City Fibre - up and running

[IanMSpencer]

Well, VM not bothering to offer sensible renewal fees - expecting double their new customer offers means that after nearly 30 years, from the days of Birmingham Cable, 4 house moves, I'm off.

Got ripped off on the last renewal - when daughter's partner bullied VM into a third of what we were paying, it was just a matter of time. VM are silly enough to display an offer for new customers on the same website as offering our "special" deal of twice that price.

I'm not interested in tricks with retention.

So when CityFibre cabled past our house, it was an easy choice to go there. Installed on time with not a lot of fuss. The only hassle was swapping to my own router to avoid res-setting up the whole house (on ai-Mesh). Needed a chat to customer services to get the PPPoE user and password and then there was a hidden magic number to set which had me Googling but getting 212mbps up and down, which is more than specified.

Last straw is "broken" web site that gives a 404 for cancellations (once you can find it), a chat that doesn't offer a call back if you say no to not being prepared to wait, just kills the connection, and an over 40 minute wait. We are using snail mail to cancel. I suspect CityFibre is killing VM at the moment judging by the vans round here.

Hint, if a customer is leaving, make it the best experience not the worst, because in a couple of years time when we might be persuaded to flip back, that cancellation nonsense will be remembered.

[Cardiffman282 · Accepted solution]

If you can face it Ofcom are monitoring VM cancellations https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Community-Natter/Breaking-OFCOM-investigating-VM-over-difficult...

[IanMSpencer]

Thanks for the link - adding to my collection of complaints - I have a few in for broadband providers now!

My renewal offer was £55 for broadband only, while they are offering £15 for 6 months followed by £33/month for new customers.

I've never had any real grizzlies with the service, but these days with cloud stuff, the fast upload makes a significant difference to me, happy to lose 50Mbps download in exchange for an extra 150Mbps upload on CityFibre. Wouldn't go Open reach based services after poor experience some years ago.

[nodrogd]

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@IanMSpencer wrote:

Thanks for the link - adding to my collection of complaints - I have a few in for broadband providers now!

My renewal offer was £55 for broadband only, while they are offering £15 for 6 months followed by £33/month for new customers.

I've never had any real grizzlies with the service, but these days with cloud stuff, the fast upload makes a significant difference to me, happy to lose 50Mbps download in exchange for an extra 150Mbps upload on CityFibre. Wouldn't go Open reach based services after poor experience some years ago.

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Yep! VMs business model is to offer new customer pricing at loss-leader prices. Hence existing customers don’t get offered them. If I didn’t want the traditional broadcast TV services I might be temped to switch, but VMs TV services does not work with any other provider & Sky want to charge more for standalone TV than what I am paying for everything from VM.

[dnpark38]

@nodrogd

You mention Traditional broadcasting of TV and I see you use Freeview and Freesat.  I too can get both but have ditched Freeview and use Freesat due to better organised ch numbers and a great number of ch in HD.

I feel it won't be long before Freeview closes.

TV through the internet will be the future, not sure what will the future is for Dish reception, but Sky does both now.

[ElectroVW]

Unfortunately City Fibre has only just started the infrastructure installation down in Poole so I'm stuck with failing equipment for another 18 months. I know where I'll be in 28 months though 👍

[Adduxi]

I think City Fibre use Sevice VLAN tagging when setting up PPPoE, 911 perhaps?  BT and most others don't need this information.

[Shez879]

That's right.  It's 911. I too have ditched VM. Was on TV, Phone (never used, didn't even bother plugging it in when they switched to voip) and M500. Got 900 up down for half the price of all that. And as we only watch streaming and no live TV, not use iPlayer, cancelled the TV license too. No point paying the national disgrace that's the BBC.
Oh and after cancelling, retentions called me and offered me a 'deal' - £5 extra than my CityFibre package for M500. What a deal! Selling points was VM is more stable - if more stable means disconnects in the middle of the day almost every week lately whilst I'm on calls... then I'll pass...

[IanMSpencer]

Yep that was it.

Latest retention text is down to £21/month for 250mbs. They've ignored that we have told them we are already on another service so giving away their bottom line which I am happy to share.

[declanmcguines1]

On the city fibre network Vodafone is probably the best isp by a country mile great to deal with used to be with Vodafone on the aging Openreach and any problems were dealt with in no time.