Telewest (UK) - Blue Yonderinitial trials and tribulations - 18 October 2001there's a 10 minute wait before my initial phone call to the Telewest sales desk is answered -- i enquire about a "surf unlimited" account and am told a special cable needs to be installed -- i tell them it is already installed (tho no longer active) from my previous Telewest contract (cancelled because they were unable to provide the advertised service) -- i'm told i'm mistaken and a cable has not been installed for my address first letter from Telewest re surf unlimited account has incorrect web address for the help page -- call Telewest internet help desk and find myself in a 20 minutes queue contract arrives from Telewest -- includes installation charge -- the Telewest letter accompanying the contract requests in bold for blue copy of contract to be returned -- look in vain for blue copy -- contract states "you must provide yourself with a valid TV licence" -- i don't have a TV so i don't have a TV license (and i've no intention of getting either) i take a day off work so Telewest can install its cable (costing me the equivalent of a year's total payments to Telewest) -- two Telewest engineers arrive on the right day at the right time to install the cable -- i'm pleasantly surprised, and helpfully tell them that the cable is already installed -- they put on their 'customers! who needs them?' look, and tell me the cable isn't installed and show me their instructions to prove it - i point out the two Telewest sockets plus the outgoing cable and show them the final bill made out to me from Telewest for phone calls made from my address -- somewhat reluctantly they check the cable along it's length using various meters which bleep and whine, following it outside along the path until it disappears into a Telewest hole in the ground, and after a brief discussion come to the conclusion that the cable is already installed -- they return and triumphally announce their discovery -- i try and look surprised -- but then the cable activation hits a minor problem -- something in "the pit" needs changing -- they can't do this themselves but they know someone who can, and another Telewest employees will definitely arrive within the hour to complete the cable activation two hours later another Telewest engineer turns up and confirms that my telephone line is now on and is attached to the right number - i check it, and it's working i configure dial-up networking with new Telewest data and manage to log on ok with reasonable connection speed all in all pretty good (compared with the recent performance of BTInternet) so ends the first week of my renewed association with Telewest **************************************** UPDATE - January 2008 - VIRGIN MEDIA ARE CRAP for the next 5 years, i stuck with Telewest -- it's all relative, but everything considered, they were ok -- i even recommended them to others -- so sometimes the line would go down, but most of the time it worked fine, and their technical support was, by today's standards, very good -- then in 2007 they got taken over by Virgin Media the first thing Virgin did was change their broadband support line to a premium rate number -- i soon gave up reporting problems to them -- it's not a bundle of fun running up huge telephone bills just for the privilege of spending 20 minutes arguing with someone reading from a cue sheet in an almost unintelligible accent (*), trying to explain to them that the fault is at their end, and that it's nothing to do with the anti-spyware package i'm using, or unplugged cables, or out of date modem drivers etc -- might as well save my money and wait the extra hour for them to discover the problem for themselves -- (* my suggestion to Virgin is that they try interviewing people for technical support vacancies over the telephone) then they started throttling back on their advertised bandwidth speeds -- late afternoons and evenings i now get less than a quarter of the expected download and download speeds, despite the fact that i'm paying a premium rate -- they have a page on their web site justifying this (without attempting to explain how to avoid it), but i defy anyone to find it without inside help unfortunately where i live is too far from the local BT exchange to allow anything more than 1Mb access over a BT line (or 2Mb if upgraded to ADSL Max), and there don't seem to be any plans to improve it -- even so, i'd probably still be better off using the cheapest package offered by any of the other broadband suppliers -- so i'm now thinking of having my BT line reconnected again, as soon as i can find an ISP which covers my area and who is capable of supplying what they advertise, and don't throttle back or cap -- but maybe these days that's too much to ask |