Force 9 service is shambolic

[#1]

I have been sitting waiting for an adobe reader update to download with ever increasing despondancy at the connection speeds I've been getting for the last couple of years. I thought that while I was waiting I'd have a look on the F9 website to check for problems - download speed of 24kb/s is just taking the p*** particularly for 17:00 on a Wednesday. I've not seen the rants & raves section before. I doubt it will change any of the poor service that the now owners of Force 9 provide but it might just make others aware of the the problems they might encounter.
I've had problems with connection speed for years. I joined Force 9 almost at it's inception,  and my first complaint was in 1999. Despite denials by the current customer services I took up a broad band service when it was available which promised a contention ratio of 30:1. I can only assume that the people in F9 at that time are no longer there because any mention of contention ratios is now vehemently countered. I made a complaint back in February 08 about the speed of connection and loss of e-mails from the F9 servers. I lost a substantial amount of money because I failed to get a e-mail which meant I had builders in my house doing nothing for a week waiting for delivery of building materials - a residential issue, and nothing to do with my business which is incidentally trauma surgery. I was told via e-mail I was using my residential account for business! The basis of the acusation was that I had fiddled around with making a website so friends could view some of my photos back in 2002/3. The site was neglected and wasn't used after that although I left the mal-functioning content on the F9 web servers. I have little time to read e-mails these days let alone run a business! They basically refused to answer any of my concerns until I upgraded to a business account or removed the content and would not listen to any explination I had. Indeed I had to wander which pleb had looked at the website or had they actually looked at a completely different site. There was no option if I wanted "help" so I deleted the entire site. I tried to copy it to by computyer (the original had been deleted long ago) but - you guessed it, connection speeds were so minimal I just ended up deleting the lot. Despite that my account was suspended a few days later - an apparent accident by some incompetant.
Throughout the ordeal I was faced with a brick wall of disinterest and have had little in the way of apology. I changed my account from the £22.99 to a £14.99 account as I thought I was getting a faster rate but infact it turned out to be just a con. If F9 had been a little more customer focussed I might still be paying for something I wasn't getting, but still the connection rates are extremely poor. Why pay a premium for a cr*p service when you can pay far less for an equally cr*p one?
I looked for a better competitor last year, and was astonished to see that F9/PlusNet had great reviews - I reckon someone is being paid off to put in a good word, because my experience doesn't match.
Guess what - I'm still waiting for the download to finish.

[#2]

Sounds as if you have a problem - because I can assure you that poor speeds are not the norm!
Oh Yeah - contention doesn't exist in the way it used to - you weren't being fobbed off!

[#3]

Contention as it used to be totally went out of the window when faster than 2MB speeds came along because the BT network capacity to the exchanges didn't quadruple overnight when peoples connections speeds to the exchanges quadrupled.

[#4]

You could have problems with your line that you are not aware of and plenty of posters round here will try and help as will staff. Also worth noting that line problems do not go away if you change ISP, it's the same wires!
I would think that James Bailey from PN would take a look at your account to make sure account issues are resolved, as for any technical issues (he will also help) if you know how to access your router ADSL stats that will be a good start. If you don't know, don't worry someone will be able to explain what to do. For the Speed issues, probably best to start a thread in the Broadband Speed forum posting some detail such as what make & model your modem/router is, along with those stats if you can. There is also a "sticky post" at the top of that forum about speed faults, which will help you to understand how to go about sorting out the problem.
HTH, Regards.

[#5]

Thanks for the positive comments. Sounds like the wires need a look at. I'll take all this on board and try to get to bottom of it.
If the initial problem I'd had with f9 was sorted in a more professional manner then I might not have been so aggrevated, but there were a series of systematic errors on the part of customer services (all-be-it indirectly initiated by a hacker attack on their e-mail service) for which no-one is apparently accountable.