The unhelpful helpline at Virgin Media

Forris

Magenta wrote:

Hi Rickhoughton,

I was with Telewest and got no warning from them that they were changing to Virgin Media, just turned on my TV the other day to find a notice on the screen saying that the Telewest Service was no longer available. Could have knocked me down with a feather!

I have NTL/Virgin 10MB Broadband and, in their defence, I did get notification of the changes. In fact, I have had 5 pieces of mail from them in the last copule of months regarding the changeover and the new deals that are available to me. My only beef is that all the combined deals include a 2MB broadband connection - I currently have 10MB costing me £36 per month. What about givng me some sort of deal??

rdwarr

Moral: Do not upgrade to Vista until you are 100% SURE all your kit will work with it. Third-party vendors will bring in Vista compatibility over the next few months; they have no "duty" to have it place already.

mistyarthur

I was thinking what a waste it was sending me all the mail they were! Your provider hasn't technically changed anyway NTL bought virgin mobile and are now paying branson and nice 10million or so a year to use the very marketable virgin name, which I think is cheeky seen as he's one of there major shareholders so its in his interest! Not sure about telewest but didnt they do a merger with ntl a little while ago?

rockabilly_spike

Vista is a NIGHTMARE.
we had PC 5 days old from currys to repair at our shop that IE7 wouldnt even load up on it.
Its not Virgin's fault that they don't support Vista as yet. Cut them some slack, Microsoft put out shoddy software for the public to try and let ISPs/Manufacturers sort it out in their own time.
Theres TONS of hardware and software thats not Vista compatible, not just ISP stuff.

like RDWARR said don't change unless you're sure.
Did you ask Virgin if they were Vista compatible before you upgraded?
Its your job to check first.

RickHoughton

I still haven't had a reply to my email, or a phonecall from them yet. I'm going to see what deal I can get from Sky for my broadband and telephone.

belleooo

I had a similar experience with BT wireless and Vista. I just plugged in via, ethernet directly to the BT router and it worked! No BT software was required. Give the ethernet connection a try. Best of luck.

belleooo

rockabilly_spike wrote:

Its not Virgin's fault that they don't support Vista as yet. Cut them some slack, Microsoft put out shoddy software for the public to try and let ISPs/Manufacturers sort it out in their own time.
Theres TONS of hardware and software thats not Vista compatible, not just ISP stuff.

like RDWARR said don't change unless you're sure.
Did you ask Virgin if they were Vista compatible before you upgraded?
Its your job to check first.

ISP's, like other hardware/software manufacturers, have had plenty of time to adjust their software for Vista. I like Vista it is, IMO, far superior to XP. The only thing I've had problems with, other than the wireless which was sorted with an ethernet connection, was with iTunes. It does not work properly which is a pain but should be resolved as soon as Apple release new software. Everything else is sound.

rockabilly_spike

Well if any manufacturer wanted a look at Vista early to make their software compatible, they had to pay Microsoft.
Some companies declined or just simply couldnt afford it.

Working in a PC shop we've had nothing but problems with it, new, recent and older machines.
I think it WILL be superior to XP once the initial problems are sorted out but its far too unstable at present to be as widely accepted as XP is.
I have customers who dont like XP and stick to 98!

the main problem we've encountered is branded basic machines like Packard Bell are sticking out with shared graphics and not enough RAM to comfortably run Vista.
People thik they're getting something new and up to date and find it runs slower than their old machine.

darwin-rover

RickHoughton wrote:

Also, did anyone get any notification that NTL had been bought out by Virgin?? Thus, their Internet, TV and phone provider would change??

I never.

They havent been bought over by Virgin . Virgin have 17% of NTLs shares , but its still the same company (NTL have a 30 year lease on the Vigin name ), so your provider hasnt changed .
I got a few letters over the past few months telling about the name change .

darwin-rover

Forris wrote:

My only beef is that all the combined deals include a 2MB broadband connection - I currently have 10MB costing me £36 per month. What about givng me some sort of deal??

You could phone them up and see what sort of deal they could give you . There is the VIP deal if you want the full works (10mb broadband , XL TV package with V+ box and XL phone line)
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/product.do?id=11029