Two posts in a day?

Might have to change the title from 'occasional' to 'almost regular'.

This post is actually a replication of a post I have submitted tonight to cable forum because my broadband provider, Virgin Media, have pulled a bit of a fast one by introducing traffic shaping (or throttling or QoS, whatever you want to call it) without actually mentioning to, well, anyone including their own staff it would seem.

The original post is here and here are some of the internet resources reporting on the throttling:
Cable Forum, IS Preview and Neowin.





Hi all

New to the forum but having the same issue with traffic shaping. I am on a 4Mbit connection and have noticed it being a tad slow of late and tonight very much so. Someone at work told me about the shaping policy today, not even VM themselves which annoyed me a touch.

So, I rang up. First off I got a CS rep who didn't have scooby doo what I was talking about so he went off to talk to someone and afterwards maintained that actually these limits had always been in place under the Fair Use policy but were simply not highlighted. This I doubted, and I argued as such but could not prove it at that moment in time. He told me that if I looked in my ts and cs then I would see he was right. So, after a fruitless argument about it, I gave up and went hunting for the ts and cs Telewest sent me. I found them and they make no mention of these limits and in fact they do not even appear to mention the Fair Use policy at all, so rang again.

This time, I got a girl who said that a few people were asking managers about this as they were getting more and more calls. She told me I'd need to speak to broadband tech support and put me through. Enter stage right a call centre employee in Mumbai who clearly didn't even understand the question as there were massive pauses while he tried to locate some part of his script that might appease me (not his fault, obviously - he's simply the result of pointless cost cutting exercises. I'd rather have a lower top package which was genuinely unlimited with decent technical backup than headline grabbing alleged speeds and crap 'support' from someone 10,000 miles away). Anyway, eventually he put me on hold as he clearly didn't have the faintest idea what my query/complaint was about and after nearly half an hour I was cut off. Exeunt stage left the Worlds Worst Tech Support.

So, I tried a third time. This time I got though to yet another CS rep who told me I'd need to talk to broadband technical support. I said I didn't want to talk to the Indian centre because they simply don't have the level of English comprehension to understand what you're saying if your query deviates in anyway from their scripted answers. I was put through to a UK call centre (hurrah!) and was dealt with by a most helpful chap. Sadly, he didn't know anything about it either, so he asked a couple of managers. Unfortunately neither of them could agree on what the policy meant or how it would actually be implemented either.

However, this chap did then go and talk to someone else and it was eventually clarified that if you go over 750MB of download on a 4Mbit connection, you will get throttled. No ifs, no buts, that's exactly it. Of course, there's nothing the operators can do about it (anyone who thinks there is a big red button to remove throttling on and individual connection is sadly mistaken, I fear), but he told me to make a formal written complaint to the following address:

Telewest Broadband
Evolution House
1 Chippingham Street
Attercliffe
Sheffield
S9 3SE

and he assured me they take complaints very seriously. Now fair play to the lad, he was as nice and as helpful as he could possibly be and he even admitted that I knew more about it than he had done or his managers. He was also most apologetic that it had taken so long to get this simple (if blunt and rather unpalatable) answer. VM have not even had the decency to warn and train their own staff on this matter which has lead to half-truths, myths and downright lies about how these limits have always existed but not been publicised. As a result I have spent 2 hours on the phone trying to get to the bottom of it, I have spoken to 5 differnet people who have, in turn, spoken to the same number again while I was on hold. What a monumental waste of time. VM have tried to slip this though on the quiet because they want to penalise the lower packages in order to make their headline grabbing packages seem even better. As someone else has said, how can they now advertise their broadband as having no limits when it clearly does?

I really don't see why I should be penalised for taking advantage of new technologies that allow me to view tv over the web. That's what they all want isn't it? For us all to be using broadband to watch tv and access digital media services? But the second we do so we get punished.

Now much as I dislike conspiracy theories, it does seem a bit too neat that this has come into force at the same time 10Mbit packages have been upgraded to 20Mbit. This in itself is a bit annoying because 4Mbit and 2Mbit packages aren't being upgraded as far as I can see so 20Mbit users, theoretically, get 5 times the service for just 50% more dosh. Hmmm. Could it be they are desperate for everyone to upgrade? Don't they see that if everyone upgraded then the problems would just be worse? As for the new 50Mbit package, what's the point? Will that be subject to traffic shaping too? If so, what will the threshold be be and what will the throttled speed be? I can't see anyone who's shelling out a mooted £55/month for that service being too happy when their shiny new connection gets the life squeezed out of it.

Me? Well, I'll be writing to them with a formal and strongly worded complaint. I'm not happy at all, and I suggest anyone else who is affected by this, thinks they might be or just objects on principal does so too because we can whing all we want on forums but VM will not takwe the slightest bit of notice unless people actually complain formally to them in writing. Take the few minutes and the cost of an envelope and stamp and maybe, just maybe, if enough of us do it they will realise that people are annoyed enough to make a bit of effort and start paying attention to the people that pay their wages. Us.