Virgin broadband

About 5 yrs ago I allowed Telewest, (now Virgin) to smash a ruddy great hole through my wall and wind yards of cable all around my porch in order to install fibre optic broad band.
The cable terminates at a large box on the inside of the wall, to which there is connected another thick unbending cable that is connected to a cheap looking plastic black motorola "thing"that wont stand up properly and falls over all the time, (I think is called a modem).

Well I thought it would be nice to move my PC to the other side of the room,(about 6ft away), so I rang them as the cable was not long enough.

They gave me 3 options, none of which sounded very good to me as they all involved a very highly paid technician coming out to alter things, one even was going to cost me another £12.50 a month to go wireless.

Any ideas as to how to extend the existing cable, all I think I need is 10 ft of cable with male and female plugs on the ends.

 

Thanks John, yes I have a Maplins locally so can give it a try.:gnthb:

 

The other thing Pete is the cable between the modem and the computer. The bits on the end are I think perfectly standard and I think it is just called a network cable, which you can buy in different lengths.

 

Ok thanks Peter, thought it might be something special, but I'm guessing the fibreoptic cable ends at the box on the inside of my wall.
Why cant Virgin just say, go buy a cable, if its that easy.

 

Why am I not surprised about ''Virgin'' being hopeless. On the other hand, I love Maplins...

 

yes Virgin are out to rip us off I think Mira, given the chance.

As for Maplins. Hi De Hi.

 

For me Virgin media offer a brilliant service,fast broadband,quality HD TV, and very reasonable phone costs and lots of other all singing all dancing bits and bobs.
If you are unlucky enough to have a problem you can speak to them on freephone and I have found them most helpful.
If you think they are charging you to much for a particular service,then don't spit feathers.....(that will throw Mira) please speak to them....they want to keep you.

 

Yeah I know they want to keep you Roders, but they wont tell you about any money saving you have to threaten to leave first.
Due to the fact that it would be very difficult now to unwind it all.

I have spoken to them and they want to make a meal of it, I've sent an e mail as well to customer services and as yet no reply.

 

Pete - I don't like to disillusion you but I don't think you have fibre optics coming to your house, or possibly even your street. I am also on a Virgin cable, and I think that when I spoke to the lads connecting it up they informed me that the fibre optic bit was like the motorway - good for long distances, but that optical connections are complicated - so they use copper wires to connect all the houses to the motorway.

I recently renegotiated my contract with Virgin. I joined early and when I changed to broadband from dial up, they gave me a discount which reduced the price but it was part of a package which included features that I never used. They charged me for the extras but wouldn't allow me to drop any of them as they were part of the package. I recently noticed that over the last 2 or 3 years the cost of long distance calls at the weekend had increaded from 1p per minute to 8 p per minute - which I thought excessive and sneaky as the increases were never mentioned.

I tend to use long distance calls at the weekend quite a bit. So I changed to a phone line for £12.24 per month which includes free week end calls, and a 10 meg broadband for £12.75. This has brought my bills down a lot. I was originally on 2 meg broadband and when they increased me to 20 meg, I really never noticed any improvement. So I thought I would try 10 meg (saving £7 per month). Again I have seen no loss in speed.

 

Thanks Peter, Ok so I just have ordinary cables coming to my house, didn,t realise that.

Its the fact that they charge you for things you dont want that really upsets me, and unless you keep hassling them they dont tell you what you are actually paying for.
I got my broadband price lowered last time for 6 months because some bloke asked me if I wanted cheap broad band, out side Morrisons, turned out he worked for Virgin and was signing people up for half of what I was paying.

The service is "OK", it works most of the time but then it should, shouldn't it?

Other than that, I cant find anything to make me fall over myself regarding their service.

Usually it takes at least 15 mins to call them due to being in a queue but thats normal I guess, complete with the usual female chirpy voice saying, "right now lets get you some help", the times I would have liked to have wrung her neck.:D

 

Got a text message and a message on my answerfone today.
The one on the answerfone was impossible as I could understand the bloke talking in the background much better than the person that was calling me.

I think the jist of it is that someone will drop off a lead to extend things a bit further.
(I need to work out if this is FOC or not).

Strange you have to contact customer services before getting any action, it should be available when you call them with a problem, and not just a list of charges.

 

Well got a call from customer services.

Seems they were going to send someone out to find out what I want, trouble is I'm at work on the times they wanted to come out.
No body available Saturday, so on the strength of what I have been told here I just said, can I by a cable myself from a shop.
They said you could explain what you want at PC World and see what they can come up with.

Its one hell of a way to run a communication "service".:(

But she did say that if I cant find a cable, I should get back to her.

Do you think I'm gonna bother.

 

Pete - do take your present cable to PC World to ensure that they know what you mean. If its the network cable, you can remove it very easily, but there is a little spring which you have to press towards the cable before it will pull out easily. It won't pull straight out otherwise.