With apologies for the rather obvious headline.
Since Wednesday, my internet connection (4Mb cable, ex-NTL now Virgin Media) had been playing up.¬¨‚Ć I’d not really had time to look into the fault, but on Friday night with the arrival of some new networking kit (ordered before I started getting problems, ironically) I decided to get to the bottom of it.
After some testing with various speedtest sites, it became clear that the problem was my upload speed.¬¨‚Ć On a Virgin 4Mb connection, it should be around 400Kbps.¬¨‚Ć I was getting between 2 and 4Kbps, with the occasional 16K spike.¬¨‚Ć Amazing. FTP uploads confirmed the figure. Even to my Virgin-provided webspace (do people still say “webspace” these days?).
Next, of course, I made sure the fault wasn’t at my end.¬¨‚Ć I reset the modem and router.¬¨‚Ć Tried disconnecting all bar one machine from the network,¬¨‚Ć tried four different computers (my XP PC, Macbook, Mac mini and Linux EeePC), connected my PC directly to the modem, tried both Virgin and OpenDNS DNS servers – everything.¬¨‚Ć Nothing improved my upload at all, and it was also apparent that my download was suffering a bit too – with speeds not above 2Mb.
With nothing left to try, I had to call Virgin. On their 25p-a-minute premium rate technical support line.  And so the fun began.
The call was answered by “Steve” (not his real name, and certainly no representation of his Indian location) promptly.¬¨‚Ć He then charged me 25p to inform me that he was charging me 25p per minute, and then went on to ask me to restart the modem. So as to not be charged 25ps just for repeating stuff I’d already done, I spent 50p explaining the exact problem (“My upload speed is crap”) and everything I’d tried.
“Please, we must reset your modem to run these tests”, he said. Sigh.
So I did, and he put me on hold for 75p and came back telling me that he couldn’t access my modem and could I read him the MAC address from the bottom.¬¨‚Ć With that done, he then started to go through the process of getting me to click on things in Windows (he just assumed I was using Windows, but anyway). I explained that my job involves a lot of computer and network support so he doesn’t need to tell me that Internet Explorer has a blue “e” icon so could we just cut to the chase?
“I’m sorry sir, but we must follow these instructions exactly so that I can report the fault”
Now, is it cynical to suggest Steve works from a script?¬¨‚Ć I’m sure he doesn’t and that he’s really a fully trained IT professional.¬¨‚Ć After all, those 25ps are paying for brains and not monkeys, right? Right.
We went through everything I’d tried. That took about ¬¨¬£1.50 to sort out, and lo, the results were just as I’d seen previously. For every test, he asked what my download speed was (never more than about 2.5Mb) and every time he said that was normal for my connection.¬¨‚Ć I know this, and, although it’s a bit low, it’s the upload speed I was concerned about.
“Well that all seems normal now”, he said.
Which it quite clearly isn’t. I was still getting crap upload speeds, and told him this was the reason why I rang in the first place! I also conveyed my frustration at having to repeat all the tests, and that I had told him all the results already, and he got a little angry and said that he wasn’t calling me a liar. After that, he did actually get me to try something else I hadn’t thought of – test the connection in Safe Mode.¬¨‚Ć Result? The same of course. How could it be any different when the fault isn’t my machine?
I told him I wanted refunding for the cost of the call, as it was clear the problem was with their equipment somewhere, and not with me. He agreed, took my phone number, and then rang me. Why couldn’t he have done this earlier?
He suggested a few more things to try (all of which were variations of those things I’d already done) and then put me on hold for ¬¨¬£2.50 (well, if it was still me paying) while he talked to someone else. Eventually, it was agreed that an engineer could pay me a visit! I felt blessed.
So, Saturday afternoon a guy from Virgin Media turned up, ran a few tests, replaced the modem cable (the bit that plugs into the box on the wall they provide) as it had corroded, and all was well.¬¨‚Ć I’m even getting almost 4Mb downloads again, and he gave me a cable for my set top box too, as I moved my room round recently and the old 15m cable was a bit long now the TV is 2m from the socket.
Bizarrely, about half an hour before his arrival, I ran another speed test Рand my upload had already improved dramatically to around 200K.¬† Still not right, but better.¬† Even more bizarrely, my download speed had dropped to the same level.
