Category: Personal

Blogging is self-indulgent, and blogging about yourself is even more so. But it has to be done.

An open letter to Virgin Media

~ Inquisitor ~ 5 Comments

A complaint letter I sent recently, posted without comment.

I have been a Telewest customer since August 2003. I’ve had pretty much the same package ever since then – now branded TV L/broadband L/phone M. I was very happy with Telewest’s service quality and the breadth of the service.

Since the takeover by ntl and the rebranding as Virgin Media, I have been experiencing a number of issues:

1. The complete inability to supply what was a previously excellent 4Mbit broadband connection between January and April 2007. This was apparently due to an overloaded UBR, causing slowing even at off-peak times to 300Kbit/s and below – making sites such as youtube completely unusable. Upload speed, on the other hand, was perfectly fine (and exceeded download speed a lot of the time).

The fact that there seemed to be a complete lack of updates on this major fault internally – your helpful newsgroup support were continually only able to tell me that the repair was in “planning” and couldn’t find out any more than that – was the largest annoyance here. My broadband connection is very important to me, much more than any of the other services I take from VM, and it was simply not worthy of the £25/month I paid for it – especially since in my area competition from local loop unbundled services (eg. Be Unlimited or Sky) is just a call to BT away.

2. The reorganisation of the TV packages. I am not someone who complained about the loss of Sky One; as a matter of fact, the way VM dealt with the loss of Sky One had my full support and may well have prevented me from cancelling due to the broadband fault. However, I have been irritated by the recent, unheralded and unwarned of change to the TV L package that has seen the removal of MTV Hits, The Box and VH1 Classic and their replacement with MTV UK and VH1. I accept that these are “better” brand names for a TV package, but this brings the number of channels that show music videos without filling half the screen with opaque junk or relying on useless celebrity programming to zero (from one: VH1 Classic). With the price rise in TV L, the gain of just one channel (Bloomberg, which doesn’t interest me) and the fact that certain channels which are free to air on satellite are only on the XL package on VM (Zone Horror, for example) I’m finding this very hard to take.

3. While I do appreciate the free weekend calls on basic telephone line rental, per-minute billing is intrinsically unfair. Switching back from the fairer per-second billing has been another annoyance, especially since it was hidden on the small print of the flyer.

4. The introduction of bandwidth shaping on broadband services: I don’t disagree with the need for curbing heavy users on what is after all a shared connection, I just disagree with the fact that no-one has actually been told about it. Sure, the newsgroups know and it’s all over the user support websites, but I haven’t received any email telling me about this major change in my broadband service’s provision from unlimited 4Mbit to unlimited 4Mbit between midnight and 4pm, and I feel that it is entirely unacceptable that only those who read the newsgroups or support forums know about it.

5. The special deals being given to customers who complain about the loss of Sky One are particularly irritating right now. This is it in a nutshell: there are forum threads pretty much everywhere on the net right now encouraging people to call into VM, complain about the loss of Sky One (which, of course, they don’t really care about, otherwise they’d already have Sky) and get a better deal.

There are people getting L broadband/XL TV/L phone for £35/mo – this apparently exists as an internal designation called “package 9”. I’m paying £47.50/mo for L/L/M, and £12.50/mo is a considerable amount of money for me to be paying more for an inferior service. If you’re going to give deals to people, don’t hide them – give them to everyone. Personally I would be very happy with this, but I’m not sure how long I’m going to be in a VM area (my university course is finishing soon) and do not want to be tied down to a 12-month contract that I might not be able to keep to.

6. Your email support web form (at http://help2.virginmedia.com/assets/html/
customer_feedback/customer_feedback_querytype_2.html) only accepts a certain number of characters in a message. This of course is mentioned nowhere on the web form itself and the textbox accepts many more; thus when trying to send this letter electronically I received an autoreply telling me that “due to a technical issue we only received part of your email”. Since you do not provide a real email address for receiving customer messages, this has forced me into sending this by postal mail. Providing an actual email address read by people would be the best option here, but please at least fix this problem.

(From the two days late auto-responses I’ve been getting to my cut off complaints it appears to strip line spaces from the text as well, which would have made this letter unreadable in any case.)

7. The most recent irritation, however, has been the emailed announcement about the change to broadband technical support services from free (through 150) to a 25p/minute premium rate number. Even considering that you will not be allowed to put people on hold, the various calls I made to you over issues that were entirely your fault in the early part of this year would have made about £10+ in extra income if they were charged for in this way – the time taken up by various computer rebooting, etc., despite the fact that it was the equipment provided by Telewest that obviously was not working.

Your competition in my area and in most other cable areas, Be Unlimited ADSL2+, has a freephone support service. Sky has an 0870 number. Premium rate support is simply unacceptable ethically; I am not going to pay 25p/minute for issues which are your fault. If this policy stays I am afraid that, despite everything, I will have to cancel service.

8. In a sense then the main problem I am having with VM that I didn’t have with Telewest is the lack of information. Faults are in planning for months, TV packages are changed without any warning, broadband packages are changed without warning, “package 9” only is known about through hearsay, the entire way my phone is charged was changed in the small print, and then when you try to complain the email web form silently cuts off most of your message. When Telewest did things like that they sent letters or emails, or at least gave slightly more information than “it’s in planning” when you asked them why. I’ve never had a fault that lasted more than 24 hours before the takeover. And support for their products was always free.

What I would like, therefore is for my service to improve back to the level it was for my first three and a half years as a customer. If you can’t do that, then I and others like me will be forced into alternatives, and I really don’t want to have to do that; while I’ve got too much of an ethical conviction to go to Sky (or lie to you that I want to go there), these don’t apply to BT and ADSL2+ LLU. I know how good my service can be. Can you get it back?

A spectacular own goal

~ Inquisitor ~ 2 Comments

I’ve just received an email from Virgin Media:

Hello,

From 1st July, our broadband helpline number is changing and from then on it’ll cost 25p per minute to call from a Virgin home phone, plus 10p to connect. Mobiles and other networks may vary. The new number is 0906 212 1111.

That’s “0906” as in “scam”.

Access to technical support, at least on the ex-Telewest side, has always been

  • 0845 local rate for those with a BT line
  • free (through 150) for those with a Telewest line

After July 1, this is no longer the case – customer services on 150 will give you the 0906 number if you have any trouble with your line (or, as has been the case with all my dealings with ex-Telewest tech support, they have a problem they refuse to recognise and/or their equipment has become faulty.) With the standard “reboot your modem, reboot your computer, repeat that the connect light on the modem is not on numerous times to the minimum-wage checklist operative on the other end until they finally get that the modem isn’t getting a signal from the UBR and it’s not your computer” routine that VM’s call centre staff follow, at 25p/min they’ll probably earn about £5 a call. Hopefully the broadband support USENET groups will continue to exist, and they’re certainly better than any of VM’s call centre staff, but with the cost-cutting they’ve been doing I’m not so sure.

Last I remember, not even the ex-NTL people got screwed with a premium rate support number. At least putting people on hold is banned under the premium rate regulations, but having your only recourse for support being an 0906 number is unacceptable under any circumstances – it is anti-consumer, it is an added cost on top of the already overpriced £25/month I am paying for 4Mbit/384K, it is an imbecilic idea thought up by someone who wants to make even more money out of people with real problems instead of caring about fixing them. Telewest already had a line (at a staggering £1/min) for people with spyware problems and other issues not covered by the broadband support service, so the explanation in the FAQ about cost saving does not hold water.

All this is going to do is annoy long-serving customers like me. I’ve already been annoyed quite a bit by VM in recent months; the swapping out of the only good music channel at TV L for MTV and VH1, the major speed issue I and everyone else in my region of Edinburgh suffered between January and April, the small-print switch from per-second to per-minute call billing, the special deals given to those who whine about the loss of Sky One on the cancellations line, the fact that VM only accept email support through a webform that cuts off after a tiny number of characters, and the fact that they still haven’t admitted anything about the speed limiter (which I actually agree with to an extent) to customers in email. At least they sent out a message warning of this.

VM have to be very careful – the local-loop unbundled providers are setting up in cable areas for a reason, because unless VM stop thinking like the penny-pinching NTL of old and start acting the way Richard Branson obviously wants them to instead of just throwing red paint over the infrastructure they stand a real danger of a customer exodus to BT, Freeview or Sky and ADSL2+ LLU. I’m already sizing up the cost of getting an aerial fitted.

I have been a Telewest customer since August 2003. I’ve had the same package all the time, and been very satisfied with it. I never had any serious problems with the service until after the NTL takeover. Now, with this change in the customer support system, they are simply being outclassed by their competition: Sky have 0870 support. Be Unlimited are freephone (0808) and, right now, very technically proficient. They are the competition here. I have a moral objection to Murdoch and Sky, but none to O2 (owners of Be). I even have a BT master box in my flat just ready to re-enable.

The change in the support structure says, quite simply, both that they think we’re all stupid and that the company is desperate for money: this is not a company that I wish to be paying £45/month to. A sad end for what for a long time was the best broadband provider anywhere in the country, is forthcoming I feel unless Richard Branson can force the banks that really own the company to get their act together. I’m not sure that even he can manage that, unfortunately, so it might soon be goodbye.

Telemarketers, scum of the earth

~ Inquisitor ~ 4 Comments

I’ve just been called for “market research” again and am frustrated to find out that the TPS complaints form requires you to find out the name and address of the scumbag who’s tried to call you (I have no doubt that if I actually trawled for such information, they’d hang up on me.) Since I hang up immediately on all such calls, I don’t have it – however, they did leave their number on 1471.

So, whatever firm of “market research” droids it is at 0870 220 9317 ignores the TPS. And is probably responsible for my silent calls and recorded message telespam too.

It’s nowhere on Google and I’m not going to call it (it’s the principle of the thing, I’m not paying call charges just to talk to them again and I recommend no-one else does the same), but if anyone on the ‘net has any more information about who owns this I would appreciate it greatly. There used to be a page somewhere listing 0870 numbers by the licensing operator; I can’t find it again, but if it’s still there it would be very useful for hunting these pricks down.

Why I hate telemarketers

~ Inquisitor ~ 28 Comments

I have an ex-directory phone number. I have this for two reasons – one that I had a very unpleasant stalking experience while living in university accommodation that I’d rather not repeat (this is also why I try and maintain some form of Internet anonymity) and the other is that I cannot stand telemarketers and would like to make it as hard as possible for them to get my information. It worked for a couple of years too.

I am generally polite with call centre workers for the most part because I know the kind of work they’re doing is hard and nasty and completely unappreciated; it’s not their fault that they have to follow Virgin Media’s “Cable Modem Diagnosis for Morons” script sheet whenever I call up, and at least the Indian call centre workers are generally polite if useless. (Top tip: if you know what you’re talking about, go to the USENET support.broadband groups, where there are technicians around who know how their network actually works.)

I see no obligation, however, to be polite to telemarketers. Telemarketers are taking up your time. They invade your privacy. They feel entitled to force themselves on you; they’re just the same as spammers, stalkers, script kiddies and fundamentalists. I can appreciate that it is not the call centre operatives who make four-second silent calls to my phone line who are at fault here, that they’re just doing what their bosses and their computer systems tell them to, but I feel no remorse when I tell them that I don’t answer telemarketing calls and put the phone down before they can respond.

All the calls I seem to get right now are survey calls. I’ve had ICM and MORI, one of whom on being told I was ex-directory told me they got my number from a random number generator. Obviously that’s how it started; once out the random generator, it got sold on as a positive lead. I’ve had people who just say “we’re doing market research”, as I just had half an hour ago. I’ve had recorded messages telling me that I’ve won stuff and to dial 0901 SCAMMER. I’ve never asked to be put on a list; I don’t want to be on any telemarketing lists, I cannot stand being interrupted by some scumbag who wants to persuade me to buy New Tory, Let’s Try Harder or whatever it is they’re actually trying to sell me.

If telemarketing was as ethical an industry as those who promote it claim it to be, they would stop making silent calls, stop the use of recorded messages, stop calling people who plainly don’t want to be called, and stop selling number lists. But they won’t do that, even though by not calling people who don’t want to be called will decrease annoyance factor for people like me and increase the number of actual takers of telemarketed products, because they want to annoy me. They sincerely believe that by calling someone a hundred times they might pay up to make them go away. That’s why telemarketing simply cannot be ethical; because no-one really wants to be sold to on demand. It’s exploiting those who simply don’t know how to say no, the elderly in particular.

I thought I’d said no pretty strongly by having an unlisted number, ticking the DON’T SELL MY DETAILS box on the electoral register and being forthright with those who call me. But they simply cannot be reasoned with.

Which is why the fact that the telemarketing industry is allowed to run their own regulator (the DMA) is extremely worrying – no wonder silent calls and recorded messages aren’t dealt with. The do-not-call register – the Telephone Preference Service, or TPS – is run by the DMA, and expires your number off every so often; what’s more, this means that if you register the telescum have your number on a list which might as well marked “IN 12 MONTHS, YOU CAN CALL THIS DUMBASS AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE”. But quite frankly it’s the only option I have left to stop the deluge of marketing calls.

The good news is that as Jon Ronson pointed out in this Guardian article, 100,000 of us are signing up every week, too many to ignore. And this will kill the telemarketing industry. Do it.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

~ Inquisitor

Yes, it’s Christmas Day and I haven’t posted for weeks. Sorry. More stuff coming up over the Christmas period as I finally start remembering to write again…

As penance, here is a Youtube video of something funny: Mystery Science Theater 3000’s “Let’s Have A Patrick Swayze Christmas”.

Panic on the check-in at Heathrow

~ Inquisitor

What on earth is going on? Here we have John Reid making one of his regular “freedom can get tae f***” speeches while obviously knowing what’s going on in the background, a “terrorist plot” allegedly foiled by the security services, and thus the introduction of yet another kneejerk “security” feature that seems to be designed to make people’s lives hell whilst doing absolutely nothing to stop anything bad getting on the plane.

(I mean, explosives getting set off by an iPod? The amount of effort needed to get the battery out of one of those things would make any terrorist attack using one about as effective as Richard Reid’s shoebomb. Maybe a mobile, but that would take time to set up too – and would be just as effective in the hold.)

What’s amazing is that these ‘security’ additions haven’t been thought about at all: instead they’ve just gone for a blanket ban. If you’re facing a threat from “liquid explosives”, (although the current Net rumour is that it was a production-of-HCN chemical reaction designed to incapacitate the entire aircraft) you don’t need to ban laptops, MP3 players, cosmetics or, of course, any and all reading material. Instead, you just have to force people to hand over their bottles of “water”.

Which idiot civil servant thought that banning (or rather, not allowing) reading material was a brilliant idea, and how much of an idiot does John Reid have to be for forcing it through? It’s a tell-tale sign that all that’s going on is a serious kneejerk reaction of the type that does nothing to improve the safety of British citizens. Spending (say) 24 hours on a flight to Australia with young kids, no reading material, no games consoles, nothing other than ludicrously priced airline mineral water is not going to be fun for those families who have to go through with it, or anyone else on the aircraft.

I was close to the weight limit for check-in baggage when I left Britain for Germany at the beginning of July. I return at the beginning of September. If I have to put all my books and my laptop in check-in (along with my laptop’s backup drive, AC adaptor and restore discs, wonderful, no chance of anything going wrong there oh no), it’ll probably take it over Easyjet’s 20kg limit and I’ll get charged oversize baggage – no-one is waiving the fee, because they don’t have to. Worse than that, I’m going to be stuck in Berlin SXF for a long time with absolutely nothing to do, followed by being stuck on a two hour flight to Glasgow with absolutely nothing to do other than read Easyjet’s pathetic in-flight magazine, followed by hoping beyond hope that my bag comes through unharmed with my laptop intact. Don’t know about you, but I’m dreading it.

BBC Have Your Say seems to think that we should blame the terrorists for all the disruption and be thankful that we weren’t blown up, since obviously if we were allowed books some terrorist might find a way to break a window with a bound Qu’ran or whatever. If the plot was real, then I’m fine with the cancellations and the removal of water bottles et al; however, I won’t blame currently hypothetical “terrorists” for what British airline passengers are suffering right now. I will blame John Reid and BAA for being unmeasurably stupid, for instead of thinking about what was necessary to protect us they simply chose to follow the TSA-style kneejerk “Oh my god, let’s ban everything!” overreaction.

And this is his claim to be deputy leader? Pathetic.

If you liked this rant, take a look at Europhobia, where as always Nosemonkey lays it out in the best written of terms.

I’ll never insult the German people again

~ Inquisitor

I just downloaded the full install of XP SP2 at 4.7MB/second. MB, not Mb. MB. It actually took IE longer to do its stupid “copying from C:\temp to D:\” thing than it did to download the file. I didn’t think you could get an Internet connection that fast in the real world… Firefox took seconds to download, too.

Yes, I’m in Germany. Not for the World Cup (that would have been a disincentive normally), but on a student exchange programme that Shall Not Be Named. I’ve been going around the country for a while and haven’t had an Internet connection, but now I’ve settled down and registered for in-room Internet, and the connection is fast, fast, fast. So expect Deutsche-Blogging from now onwards for a few months.

I’m in the East in a small, pretty (apart from where the DDR got a hold of it) university town. The weather is hot and bright, and yet not too disincentivising. It’s a beautiful country, too. And electronics prices here are surprisingly low – I just bought a 512MB SD card for €16.99 (£11.76) from the German equivalent of Comet, K&B, which as far as I can see only eBuyer type places can beat in the UK. And wouldn’t you rather buy from a shop than eBuyer? I know I would.

It’s going to be an interesting few months, that’s for sure. In the meantime, however, I’m going to go off to my local large screen, drink beer (obviously, this is Germany) and watch Germany-Italy with my fellow trainees. Speak to you later.

Welcome to “The Hard Sell”

~ Inquisitor

This is the fourth incarnation of my personal blog, and the first hosted on wordpress.com.

I used to write my blog by hand, and it got annoying after a while. I persisted, though. Now, the disadvantages are becoming clear: I can’t do many of the things that bloggers everywhere take for granted, even with the automated Thingamablog solution I used for the previous blog. The most important, for me, was being able to post from places other than my broadband connection.

So I considered a number of options:

  • Upgrading to Blueyonder’s higher web tier and installing something – no MySQL, so no MT or WordPress hosted
  • Blogger by FTP – can’t FTP to my site from outside the provider’s space, and Blogger’s apparently quite unreliable lately…
  • Paying for a hosting provider – bandwidth limits a go-go

Thankfully, I discovered wordpress.com. Sure, I can only use one of their provided styles – and the site might change a bit until I find one I really like – but otherwise, it’s exactly what I needed. It provides easy access from anywhere, it moderates comments, it’s WordPress, it doesn’t force adverts on you and it’s free. So I went straight for it, and I must say I’m liking it more and more.

And the obvious question: what is “the hard sell”? Simply a comment on our society as a whole, something that everyone has been taken in by, me and you included. Also, it’s the title of the perennially redrafted novel I’ve been writing for a very long time. Hope you enjoy the blog.