4 June 2010

Service disruptions on Virginbroadband in Canberra?

4 June 2010 | Low Larynx

Received the formulaic e-mail below from the good people at Virginbroadband. I am experiencing a disruption to service every night with no connectivity from approximately 8:30 pm until about 9am the next morning.

I understand that Virgin use the Optusnet architecture. Does anyone know of work happening in the inner north, specifically to the towers at Northbourne Ave, Rosevear Pl, and Phillip Ave? If so, does it explain my regular dropouts and how long will this work continue. It is very difficult getting specific information from Virgin.

See e-mail below…

—

Good day! Thanks for your email.

I have confirmed that the towers surrounding you are currently being upgraded.

Everyday we are improving our service, towers are being upgraded to give you a better connection, but somehow while in the process of upgrading, the connections of some of our members are affected.

We are unable to provide exact time frame as to when will the tower upgrade be finished as it depends on our technical people who are working on it. It may take sometime or very soon. It is one of our top priorities so it should be fixed soon.

On the other hand, the commitment of your Broadband at Home service has expired on ???????. Your service has remained active until you request for a cancellation.

Since the commitment has ended, cancelling your service will not incur a commitment fee anymore. You will just have to pay for the outstanding balance on your account if there’s any, and prorated amount of the monthly service charge with chargeable calls.

Please be aware of the following consequences before you proceed with the cancellation of your service:

– Your service will be disconnected right after you agree to cancel
– You will not be able to port the home phone number out to another service provider
– The modem will no longer be use-able
– You DO NOT need to return the modem
– You can dispose the modem as you chose to or check out your local council information online or by calling for advice on disposal.
– If you wish to port your number out to another carrier, please contact the carrier that you prefer to be with & they will do the rest. Once the port completes, this will automatically cancel your service with us. Please Note: You will be responsible for the service charges while we are waiting for the number to be ported to your new provider.

In case you proceed with the cancellation, please confirm the IMEI that we have in our records which is 35?????????? so we can proceed with it. The IMEI or serial number of the modem is 15-digits and starts with number ’35’. This number can be found underneath the modem, on the left hand side.

By the way, cancellation cannot be requested in advance and it takes 10 business days to complete.

Note: The cancellation of the service can only be requested by the Primary Account Holder.

After all that said, we do reserve the right to feel sorry that you are leaving us.

We will further evaluate how we can prevent this problem from occurring again in the future.

Please accept our sincere apologies for any trouble or inconvenience this issue has caused you.

We highly appreciate your feedback as it will assist us in becoming better in what we do. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again. Email support is not an instant service. There may be slight delays in receiving responses. For urgent matters, please ring Virgin Customer Service Team.

Note: Support via our Online Support Page is done by a group of online support service representatives who ONLY handle electronic queries. We do not have the facilities to make outbound calls or to deal with inbound calls. This task falls on our dedicated inbound helpdesk who you would have been calling on 1300 555 100.

Have a nice day!

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Raging Tempest12:43 pm 09 Jun 10

Just change to iinet.net.au I don’t have any problems!

Yeah, except the month of waiting while they bumble along stuffing about before it finally gets connected – in a back bedroom, not the main phone line nearest the front of the house… that said it is hell fast and no disruptions to date. And their help line is actually helpful.

Jim Jones11:17 am 09 Jun 10

cleo said :

Just change to iinet.net.au I don’t have any problems!

+ 1 million

Every time we’ve strayed from iinet, everyone has turned to absolute crap. Virgin Broadband (owned by Optus) was far and away the worst experience I’ve ever had with a service provider ever. I’d rather eat a big bowl of fresh, steaming dog poo than have anything to do with them again.

cleo2:01 am 09 Jun 10

Just change to iinet.net.au I don’t have any problems!

Ryoma2:04 pm 05 Jun 10

Thankyou for posting this up, Low Larynx. Interestingly enough, it sounds almost identical to the problems I had some months ago with 3 Mobile Broadband. I spoke to the girl at the store I’d bought it from, who advised me that they used the Optus network as well, and that the Optus mobile tower was down after a storm.

She said she wasn’t sure how long it would take to fix the situation, and I should try again in a few days…so I did, only to be told the same thing. The second time around I waited for a week, and this time I got stuck into her:

– Why haven’t you been in touch with me to let me know what’s going on?
– If you don’t know what’s going on, then who does?
– Give me your Manager’s name, so that I can chase this up myself.
– Right, he doesn’t know either – who have you been speaking to at Optus to know where things are up to?
– Oh, so this whole story is rubbish then? Right, tell me why I should buy from or recommend your company in future?

That night I called their help line, and spoke to a guy from India (of course). He was excellent, even though it took a while to sort out the problem. Of course it had nothing to do with storms or towers, but simply ineptness and/or laziness on behalf of the sales staff over here. Service has been fine since.

My point – why do so many Australian firms think that giving us service delivered at a teenage level is what we want? Don’t they realise that many of us would be happy for them to compete on service – and would be willing to pay for it!?

Pickle10:50 pm 04 Jun 10

Don’t forget the telecommunications ombudsman.

They cant hold your ported number for ransom.

They cant charge for a service that does not work.

Ring and write regularly keep diary notes and dont let them charge for the time it takes to port your number back to telstra, (after virginbroadarse Telstra will seem good)

Use registered mail.

It took over 6 months, They complained about me writing to them, they never responded to my letters and pretended they did not exist, then on the phone they complained about my writing to them, I had to ask, cant you guys read? It would seem they can only read what the TC Ombudsman writes and not much else.

Once the TC Ombudsman gives you a case number it is resolved quite quickly, The ombudsman gives you a different phone number, it is answered promptly, there is even mock disbelief at how much trouble you have been through, and then finally they cough and say yeah well as a favour we will remit the charges.

What a pack of ……

Les Lozenger9:06 pm 04 Jun 10

I must be missing something – but just in case i’m not, what the hell are you doing using Virgin Broadband in the Inner North? I thought the inner North was the land of ISP milk and honey? I must have missed something. Surely? On the weirdly ironic side – VB wireless reception has been uninterupted in Gungahlin! (well, between 9pm and 1am anyway).

Pork Hunt5:23 pm 04 Jun 10

Speak the Queen’s English Pb you’re not an Aussie yet. It’s worst not worse.

Woody Mann-Caruso1:29 pm 04 Jun 10

Email support is not an instant service. There may be slight delays in receiving responses.

By pure coincidence, delays may be longer when it’s night time in Bangalore or Belfast.

Pommy bastard1:21 pm 04 Jun 10

Don’t get me started on “Virginbroadarse”or I’ll not stop. Worse service, worse support, worse connection, worse everything out of any ISP I have used in three countries!

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