New internet.

Well finally BT Internet have totally Brassed me off and I am giving them the sack. As in my humble opinion I think it is rubbish. So on or around the 17th of September we should (hopefully) have a better service. I have so much trouble getting on line, I rarely get on Brummies Talking.

Who are you going with then SB?

Hi Mike Virgin I think. I have heard good and bad about one or two but Virgin seem to be a good deal. I may have to wait a short while due to my phone contract.

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I'm on virgin and are pretty happy with them.

Thanks for that information Mike.

Before BT Broadband I was on BT dial up from the beginning then Virgin dial up for two years and then Virgin Broadband for seven years.
Nothing to complain about when things are working, different story if something goes wrong, which was often.

Twice a year the broadband would go off and not come back on. After a couple of days I would ring Virgin to get it fixed, whereupon I would be given the run around.
First they (Indian call centre) would tell me it was working, then they would transfer me to other call centres, who would promise to look into it and call me back, which they never did.
Next time I rang they would say it was BT's fault. BT would do a line test and claim there was no faults with their service, just a lack of broadband connection.
Eventually I would get to speak to someone at the old Telewest place in Small Heath. They would say that synchronisation had been lost and it could be a week before service was restored.
During that time all telephones had to be unplugged and the broadband modem plugged into the master socket. I also had to stand on my head and sing Rule Britannia for twenty minutes every day.

What they were doing, I discovered, was turning down the signal volume over a period of time until broadband stopped working, then, and only if I complained, they would gradually increase it until broadband was restored, which would take a week. They could have restored it in an instant if they would just turn the volume straight back up to full, which was proved correct on the final occasion when I pointed out that I knew what was going on and, having worked in the telecoms industry, knew that what I had just been told by the man in Small Heath was a load of cobblers.

Leaving Virgin wasn't easy. They insist on trying to sell you a new plan before resorting to various threats about your online future. They took two weeks to provide me with a migration code and as soon as it was issued and received they stopped my email service, blocked my access to my own web sites on their server and subsequently stopped my broadband service a week earlier than my paid for expiry date.
I wouldn't go back to them if they were the only provider on earth.

That's when I moved back to BT. It has gone off a couple of times in the last eight years but at least I can use the BT Fon WiFi service while it's down for the two days.
BT can't blame anyone else so they just get on and fix it.

Thanks for that Voltsperson

Would that not have been before they had their own network Volty. In Reading they have their own fibre network, and never had anything like you describe. Certainly noindians

Yes Mike, I was on dial up before and after Birmingham Cable installed their network, killing loads of trees in the process. It was eventually taken over by Virgin.

My Virgin broadband was over the BT copper line, as is my current BT broadband.
I have never felt the need to get cable TV and BT haven't installed their broadband fibre network in our area, even though they write to me twice a month trying to get me to upgrade.

I know someone who was on Virgin cable ten years ago and he used to get the same crap off them as I did, and he was paying for TV and phone as well.