Since moving QTH back in February i’ve had a few issue with the internet. or rather lack of it. This has been especially challenging for the Elland Air Quality monitoring Station that i run. I’ve had to use tethering to the 4G network and while i can only sing the praises of the 4G internet provider EE. I cant sat the same for Virgin media who have been very challenging to deal with.
Problems started almost immediately. Virgin told me there was a cable outside the house and it just needed an engineer to come and connect my new home to the network. Well, they didn’t turn up and i’d taken a day off work so that was somewhat annoying but that’s ok because things do go wrong from time to time.
The trouble is that was back in February and as i write this we are more than half way through June and they still have not managed to get their connection installed and working. I’ve found they are full of excuses. I think even their call centre staff are fed up of excuses, initially they would call and tell me there was a problem and that there would be a two week delay, while promising the new installation date would be the one where the job was done. Now they don’t call, i just get an email telling me they have moved the date, again and again.
Apparently i can get compensation for the delays, yeah right. When i call and try to speak to someone about whats happening, a perfectly clear line suddenly becomes intelligible one the word compensation is mentioned. Richard Branson, if you’re reading this all i can say is that i’m disappointed.
I’ve tried and I’ve tried to keep going, because if Virgin media can deliver on their promises the speeds are 5x faster than the what BT Fibre promises. However, after five months of waiting, my family can cope no more with 4G tethering, therefore an order with a supplier other than Virgin media has been placed.
This means the monitoring station will soon be once again fully operational, and hopefully over the coming months there will be a few additions to this amateur radio/science stations capabilities.