a heartfelt thank you from a new customer

[#1]

I am a new plusnet customer, and i just want to say a big thank you to you guys for the outstanding service i have recieved so far,
Before joining plusnet i was on Virgin ADSL and quite frankly, they treated me with contempt, disrespect, and most insultingly, like an idiot,
with peak time speeds of 0.5Mbps if I was lucky, and absolutely no feedback at all on when or if it was going to be fixed, as well as a conplete lack of knowledge from their customer service team it was quite frustrating to say the least, so i complained loudly and hard and eventually got out,
By contrast, since i have joined plusnet, you have been nothing but helpful and sincere, answering queries quickly, being completely upfront about some of the less favourable things, like download rate limiting at peak times on certain services, and on the rare occasions i have had to phone, if you couldnt answer me, promising to phone me back, and actually doing so without leaving me on hold for ages
I honestly cant thank you enough, you really have been so far the best ISP i have ever been with, and i will certainly be recommending you to everybody on the virgin forums who are still suffering and are looking to move, i honestly cant imagine two ISP's who could be such polar opposites

[#2]

Hi severedsolo
I am hopefully not far off joining plusnet myself.
Just waiting to be told the day.
Still struggling on the VM connection at the moment.
Just done a speedtest, get what I got, exactly 0.5mb
Glad you are pleased with Plusnet, hope mine works OK soon, will be so glad to be rid of VM

[#3]

Evening guys 
Welcome to the plusnet forums severedsolo. (still don't know your proper first name even tho we have been chatting for what seems like years lol)
You proberly read my post on virgin earlier stating how happy I am with plusnet at the moment.
Its like a breath of fresh air eh!

Paul.

[#4]

hi paul, yeah i saw that, glad things are working out for you too, i know its early days, but it is always nice to talk to a tech support person who actually knows more about the way it works than you do, (which is how it should be, rather than having to explain to them whats causing the fault and how they need to fix it,
by the way, its Martin 

[#5]

Yeah totally get where your coming from.
The thing that still sticks in my mind is the 1st phone call I made to virgin regarding the problem.
They said it was not just their problem , it was happening with every internet provider , I said "no chance , I bet you anything if I switch everything will be fine straight away" he then basically told me I was full rubbish.
I then asked for a mac code and he said it would cost me 170 sheets!
Thank god for Susan Smith eh!
And then surprise surprise 1st night I am connected to plusnet  I am downloading half life 2 from steam at 700kbps , listening to radio 1 in the background on i-player , chatting to a mate on xfire and surfing the net at the same time with no issues at all hmmmmmm.

[#6]

I am like severedsolo and paulpicks (and several other ex virgin customers who will soon be on Plusnet) but I wanted to post this for severedsolo and paulpicks (who probably feel the same way I do) that it is actually quite sad for people leaving virgin after being a long standing customer who has been treated as if their not worth anything by Virgin just because they're an ADSL customers, apart from one exception at Virgins CEO's office and severedsolo and definitely paulpicks will know who I'm talking about but I've deliberately left out her name from the below E-Mail I want to share with people that I've sent to this person regarding why I've left Virgin and why I (amost certainly) won't be backing out of my new connection with Plusnet.
Oh and the part where i've put i'm glad to here Virgin aren't going bankrupt I do honestly mean that regardless and it's just a response to the person I e-mailed in question to something which I'd heard on the grapevine which turns out to not be true anyway.

Quote

Hi *****, With regards to Virgin being bankrupt, I'm glad to here that they're NOT. Now on another note, what you have put in the 1st part of your message is blatantly an exact cut and paste of what the service status mentions here https://national.virginmedia.com/service-announcements/serviceInfo?serviceId=3&type=F no mention of what I actually put to you as I was on about the Steam downloads being pathetically slow (deliberately limited by Virgin in other words) as their was never a problem with Steam until the last 3-4 weeks when everything seems to have gone wrong with Virgins ADSL network, you cut and pasted about streaming video the iPlayer and YouTube which has absolutely nothing to do with Gaming! I was talking about downloading a game from Steam http://store.steampowered.com/ which is completely legal and I shouldn't have to suffer these appalling speeds! Ex Virgin ADSL customers have now left to go to Plusnet ADSL and have posted on the Plusnet forums that since they left EVERYTHING is running smoothly down the very same telephone line Virgins ADSL service is coming down so clearly Virgin has some MAJOR issues and it's not all to do with video streaming as everyone seems to think, it's about time the team at Virgin ADSL looked at the bigger picture and stopped concentrating on just the video streaming issues and sort everything else out, I have no doubt in my mind that Virgin are deliberately limiting the steam downloads (and for no good reason!) for ADSL customers where Virgins CABLE customers have no issues whatsoever....... For example on Steam a member of the Virgin 'HELP' and support forum has posted on the Plusnet forums saying since he migrated to Plusnet his steam downloads have gone from 60 kb/s download speed to a massive 750 kb/s download speed which is more than a 100% speed increase down the same phone line as Virgins ADSL service was coming down so it's definitely NOT a phone line issue. Now I am still within my 7 days to cancel the service with Plusnet which I haven't done yet as I got to thinking how much longer will these problems with Virgin persist? As if they can limit Steam to download at a maximum of 60 kb/s then that's ridiculous to expect people to pay £20 a month for that sort of service, all they have to do is reverse what they did in the 1st place (and stop giving 99.9% of their time to your preferential CABLE customers) because their are a hell of a lot of other customers on ADSL who deserve just as much Help AND support as CABLE customers and they just aren't getting it, take for example the now 49 page thread here http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Broadband-down-your-phone-line/bd-p/national their has been 3 replies only on a 49 page thread!! from a Virgin representative called Mark Wilkins and one of those replied was only to ask for people to stop giving out your E-Mail address, not a reply to actually help the customers with some positive information. I can understand why you would not want your E-Mail address passing out but you are the only person who I have E-Mailed or dealt with at Virgin in a long time who knows her job and sorts things quickly, that is why so many people wanted to contact you as you know what your doing and I seriously want you to know that I and everyone else you helped appreciates it as no one on the end of a phoneline but yourself it would seem gives a damn what happens to the ADSL customers and to put it bluntly are all a bunch of braindead cabbages (yourself excluded) who are clearly reading from a script instead of treating customers (god forbid) as if they actually do know what they're talking about instead of treating them like idiots, I'm not a racist but I swear the customer service agents must be sat on a bicycle in the middle of Bombay marketplace with a headset/microphone and a laptop with a script in front of them because they seriously don't have a clue about anything at all, in my honest opinion they must be employed just for the sake of it as the majority of them NEVER resolve anything or have a clue what to do next apart from telling customers (who are far more knowledgeable than 99.9% of the 'customer service agents' on the other end of the phone) to unplug this, reboot that and keep switching something on and off until the magic genie pops up and says HELLO everything is working as it should! That will never happen unless Virgin employ knowledgeable people who know what they are talking about and who speak clearly enough for customers to understand them instead of them rambling on/speaking so fast that we 'the customers' need to ask them to repeat what they asked which is usually 'Reboot your PC' and 'Reboot your router' etc etc etc when most of the customers who own a pc will have known to do ALL of those things before they ring up to speak to someone who should know more than they do. So anyway unless you can provide me with some definitive answers then unfortunately and I honestly mean that (because after more than 2 years with Virgin I will actually be sad to leave) then I am still going ahead with Plusnet and should be activated on the 27th of March unless by some miracle you have something knowledgeable to tell me regarding all of the problems, notably with Steam downloads, which is as simple a fix as unclicking CAP @ 60 kb/s and clicking UNCAP full speed ahead @ Line Speed! As it used to be. So thank you for all of your help and you are truly a credit to Virgin Media and I appreciate everything you have done for me above and beyond anything the customers service staff via telephone have ever done. Thank you

[#7]

I was really glad to read this thread as I am currently in the process of switching from Viring Media to PlusNet.  The service that Virgin had been providing was getting worse and worse.  The speeds I was getting were far slower than I am supposed to be able to get, webmail didn't work half of the time and their customer service was very poor.  I can't comment on PlusNet yet as I am not fully set up but so far so good and from reading this thread it looks like I have made the right decision!

[#8]

same here, also gone from virgin, been with them for years 
pity its gone downhill, change is good hopefully

[#9]

Another jumper here. I'd been with VM for nearly 3 years and felt I had no choice but to change provider.
Unfortunately things haven't been quite so rosy for me so far, but I'm sure my Plusnet service will get better from here. At the moment I'm stuck using my iPhone as my only net access because my migration hasn't happened today. VM have already cut my connection with them, but Plusnet isn't working yet, so no proper internet at the moment. 
Not too happy right now, and no update since 12pm on the issue either.

[#10]

well a sort of welcome
the answer to your problem is here http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1269432773.htm  a problem with BT not PN

[#11]

All up and running now. 

[#12]

That's great news, thanks for letting us know