My ISP just phoned me to bump me

I'm on 2Mbit at £17.99 pm.

They phoned to request my permission to bump me to 8Mbit at £14.95 pm.

The only clause is I must agree to stay with them for 18 months.

Sounded like a good deal to me - so I said yes.

They had written to me recently regarding this, but the only way to respond was by phoning them - so I didn't. I found it strange that I couldn't agree it online - considering I signed up with them in the first place online.

They are probably reading this now.

Trouble is, your download speed is only ever as fast as the server you're downloading from.

That said, more maximum speed for less money is a good deal, if you're happy enough with your ISP. I'm with Supanet - £10.99 per month for 8mb broadband, plus free telephone calls 24/7.

And yes, they're reading this. Hang on, I'll fax you instructions on how to fashion a tinfoil hat...

P.S. Which robbing bugger of an ISP charges that much for 2mb broadband?!

I knew it, I knew it.

I said before they always watch me. I'm sure they study me or something. They are probably upgrading me so that they can study me faster or something.

Tell them you changed your mind and go with Supanet. That way you can stalk people by telephone free of charge.

Seriously though, Supanet are dead cheap. Broadband is OK - not as fast as Zen.co.uk but its 1/3 of the price and I didn't get free telephone with Zen so its swings and roundabouts. I made a 15-minute call to USA via supanet and it only cost me 70p.

Hah. Im on 4Mbit download and 1Mbit upload for €9.95 a month. Altough... next month the year discount is up and ill be paying €19.95 :(

Next month I'll still be on 8mb and I'll still be paying £10.99. So, "hah" yourself. :)

I don't need a telephone service. I piggy-back my ISP over someone else's line. I'm not sure they are aware of this - not sure if it is against the rules or not. Basically, it isn't my phone line. AOL didn't ask any questions when I did this - It's no different than nightly plugging an extension lead into next door's electric socket in their garage and milking their electric or filling up my water butt from their external garden tap, or stealing the nuts from their bird table, etc.

All Virgin 4meg customers are getting a free boost to 10meg over the coming months. I think there are a few VM users around here. Not bad, it was only 2meg when I signed up and by the time they installed it, it was 4. Now it's going to 10.

Surely I can't lose? If I never see a speed increase - I'm still saving £3.00 pm.

Is there a chance I could lose speed? I assume not - but now it has me thinking what the catch is.

"I don't need a telephone service. I piggy-back my ISP over someone else's line"

Don't get caught. You could be gaoled (thats the correct way in English to spell jailed) or fined £££££ and then gaoled.

Yes, its incredibly illegal and you can go to prison for it.

with all your media piling up i wouldnt be surprised if it really should have read

My ISP just phoned me to tell me they are going to bump me off

"hi this is the assasins creed ISP weve recieved a complaint about your apparant leeching of numerouse gaming media and are sending someone round as we speak."

...

on a side note im using one of those mobile broadband doohickies on 3
£15 for 3gb data limit (total both ways) land lord kinda said no to a telephone line installed into my room when i first looked into it
i probably could have gotten Virgin Media but i had issues with NTL sending me bills when all i did was just ask about it some years ago

so till i forgive NTL (vm as now) or move so they dont have me flagged im stuck at 3.6mbps

I pay £65 per month for my TV - Broadband and Phone. I'm with Virgin Media on the XL PLus package which gives 20mb broadband, All standard TV Channels and unlimted calls 24/7.

I've also been told that I'll be bumped up to the 50mb service, if I join their VIP deal, when it comes out later this year.

think my brother is on that 20mb deal
hes torrents #1 fan
hed be in heaven @ 50mb (although that doesnt really affect torrenting if the seeder is going at a pants slow speed)

I'd want a free ride on Branson's space-plane for £65 a month!

50 MB?

What's the point? Internet backbone access - that's what you need - totally free - faster than anything out there.

You're obviously talking crap, Puki. ISPs don't phone their customers neighbours who are leeching bandwidth to see if they want an upgrade.

Stop being a tit and have a reasonable discussion for once.

no what you want is to take a usb hard drive to one of the many isp's in the country plug it in and just leech random data off the first server you come to before getting thrown out

then get home and find a gig of pr0n couple of dozzen myspace/facebook sites and like the rest of the internet 99% of pointlessness
all for what?
the price of bus fare ;)

"I'd want a free ride on Branson's space-plane for £65 a month!"

Virgin Media (NTL as was) isn't owned by Branson ( he's the largest share holder 15% I think ? NTL bought virgin mobile which gave them the right to use the Virgin Group's Logo's) Virgin Media is still run by the muppets that run NTL.

It's not my line - I don't pay anything for it. As far as I know, my ISP let you login from any telephone line you can find.

oh i thought it was the other way round
ho hum

im definatly not going with them till long after i move out of this dump
which might be never

they threatened to send the balifs round to collect a non existant set top box and i replied with less than vague hints of kneecappings

edit:
this was after having it 'sorted' on two previous occasions
but whom ever altered my (never agreed to) account to say deactive failed to check another box saying everything returned or something

Ginger Tea - any dropout problems with your 3 broadband?

sorry Puki, HAHAHAHA! that was funny xD

You're getting an 8 megabit connection for $30 a month?

I'm paying $76 a month for mine. :-( I just cancelled my cable TV cause I wasn't watching it and THAT was costing me over $61 a month. The internet was $10 less with the package, but I was still forking over around $125 a month for cable TV I didn't watch, and internet.

Oh, but they were nice enough to tell me that I could get a package deal for $99 which would get me internet and cable AND internet phone once I actually called to cancel. Never bothered offering that to me for the last year I was forking over $125 a month for fewer services. Course the $99 fee they quoted me was surely before taxes, so that was probably close to $125 too and they were just trying to screw me over and make it sound like I would be paying less.

But 8mb is worth it. I noticed the speed difference just switching from 6mbit to 8mbit. You'll definitely be loving it after switching from 2mbit. Course it does depend on the site whether you get the better speed. But I got my upload speed tripled for that upgrade too, to 768K.

Same boat here for my family's connection Sswift.

$70 a month for a 3mbit connection, as to which we really only get 1mbit due to distance degradation (wireless connection), and with a 20gb bandwidth cap to boost.
(which is hell to keep under nowadays)

I'd kill for something better (like my college dorm's 45mbit connection....love downloading crap at 5 megs a second), but nothing else exists afaik that is rural firendly and doesn't have a craptastic ping-rate.

beaker:
it sometimes dies big style
i at first put it down to the sim falling out of its housing (it is cheap looking) so blu tac'd it in place

still does it and the only known cure is a reboot which is a bummer

£55 with vm, get xl bb, xl phone and xl tv. Also giving me another box for my bedroom, installed free this saturday :-)
I've heard bad things about them but they have been nothing but great the last year. Here's hoping for another problem free year.

At the first sight, yes... But not necesarily so. They might end up switching you to a different DSLAM, and it's entirely possible that prior you were consisently getting your 2Mbit and that going forward while your peek speed might be higher your 'normal' speed could be considerably less than before.

Keep in mind: there's likelyu going to be a ton of other 8 Mbps people in your new cloud, and each of them bursting could have a negative impact on your own available capacity. Furthermore, the higher speed packages are more likely to be used by heavy downloaders (they'd be the most interested, after all) while in your 2Mbit tier you'd be in the generic entry-level group which most likely has a lot more basic users in there that don't hog bandwidth all day long.

Anywat, just some thoughts. I hope it works out great for you, just realize that that's not a given. :-?

(personally I pay about $35/month for 3Mbit DSL here in the middle of nowhere, Washington... I have a choice between DSL, cable and wireless, but none has any faster options than that available)

I signed up to Orange BroadbandMax recently (so I could get rid of BT line rental) and since then I've got two sales calls trying to convert me to the same package - DOH!

I love this stuff. Honestly.

I have been with my ISP since they first became BlueYonder, 512mb connection. they upped me to what would have been a 20mb connection but I moved, then i cut my service to 2mb after one month of 20mb wiped me out hehe. (stupid me, didn't check the pricing! ;-) )

I love it when Sky/BT/Whatnot ask me what my connection speed is. At the time I replied "4mb!". They would respond with, "We can offer you 8mb for <x> price."

My response was always, "No no no, you don't get it. I am actually achieving 4mb download speeds." "Yes, and we can get you up to 8mb.." "up to? I am already on full 4mb. I doubt i'll get even 4mb on your "up to" service..."

Slam those annoying agressive street salesgoons down. Arses.

salesgoons LOL. I get so many f*cking dumbass calls. Yesterday I had another automated "you've won a holiday" call which began speaking before the phone was on my ear. Today I got some music for 5 seconds and then someone from India called "John" (yeah right) said he was posting me stock portfolio and wanted to clarify my address (which they had correct, but I didn't tell them!). I said don't bother as it's a waste of paper and your money and please remove me from the database. Then there's door to door window salesmen (I've got double glazing on all windows already) so they try to get me to replace the facias or soffits or some crap, oh and door to door driveway paving/tarmac salesmen (avoid). etc. It's endless. It's "real-life" spam instead of the digital kind.

Hey imagine we got "real-life" spam of a naked lady coming round saying "Do you want to watch me nude? Just insert credit card here" or a man with a briefcase full of viagra and penis enlargements!

insert credit card where ?!? :))

Thats one hell of a slot.

lol!

Hmm,

Re: Virgin Media (as an existing NTL customer):

I get basic Virgin Media cable tv, phone (free calls to landlines 24/7) and 4MG Broadband for £27.00 per month.

IPete2.

same here now. i cancelled tv during a difficult time and they gave it me free!

i work for bt sales and you do get UPTO 8mb d/l ;-)

It is a fierce market out there and everyones going crazy!

Sounds like a decent deal to me puki.

nah it was puki

when virgin boost the 4mb to 10mb i think i'll drop down to it.

Puki posted it, and he hasn't edited it out, it's still there. I don't make a habit of posting something, then editing it out and hoping no one notices what I posted earlier.

They said it would take about 10 days.

I'm sure they purely phoned me out of curiosity - just to take notes etc. I bet I am not really getting an upgrade, it was just an excuse to phone me to see if I really existed.

I was getting a bit excited about my upgrade.

How long can it possibly take? This formed part of a new 18 month contract - I had to agree to stay with them for at least 18 months to get this upgrade. Nearly a month has passed.

So, you're still only getting 2Mbit?

Yeh.

Well, I've not tested it. However, I have not noticed any apparent speed increase. Going from 2 to 8 should be noticeable.

You almost certainly wont get 8. If your speed has up by 1 or 2Mbit, you prolly wont notice the difference browsing. Try a speed testing site.

Download: 1.92Mb

Upload: 0.23Mb

Seems a bit bent to me.

That's total crap, mate, TBH.

Ring up and bend someone's ear.

You what?

It's a software switch, surely. (ie. click mouse to enable).

Mebbe they saw you coming...

:-)

pah haha, sorry I sniggered out loud. Yeah it's stinky. I hate all this stuff, why can't just get something friggin' honest and decent!?

I get a constant 2.5 megabytes download speed with my VM connection. I couldn't imagine going back to something like 200k. :)

After a right nightmare a few weeks ago, my speed is now a constant 4Mb connection again... Which I'm pleased about!

Interesting enough there is an article at the BBC about a 'broadband review in the UK'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7258934.stm

But to me, the way the current system is, especially if you live no where near a cable setup, is thats its shite and the quicker they get their fingers out, the better value us customers get from our packages.

Dabz

I just read my e-mails and found one from my ISP that said my upgrade would take place on 10th March. I sat there and thought, 'ah, that date has now passed'.

I just checked my speed:

Download: 1.94Mb

Upload: 0.22Mb


2 weeks ago it was:

Download: 1.92Mb

Upload: 0.23Mb


So, no improvement there. Bit of a waste of time.

just stress them and remember them that the contract is two sided. If they don't fullfill their part, you can terminate the contract at any time. No XY month binding shit

If it's ADSL, going onto the "up to 8 MBPS" service means a standard testing period of 10 days (for all ISPs using BT exchange equipment) where the speed may fluctuate and you may get random cutoffs. The 10 day period determines the fastest speed your line will reliably support. See what it's like after the 20th or so...

It's not hard to fullfill "UP TO 8 mbit". All they are guaranteeing there is that you won't be seeing anything over 8 mbit... Even delivering dialup speeds technically meets that.

Keep in mind: these companies wrote their contracts, and I'm sure that they picked their words very carefully.