Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/29 ... trictions/



You know, it's almost as if Virgin *want* me to drop them and run off like they were a hive's nest of greasy, diseased bees. This has to be right up there with their CEO kindly declaring net neutrality to be "a load of bollocks".

I don't know what they put in Telewest's water before the merger, but I imagine NTL must have been responsible for the side of Virgin that outputs the laughing stock of all broadband services nowadays.

*pffft* Well, they can get to fucking fuck, as soon as this contract is over.

I had a crappety crap time with them recently, but I do like the cable broadband. I don't think I'd want to change to non-cable.

There's no way this doesn't count as a significant alteration in the terms as they relate to the service you receive, and as such you can tell them to get to fuck immediately. They'll tell you that no, they've somehow overridden contract law with some woolly clauses about it. They're (probably) lying. Unfortunately, it'd probably take a court case to prove it.

Or Mr.Chris' say so?

But I think they have.

I'm struggling a bit to get the context there, but if you're referring to the contract law bit of my post - they can't override contract law; substantial alterations that work against the customer invoke a thing that means the customer can terminate immediately, regardless of minimum term or notice period. Or so I understand it, anyway. Someone who IAL (Mr Chris, I choose you!) would know better.

For exampe, O2 recently changed collecting voicemail from free to local rate, which meant they had to accept that even people who'd just signed an 18 month contract could terminate without prejudice within 14 days, including keeping their new handset. They relied on people being as lazy as me and carrying on past the deadline.

So, in terms of alternative ISPs, it's really between Be or ADSL24 isn't it?


I think I have to get a BT landline first though.

Or sky, if you want the telly.

The whole Virgin debate confuses me. I use them and I've found it really difficult to find out exactly how much I can download before I'm "throttled" (By Richard Branson himself I hope)

Also between what times? I regularly leave my PC on overnight to (legally) share torrents and such like. Should I stop doing this? Should I just use the internet to check my emails once a week? Should I stop everything and read a book instead?

I'm confused... Virgin Media don't help at all.

My friends on BT have said that their speed is being throttled horribly at the moment.

Mine has been going surprisingly well for some time now.

Of course, this means that tonight it will crap out.

BT has been shite recently - I presume this is the throttling of which you speak.

UK Online are great. They aren't the cheapest, but on their unlimited subscription, the deal is that if you consistently download too much, instead of throttling you, they will contact you, and say "we have noticed that you download a lot, we are either going to have to throttle your bandwidth, or you could cut back a bit." they monitior your bandwidth levels for the next few months, and will lightly throttle you if needs be, but if you cut back, it'll be fine. If they do throttle you, they will tell you before they do so.

They also have a freephone, really really good, UK based, 24 hour service line.

They also gave me 3 months free when (through an error on their behalf) I was cut off for a week.

Can't recommend them enough.

Yes. It regularly now takes about twice as long to watch a video stream as its length, whereas before you'd only ever need to give it five minutes of head start.

When they're not selling your data on to others, they're practically giving it away.


Zounds!