Be Excellent To Each Other

Yes, I have noticed this over the last week or so.

I do not like it.

You could get around this by switching to OpenDNS if it bothers you that much. That's how it'll be working -- DNS injection for non-existent domains.

pssst, you can opt out here: http://www.virginmedia.com/myvirginmedia/advancederror/

Yeah I could do, but what the fuck?! This has just happened without any kind of warning. They're probably earning a pretty penny from ad impressions as a result, too.

Good find Mimi! I like how they're labelling it as a helpful thing rather than a cynical attempt to make more money. It's on by default, though, which isn't right, considering the number of customers they have who probably wouldn't know how to opt out.

Hmmm. If you weren't looking at that page, you'd be looking at a "server not found" error in IE or Firefox instead. Is that really that intrusive? It's not exactly phorm, is it?

Yeah, I think it was a cynical move, and I don't like the fact that they hoisted it on people without any prior notice to say that you could opt out.


(from here)

I prefer the server not found page. It's a bit of code built into my browser. I don't want to look at their shitty site with banner ads on it, ta.

You're quite right. However, I don't like it. It's nothing more than a way for them to make some more money, and if I want to search for something because I have the wrong address, it isn't Virgin media I want to search through.

It's my understanding (from a chum who actually works for them), that, barring maintenance work, it's pure profit. The fibre optics are in place and they simply make sure they work most of the time. The rest is profit profit profit. The competitive thing is bullshit. Also, they're more than capable of rolling out 100Mb to everyone, but why should they bother when the likes of BT simply can't offer it and are charging £30 a month for a few Mb? They just have to match/go one notch better than BT and they're golden. They'll make as much money as they can for as little work as they can for as long as they can, and when BT catch up, they'll offer a bit more.

I'm on 10Mb and I get capped at 1Mb FOR FIVE HOURS if I download over 1.5GB between 9AM and 9PM. What the fuck is that about? I'm on 10 fucking Mb. 1.5GB is a couple of iPlayer TV shows.

I hadn't noticed this as I generally only visit my bookmarked sites. I agree that it is not right and have opted out.

Thanks for the link.

I wasn't posting that to help them justify them making this extra money... I think they're doing OK as it is, and as they charged me three times in one month for the same bill and are playing dead at giving me my money back, I'm in no hurry to help them

Ditto web hosts who fill your space with adverts if you don't use it.

I'm looking at you Fasthosts.

OpenDNS does the same thing, badly mess up a URL & it gives you a couple of adverts & a search box.

But they're a free service & you gain a few benefits using them so...

Do you have any idea how much debt Virgin Media inhereited from NTL and Telewest? It's quite impressive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Media





Basically VM was created by stapling two dead-in-the-water companies together. They aren't exactly your million-dollar-per-second-profit banks or oil companies.

Oh yeah, I know, I was just adding a whinge! My problem is they're making loads of money, more or less pure profit, they're pissing about with schemes like this and making even more money, there's barely anyone in my street with their broadband, AND even if they were, it wouldn't make much of a difference, so WHY do I get my bandwidth capped for downloading what in 2009 is a piddly amount of data across the entire day?

Yeah there direct debit billing is a joke. I switched to paying by card when they pulled a similar stunt with me, they then tried to charge me £5 a month for the privilege but I rang them up and explained that I was not prepared to pay this charge as their direct debit system was awful and I should not be punished for their ineptitude so now I pay 50p which I can stomach.

So? Debt and profit are two different things.

Do I really need to explain how debts have to be maintained, often involving regular payments taken from operating profits?

Aw I didn't realise.





Still don't want their banner ads.

Don't get me wrong, it reeks of penny-pinching desperation (which makes me wonder about the state of their finances) and is a bit of a dick move. But I don't think it's mobs-and-pitchforks time. I think the flaming torches are best held in reserve in case they ever sign up to phorm.

Oh! And another thing they pulled!

A few months ago I was on rubbish 2Mb (I think), but unbeknown to me at the time, they were offering new customers 10Mb for the same monthly fee. They didn't let existing customers know about it but there was an option to upgrade for free hidden on the website. I did it and told a few people at work about it as well, so they all did it. It was all done completely online, ticking boxes, filling in some details and then bam, 10Mb. Wahoo!

However, one of the ticky boxes was "Wireless Router - £50". I already have a wireless router, so I unticked it. So did three of my colleagues. Guess what? They sent us one any way! All of us! Free routers!

No. Come billing time, there's an extra £50 on there for the routers we didn't ask for. Obviously we all individually rang them up to complain and were told "oh sorry about that, just throw the router away - we'll remove the charge from your account". They're basically ignoring the boxes customers tick and sending out routers that are clearly worthless ("throw them away") on the off-chance that people will stump up and pay for them. If they complain, "oh well, nevermind." They're basically fucking conmen. Unfortunately, we have little in the way of other broadband options around here.

Yes, it is. "Server not found" is a valid technical response that can be expected to be relied upon because it is an accepted DNS standard. What happens when your spam filtering software uses a source domain validation test to see if the sending domain of an email has been made up? Suddenly, with this change, they all pass the test because it won't return a failure response.

Verisign did this at the root DNS level a few years ago. It caused carnage and uproar.

Bulge of Wogan? Nemmie? Pitchfork time say you two?

Yes, me also.

Grab those flaming torches and chaaaarrrrrggge!

Tiscali have been doing this for many years.

It doesn't bother me because I never mistype a ULR EVER.

Aren't virgin media known for being utter cunts already though? What do you expect?

No. But you can take your argument for argument's sake into another thread because I can't be arsed today. Maybe tomorrow.

Now this I can understand. Pitchforks it is, then.

Jonarob -- why not just, y'know, use someone else you hate less? I'm happy with my O2 ADSL, and I was happy with my Sky ADSL before that.

Because we'd have to arse on going back to BT, etc.

If you're going to charge, you'd be better changing Jonny's name to Wogan's Trouser Bugle, but then one of you'd have to blow the bugle to lead the charge

Why not use some of your dislike to fuel a response on their #affect_other" class="postlink">feedback form for the service?

@Wullie

Aww, I thought this thread would be full of people sharing my VM woe. Every time I click on a link, download something, or do anything, my wireless manager tells me the connection's borked. And the computer I'm currently using* is fucking wired. Dicks.

* MacBook is upstairs, grabbing sweet, sweet Curb for me.

Done! Told them it should be opt-in, not opt-out. Amongst some other angry words...

That is also what I said.

Throughsilver swears? I have never seen you type these words before, you must be very angry... or an IMPOSTER!

I never type a URL. I just type roughly what I want in the box and it says that URL doesn't exist and did you mean http://www.thaturl.com, and it's usually right. Really helpful, that is

If they take this extra 20p, and use it to change their billing system to a proper system which allows me to change my TV package online (Calling them pains me too much) I don't mind.

VM - Great if you don't need to setup, change or cancel anything.

Thank you so much for telling me how to stop this. It has been driving me mad!

It was mentioned on the The Register back in August. I didn't mention it as I didn't realise there were many folks using them... I opted out a little while back.



Weird, I had a card through telling me of a free upgrade saying that if I wanted to upgrade, I just visit the link mentioned and sign up. A few weeks later I was upgraded... painless.

Is there any news on this Virgin Media music subscription thing that is supposed to be coming soon? Like Spotify, only I think you keep it. I'm sure they said late summer, some time in march.

I swear a fair bit, though I try not to. I never use the female genitalia-related swears so beloved by this forum, though. I'm like Ian MacKaye or something.

I swear a lot in real life (as anyone who has played on Xbox Live with me will confirm) but I hate swearing in type. It is how you know I'm really riled. I used to never swear in RL either but my gf corrupted me

I have not had relations with this woman

*Gilly McIvor like this*

THREAD CROSSOVER!

Any details on those links in case they are still working?

Our internet is a free perk with the rent as the landlord didn't want to cancel it for some reason when he moved to germany and told us we could use it free. But i tmeans I don't have any details for it. (Infact I only knew we were with VM when this happened).

And it's currently 2Mb...

I've long since binned the card that got posted but this link suggests you'll get upgraded in due course anyway.

I don't even know how to tell what speed I am on. Does something like this site help?

I got 9.68Mb/s download and 0.47Mb/s upload

I don't know what a Mb is - is that different from MB? I always get confused at these things. Do they measure by the second? Is it normal for uploads to be so different from downloads?

Oh, and what about this gubbins:

Packet Loss 0%
Ping result 29 ms
Jitter result 10 ms

Anyone understand this voodoo?

Cheers Devilman!