were very helpful. It turned out to be a computer problem in the end.

In the computer mags I read Tiscali is always up there in the top 3 for customer satisfaction.

Previously I had been happy with Virgin for 3 years.

You do surprise me artist Completely the reverse to my experiences with them. My problems were mainly on the accounts side, I wasn't too bothered about speed, but I never had a reply from the same person twice and had to roll out the whole story from the beginning with each e-mail. Life's too short.

[catgate]

I had a telephone call this morning..just after eight o clock.

At the other end of the line was a gentleman of Asian stock who, amongst much incomprehensible burbling, uttered "Tiscali". So at last there was a clue.

It transpired that he wanted to know what the current download speed was at that time (I think). So I switched on, booted up, and tested. It was unsurprisingly 2.3Mps.It is of that order during the morning.

This point had been reached in a very unsatisfactory way over something like ten minutes. The problem was that although he may well have been able to speak understandable English to another Asian he was for the most part incomprehensible to me even when I could hear him clearly, which was for less than 10% of the time.

I would say "Sorry ...I can not hear you properly." There would be a moments pause and he would then say "Can you hear me now." quite clearly., and off we would go again. But as he was speaking it sounded as though he was gradually turning away from the mouth piece and slowly going off, out into another room.

I would shout,"HELLO" and back he would come "Can you hear me now."....."Yes that is Better"........"mumble, mumble".... "HELLO"..." Can you...".ad infinitum.

To some extent the fact I could not hear him was purely incidental, because even when I could hear him I did not have the foggiest idea what he was saying. As he spoke, out came just one long word, with no apparent breaks in it.

So eventually I explained, although whether he understood me is questionable, that continuing the conversation was futile because his pronunciation of the English language, whilst undoubtedly infinitely better than my effort at Pujabi would be, was still totally unsatisfactory to do what he was being paid to do.

We adjourned the competition.

Shortly afterwards I got an email--

Response (Damodar Sarode) - 29/01/2008 08.37 AM

Hello,

Apologise for the delayed response to your email.

Further to our conversation today , , we had discussed the following issues:

1. Slow speed.

As per observations , you are getting broadband speed upto 2.4 Mb. As you stated that you get slow speed during mid afternoon, I would like to inform you that we have already escalated this issue to our network engineers. they are working at network end.

I am closing this email thread. We once again apologise for any inconvenience this delay has caused you.

In case you have any further queries, please write to us.

I have bombarded them over the last few days with graphs and screen shots of test data from three different testing sight giving them details of the problem and yet the email seems to suggest they either do not understand the timing of the problem or the English language.

As long as there is life there is hope....but not much.

[artist]

I have absolutely no problems with Tiscali at all! I'm on 2Mbps and constantly get 2.3.

Have only had one small blip when I couldn't get connected. The forum people there were very helpful. It turned out to be a computer problem in the end.

In the computer mags I read Tiscali is always up there in the top 3 for customer satisfaction.

Previously I had been happy with Virgin for 3 years.

You do surprise me artist Completely the reverse to my experiences with them. My problems were mainly on the accounts side, I wasn't too bothered about speed, but I never had a reply from the same person twice and had to roll out the whole story from the beginning with each e-mail. Life's too short.

I've changed packages a few times - have currently got one with free phonecalls at certain times - each time it went without a hitch and no probs on the bills.........

[CurlyWhirly]

It looks pretty dire to me. It has certainly got much worse over the last few weeks. I thought at first it was Christmas traffic, but it has not gone away as I hoped it might.

Well personally I would never go with one of the 'big boys' (examples are Orange, Tiscali, Talk Talk, BT and AOL) as they tend to oversubscribe their service and then fail to add sufficient network capacity and the result is dial-up speeds.

Some of them also outsource their customer service to foreign call centres that read from a script and they are difficult to understand

I had this problem when I was with AOL.

I have since migrated to Zen who have UK based support and they actually know what they are talking about.

Also I am on a monthly contract as opposed to a 12, 18 or 24 month contract that is quite common with some of the ISP's listed above!

[Watchful]

I know, from what you have said many times Curly, that Zen is a good ISP but they are too expensive for me at present so I'm on a low charge option with BT where the monthly payment includes my phone bills etc. B)

[CurlyWhirly]

Shortly afterwards I got an email--

Response (Damodar Sarode) - 29/01/2008 08.37 AM

Hello,

Apologise for the delayed response to your email.

Further to our conversation today , <29/01/2008>,<8 : 20 AM> we had discussed the following issues:

1. Slow speed.

As per observations , you are getting broadband speed upto 2.4 Mb. As you stated that you get slow speed during mid afternoon, I would like to inform you that we have already escalated this issue to our network engineers. they are working at network end.

I am closing this email thread. We once again apologise for any inconvenience this delay has caused you.

In case you have any further queries, please write to us.

I have bombarded them over the last few days with graphs and screen shots of test data from three different testing sight giving them details of the problem and yet the email seems to suggest they either do not understand the timing of the problem or the English language.

As long as there is life there is hope....but not much.

You are being throttled and no amount of complaining will do any good as that's how they operate :(

If you check out my link again (below)

... you will notice that ordinary HTTP/Web usage (i.e. surfing the net) is slowish in the evenings (which is signified by the orange dot)

Are you sure that you are getting the slowdowns in the afternoon and not the evening?

[CurlyWhirly]

I know, from what you have said many times Curly, that Zen is a good ISP but they are too expensive for me at present so I'm on a low charge option with BT where the monthly payment includes my phone bills etc. B)

They aren't too expensive for me as I don't use the phone much (hence not paying much in call charges) and I've since got rid of Sky saving me around £25 which pays for my Zen connection.

p.s. I'm not interested in signing up with Sky broadband either as you are tied into paying for the TV service, and I may be cynical, but in my opinion, Sky are just trying to reduce the churn of their TV service by offering Sky broadband!

[catgate]

Are you sure that you are getting the slowdowns in the afternoon and not the evening?

I am sure I am getting them starting mid to late afternoon and going on until, basically, bedtime. Despite sending them dates, times and speeds They think afternoons, according to the email.

I tried to question Sanjeev this morning about "Traffic Shaping" but his head must have been a long way from his receiver because he just ignored the question (or did not understand this strange Englishman), It seemed, from looking at the site you gave me, that that was going to be the problem.

However I do feel that knocking a 2Mps down by often 80+% is less than fair play. But ... who plays fair these days.

It's no good writing to my MP because, if he is like the rest, he will be wrestling with his own strange unaccountable numbers.

[CurlyWhirly]

However I do feel that knocking a 2Mps down by often 80+% is less than fair play. But ... who plays fair these days.

Zen is one of a number of ISP's who do play fair!

On http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/caps.htm if you want an unthrottled connection you should go with ISP's that have all green indicators!

[catgate]

However I do feel that knocking a 2Mps down by often 80+% is less than fair play. But ... who plays fair these days.

Zen is one of a number of ISP's who do play fair!

On http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/caps.htm if you want an unthrottled connection you should go with ISP's that have all green indicators!

In this last hour I have looked to see what is available to us out here in the wilderness. Sadly Zen is not on offer. What I saw was Tiscali offering "up to 8mps" for what we are on now. That's money for old rope, init.

There is a very reasonable BT package, but I suspect line rental will not be included. I have asked management's cousin, who occupies some exalted position with BT in Sheffied, to get the low down if poss.

I have just done another speed check on Namesco and currently I have an upload speed faster than my download speed ....now there's value for money.