V21 problems

I have been messed around a lot by V21 lately. I applied for a
conversion from ISDN to ADSL. For 11 weeks I was given appointments for
BT to call which they never did, resulting in taking days off work
waiting around. Not the fault of BT, but would seem to be between V21
and their new provider Telefonica giving the wrong instructions. Apart
from the wasted time, my main number was ceased 3 times without my
knowledge. I was lucky, and to their credit, I did get a full refund
when I insisted on it.

In the meantime they have carried out a mass migration of all their BB
customers from ipstream to datastream Telefonica. This was done without
informing anyone, and it was denied that it had taken place, assuming
their customers to stupid to work it out for themselves. They are now
locked into datasteam until such time that migrations are possible.
There are now a lot of angry customers there.

Since this migration many users have been without a BB connection for
days and weeks. Some are reporting that their connections are now slower
than before, although some say improved. Support is by £1/min with a
long waiting time. There has of course been hot discussion in their
forums, but today they have censored any continuing debate on the threads.

I think that Tiscali also use Telefonica who also suffer severe
criticism in ISPreview.

If anyone is looking for a cheap BB ISP then don't for your own sake
look at V21.

I notice they advertise in PC Plus magazine where one of their claims is
that "No long contracts to tie you down". True, but you can't leave and
no mention of £30 to do so.

--
Regards


David G
(remove r u n)

On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 12:39:54 +0000, in uk.telecom.broadband,
David G <notreallyhere@sure> wrote:

>They are now locked into datasteam until such time that migrations
>are possible.

Are they (a) blocked from migrating because of some contractual
reason (as well as V21 charging a fee when they do leave), or is
thie (b) migrate to IPStream you are meaning ? I guess migration
from one Datastream service to another might be awkward, but never
havingg tried... (my IP and network link is with Tiscali on a 1000
kbps Datastream connection and there's nothing intrinsically wrong,
but I have seen the comments and accept contention issues could be
affecting many other people, just not happening here for me, with
some other users of Tiscali (as their ISP, mine is ukfsn.org for
this connection) also happy with service, AFAIK (friend's father
is using them, for one, and he'd be quick to comment if it wasn't
giving him good service, I know for sure).

>I think that Tiscali also use Telefonica who also suffer severe
>criticism in ISPreview.

It would be nice to know if Clara still uses Telefonica
Come on Nick !! (Nick Sellors is still at Clara I assume


--
PlusNet <http://tinyurl.com/24ymz> - I recommend them and save some cash.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, us-
(E-Mail Removed) says...
> >I think that Tiscali also use Telefonica who also suffer severe
> >criticism in ISPreview.
>
> It would be nice to know if Clara still uses Telefonica
> Come on Nick !! (Nick Sellors is still at Clara I assume
>
No. Clara only used Telefonica for the 1Mb trial which ended on,
apparently, a sour note with telephonic withdrawing service and parting
company with clara without warning.

That's how I saw it anyway and I was one of those on the trial who
suddenly found themselves connectionless.

--
Alan LeHun

Peter M wrote:
>
> Are they (a) blocked from migrating because of some contractual
> reason (as well as V21 charging a fee when they do leave), or is
> thie (b) migrate to IPStream you are meaning ? I guess migration
> from one Datastream service to another might be awkward, but never
> havingg tried...
snip

There is no contractual reason to prevent moving. Don't know how easy it
is to move to another d/s provider. The main area of discontent was that
originally there was an option of changing to a lower rate d/s
connection. A few took this option, but it seems many wanted to remain
on the ipstream option until they could see how successful d/s was. That
option was suddenly removed by a decision of V21 to move everyone across
without any prior notification or even post. In fact it was denied for
some days that it had happened. As a result many users now have been
without connection for approaching 2 weeks. Others are connected but
suffering slow connections.

The whole affair has been handled in a very underhand way. A happy bunch
of guys have been turned sour by this.

It does seem that the cheaper ISP's are choosing this route to offer
cheaper accounts. It will be interesting to see how the speeds span out
over the coming months as they pick up more users.


--
Regards


David G
(remove r u n)