LeeNukes

Let me share my dismay at Virgin Medias terrible service so far.

Earlier this month I opted to upgrade my broadband connection from 20Mbit to 50Mbit. Sure, 20Mbit was probably enough but I worked out that as I use my internet more then my TV and Phone I could downgrade my packages on those and get 50Mbit and a free D-Link 802.11n router and a free 802.11n USB dongle in the package for 30% less then what I’m currently paying. No brainer.

So, I arranged with Virgin Media to send out an engineer. On the 8th of October I took a half day off work for them to install the modem assuming I would be up and running in a couple of hours at best.

Today is the 16th of October, I still have no broadband. They claim that the problem they are having is registering the modems. Fine I said, send me another one. Apparently this won’t help.

I’ve called their tech support every day since I first reported this issue and there is still no real estimation of when this will be fixed.

What kind of service is this?! I’ve sent my letter off complaining but I cannot find anywhere on the internet them reporting that there is a problem, also, why didn’t they just say we’re having issues at the moment so installation won’t be for a month rather then cut me off!!!

I’d seriously recommend anyone looking to move to Virgin Media or upgrade to hold off at least until November.

My ISP Virgin Media offers online backup packages as part of their internet bundles.

The bundle that I am currently on offers 10GB of online backup space FREE as part of the account. Well, obviously its not really free as I’m paying for the internet connection.

The partner that Virgin Media use to offer this online backup service is provided by a company called steek who are based in Belgium. The software that they provide is Windows only, but you can make it work with Wine to a satisfactory degree.

Here is how I set mine up:

1) Download the Software from Virgin Media My Stuff Page: https://my.virginmedia.com/dashboard/start

2) Using winecfg I setup a Z: drive which points to my root /

3) In the Virgin Media V STuff Backup Software I turned off all the auto backup email items as they just look for Hotmail and My Documents etc and I choose “Backup All Files/Folders”

4) Now simply choose the files you want from this screen:

I am backing up my .evolution, Documents, and Pictures. That way at least I have these backed up. The software works ok, although it doesn’t seem very good at only uploading the changes, if the file changes it seems to need to upload the whole file again.

There are many more options in the software that can be configured but what I have setup is enough to get you going with it.

You may want to setup this software to autostart with your PC, to do this I added a script:

#!/bin/bash
sleep 480
env WINEPREFIX=”/home/lee/.wine” wine “C:\Program Files\VirginMedia\V Stuff Backup\v_stuff_backup.exe”
exit

to my scripts directory and then I setup Sessions in Gnome (System -> Preferences -> Personal -> Sessions) of this:/home/lee/Scripts/startvbackup.sh

This starts it 8 minutes after login enough time to warrant a connection from it :)