Be Excellent To Each Other

Right. The other night Tiscali went down. I phoned CS and got the Bengal express. Call went on for 48 minutes and in the end they said their DNS servers were screwed which I already knew.

What I didn't know was I was being charged 10p+vat a minute to be told of their problem. So that call cost me a fiver. Now...

I want to switch to o2 broadband. However, becasue of where I live it's £22 a month. I can, however, get a £5 a month discount if I have an o2 phone with a contract (because there are too many rules and regs on the PAYG) by simply giving them the number, then, they will text me a discount code. It can be anyone's phone number.

So, could someone out there please help? All I need is your number, they will then text you a five digit code and with that I can save £60 over the year. There's no rules and regs.

They've already told me that I can use anyone I know's o2 for this discount but I just can't afford £22 a month

I'm on O2 but it's payg.

Yeah I have 3 sims here. Thing is, if you don't top up a tenner a month they revert the monthly fee to £22. With a contract however you automatically qualify for the whole year. Crafty gets

And to top it all off Tiscali has been brought by Talk Talk and now have a 40gb usage cap and are about to ramp up their prices.

Oh right. Well I top up the tenner use the free minutes and texts and then use the tenner after the month runs out, so I don't even top up every two months sometimes.

That's the issue with me tbh. I only ever put credit on when I'm at the hospital for my back or visiting a psych, and that can be every 6 months. Only use it to call cabs from the hospitals.

Last time I topped up and had credit on my Virgin PAYG was in Feb when Nemmie called to tell me he had got an Alienware lmao.

Just don't want or need one tbh.

No, I just breathe all I like and nobody has tried to charge me for it yet. I don't think they are allowed to, to be honest.

Job done. Got a mate to do it for me. Didn't realise he was o2. Must get with the times here.

Phoned Tiscali to cancel/transfer request my MAC. And, Quelle Suprise ! Their systems are down. Typical bullshit from a cancellation department.

Gonna phone back at 4pm.

go on the teh Tiscalli forums, they can issue MACs there too, that is what I did..

Cheers for that. I might try that later.

BTW are you still with Tiscali? You'll be pleased to know Talk Talk have added a 40gb usage cap. The fuckers. Only a matter of time before they ramp the prices up.

I was with tiscali for 9 days, until the stoped my VPN for work functioning, I could not play online games between 5pm and 10 pm.. SO I said there service was not fit for purpose, so either stop the throttleing and shaping or give me a MAC...


got my MAC...

Sounds about right. I specifically asked them when I signed up "do you throttle or send empty packets during peak hours".

Answer was no. So, I pushed on and asked if they had _any_ restrictions *at all*.

"Yes we do. However, to trigger it you must get three warnings via email about usage"

And you'll never guess what?

I get shaped, slowed, empty packets and blocked ports sent and slugged every evening between 5 and 11:30pm and I've never recieved a single fucking email.

o2 is a *right pig* to get cheap. Basically if my pal ends his contract my discount ends. But, they have no hidden agenda at all, and are basically Be with less steroids. Which I like, because I can't get Be here.

Now I just need to fight Tiscali for the transfer and my MAC.

I always thought you only had to top up £10 every three months? Whatever, they email you if the timeframe for you to top up in is getting close. I'm on O2 Broadband at home and I originally used my mum's PAYG phone to get my discount, before getting my iPhone.

Was probably the Scottish accent that got me

Thing is the discount is £4.50 odd a month. You're paying £3.30something to get it.

I just don't use mobile phones. That's the problem. Infact, until today I forgot I even had one. It was last used in Feb lol.

I have an o2 contract.

Me too.

This morning (alright, yesterday morning technically) I couldn't make outgoing calls ("connection error"). Over the course of five phone calls to customer services, they firstly told me they'd send instructions for me to return my phone "in 48 hours" or so and couldn't tell me how long I'd be without the phone for. Then after a bit of googling, when I realised the problem was only on 3G (it worked when I switched my phone to GSM and when I tried my SIM in a non-3G phone) I tentatively suggested their could be a network issue, but was told that no, there definitely wasn't but it might be a problem with my SIM connecting to 3G.

Finally, the fifth call was to tell them that my newly activated spare SIM seemed to be working and to say thanks, but I was greeting with a recorded message saying there were network problems. Seems the customer is always wrong even when they're right.

Confirmed it wasn't just me: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23o2fail

Sorry JC, this is pretty much irelevant to your thread, but seemed like a handy place to rant.

Broadband costs alter according to where you live, regionally?

Sky's only a fiver.

Broadband costs alter depending on your local exchange-if it is unbundled you get the best prices but BT haven't completed this yet and so there are still a fair few that are being charged at a higher rate. So for example, company x offers broadband for £10 a month in unbundled areas. When you query about it, they take your home phone number and check the line and find out it hasn't been unbundled, so you can't get the price and have to pay £20 a month.

I think it is to do with company x having to pay BT for using the line as well as taking their own cut so these charges are passed onto the customer.

That is right Gill, the only LLU in Brosely, is Talktalk..

That I did not know. Thanks.

May I also just say, reading my post back makes it sound like I am annoyed at the companies for this but they do always state this with their prices. (The fact that they may not be able to offer the special price to all customers) and obviously if one company can't give you the offer price, none can since they all need to wait for the exchange to be unbundled.

I rarely read "annoyance" into people's posts. Unless it is prefixed by something indicating vexation.

I like this post, the words fit together nicely. I love watching James Bond films because of the way everyone talks to each other, no one ever seems to talk like that in real life.

FTFY



BT recently put the price up pretty steeply too, the buggers. I was paying £10 a month for broadband for years, and it jumped to 23 quid over night. I phoned up (AOL) and demanded a MAC and told them why, and they explained that BT had started charging *them* £12 a month for my connection, so it had bumped me up on to a real tariff.

Anyway they offered me £16/mo so I stayed.

So much for a Wired Britain though, BT. Fucksake. Get the wires in, make sure there's no competition and then jack the price up.

I paid 14.99 with plusnet, and when I called up for the MAC code as we were changing to SKY, the man offered me 7 quid a month. I asked when this price had started from, as it was "the same as you have now" and 1) why had I been paying the higher rate and 2) can I have it backdated to the start of the cheaper rate. They said "no" so after more heated debate over how stupid I was, I got the MAC code request done.

Yeah Scotland is particularly bad for not being unbundled. I'm not sure about my local exchange but when I was in Glasgow I was ok. If my local one is, then it is recent because I'm sure I've had this conversation with my brother in law just after they got married.

I have no idea why it is taking so long because when I worked for BT I'm sure they were predicting 3 years max for them to finish (they even created a new company to carry out this work, BT Openreach I think it's called?) but they're past that now.

Thing is, in theory I don't object to having a "non-unbundled" exchange. But I think what's happening is, BT have been forced to do that and it's costing them a load of money and making no profit, so they're increasing their own customers prices to compensate.

And I don't like that, because the equipment is installed and paid for - in my local exchange I believe it's been upgraded once in 5 years. So really, why put the price up now?

Yeah most companies won't offer new prices to existing customers until the customer is leaving and then they come up with those prices or better to get you tied back into a contract. One of broadband and mobile networks biggest problems is 'churn'. That's the amount of customers who leave to go to other networks and they have retentions depts specifically to try and stop that happening since it is generally easier and cheaper for the company to retain a customer than it is to get a new one. They could obviously just offer the good deals to begin with but then they are missing out on the margins they would be making from you staying on your first rate.

Agree, absolutely. but I felt it was worth asking.

Don't ask and don't get. people can only say "no".

BT are in a bit of a rubbish situation at the moment. They have resritctions placed on what deal they can offer and so are losing loads of customers who are getting much better prices from companies like Talk Talk and Sky etc. These restrictions were only in place until there was enough competition in place and again from my time at BT I'm sure they are about to be lifted because we were getting told it was close to happening back then. So maybe sometime in the next couple of years we will get some better prices again which will hopefully encourage BT to start moving a bit faster with the unbundling.

Aye, Ofcom have buggered things up a bit. BT's Broadband could have been cheaper & the UK's BB infrastructure would probably be better than it is if it wasn't for Ofcom's restrictions on how much BT Wholesale can charge the resellers. BT needed higher prices to pick up the slack, so everyone went with the resellers & the investment that had to be carried out to twangdoodle the exchanges cost BT a fortune. A fuckton of jobs were lost & as a result things are happening much slower now (as well as huffing & dragging their heels obv).

The Royal Mail possibly had a rougher time with Postcom. They've to deliver Deutsch Post's (or whoever's) letters but they get paid significantly less for that than what they would charge businesses directly, they're not allowed to put the price of stamps up even by a few pence & they've had to downsize their delivery offices (not a demand of the regulator, but they needed to save monies), meaning with less folk they've to deliver more mail & walk longer delivery routes.

Both theses companies made major changes & staff cuts well before the recession, who knows what kind of a state they're in now. I'm not surprised that their services are worsening.

Shitty fucking regulators, trying to do "a good thing" but ultimately making an arse of it.

Our exchange is old. Not suprising really given that we live in a parish town where if anything happens to the church they basically try and sell your house to pay for it. I'm not kidding either, it has actually happened in the past. When my aunt and uncle brought this place they paid £3000 for a permanent insurance against such a thing, but back in the 80's three families lost their freehold houses because they declined insurance and there was a fire at the church !

Mum paid it too, but hers was about £1500 'cos her house is smaller..

So yeah, back to rubberband..

I have been quoted the following by each provider I can have, and, the limits..

BT - Around £23 a month. 2m max speeds, 3gb usage cap. - Startlingly this is what all my neighbours are using, cos I can see their BThomehubs in my wireless list

Orange - Around £26 a month IIRC. 2m max speeds, 6gb usage cap. Would be £6 if I was in London.

Sky - £17.99. 2m 20gb usage cap. This is the £5 deal a few of my pals in London are on.

Be - basically told me to fuck off, they don't provide to my exchange (which I was fucking gutted about because Be are roolage and I wanted a Bebox dammit !)

Virgin - no cable until...well, ever. They're not setting up down these parts, apparently.

Tiscali - 5m max, no cap £7.49 for 3 months then £14.99. Plenty 'o' shaping, throttling and empty packets/blocked ports, but at least there's no hidden costs and you do get 5m for about 6 hours a day. So now you can see why I had Tiscali.. Have now been brought out by Talk Talk who have introduced a 40gb cap and the DNS servers have been screwed for over a week.

o2 - 6m no cap, no throttling, no empty packets, no port blocking. Basically same service as Be. £17.02 a month thanks to the discount 'cos my mate with a new o2 contract allowed me to use his phone for the discount. First three months free, so works out about £152something for the year, whereas Tiscali was closer to £200.

IIRC that was about it. The rest wouldn't entertain me, but, looking at their prices quoted I wouldn't entertain them, either.

I phoned Tiscali about 20 mins ago and they are sending my MAC in the post. What I didn't know was the transfer is all done for you. Once the MAC arrives and I sign for it BT contact Tiscali, who then cancel the direct debit and contact o2 giving them the go ahead to activate their direct debit and activate your modem. Total changeover downtime is about an hour. If that all goes as they said it does then I'm really rather happy with that, and the extra £14.99 a month I won't have to pay for 3 months will help toward christmas pressies

Chancel Repairs are the latest hot stuff in conveyancing at the moment. This is being drummed into us. The churches are apparently going through all the records finding out who they can get cash off.

Well they're not getting any from us. In fairness they don't ask tbh. We do donate to all kinds of charitys (not strictly cash, but clothes, household items we don't want etc) but they are all children's charitys.

One doesn't usually get a choice in the matter, to be honest.

True. This is why the insurance was so important. Thankfully when buying down here they legally have to inform you of it and offer the insurance. And unless you're a tightass who wants to take an enormous risk then you basically buy it

We do have a couple of hard core bible bashers (hypocrites*) in our area but we tend to ignore them.

*remember that fat lass who was living nextdoor? hard core christian apparently. Hard core christian right up to the point where she gipped the people she was living with out of all of the rent and back rent (cos she was waiting for the govt to pay out) and done a bunk owing them about £1300.

Amazing. Those who seem to preach the bible and go on and on about the church always seem to fuck everyone over. My ex wife's mother was one of these. She paid 10% of her wages per annum to the church. Didn't stop her telling my ex wife "I didn't even want you it was your father's idea he thought it would keep the marriage together". Quite shocking how some people think they can act how they like, be vile nasty fucks and then buy their way into heaven.

If there is a heaven I really hope it doesn't work like that. Never forget about one time I went to church in the USA for christmas service. Got a massive spiel about money being the root of all evil blah blah and then about two minutes later around came the collection plate.

Maybe she wasn't so retarded, after all

I should have used the Horatio cane cartoon for that, I guess.

I think that was all a scam tbh. Personally I think she was just a lazy bitch.

Apparently her housing benefit refused to pay because she was supposed to be going to college but wasn't actually going. Thing is, she used that as an excuse, buggered off and when the people who were putting her up spoke to her mother her mother said "oh? so she's not been giving you the £200 a month I gave to her to give to you then?"

Right fucking scammer. Yet goes on about Jesus and being saved all day long