Coms broadband migration to Timico - usage changes

Hi,

If you're a Timico broadband customer as a result of the Coms acquisition earlier this year, you should be receiving an email today or tomorrow with some changes to broadband allowances.

Basically Coms broadband usage used to be measured 8am to 8pm with overnight usage effectively being unmetered. On Timico usage is measured on all accounts 24 hours a day. To compensate for this change we're doubling all usage allowances for Coms broadband customers migrating into Timico. So 50GB becomes 100GB, etc. This will bring ex-Coms customers in line with Timico broadband accounts and will take effect from 1st November.

Full email below FYI. I'm happy to answer any questions of course.
Likewise if you receive the email and don't think you should have done please PM me. Likewise if you don't get the email and think you should have done please also PM me.

----

Dear xxx,
Coms account code: xxxxxxx
Timico account number: xxxxx

You are hopefully aware that Timico acquired the telecoms business of Coms.com earlier this year. We contacted many customers in June to provide an outline of our integration plans, but we're aware some customers did not receive the letter. Sorry if we missed you the first time!

Coms is continuing to operate from Stokenchurch as a wholly-owned subsidiary, but during the next few weeks will be fully merged into Timico. This email provides some information about Timico, our integration plans and how this will affect you.
Becoming a Timico customer

Timico is a long-established and profitable Internet, Hosting and Communication Service Provider, headquartered in the East Midlands. We employ more than 350 people across seven UK sites, focused on the delivery and 24/7 support of business-grade, Internet services to more than 15,000 customers. You can find out more about us and the clients we already work with at www.timico.co.uk

We've generated you a new Timico account number and we'll give you details of how to contact us for technical support, customer service or sales enquiries. We've hired lots of new staff and are going through training programmes to make sure we're ready to look after your business in the best way possible.

We've already migrated all broadband lines onto Timico's network and all landlines and VoIP services will transition across shortly. Systems and billing integration will happen in October and November. The contractual terms and monthly price for your services will remain unchanged. The only immediate changes relate to the way you settle your invoices from now on:
� Direct Debit - no action is required. We should be able to collect your monthly charges using the current mandate, if we can't we'll let you know
� BACS transfer - payments must be made to; Santander, account number 01108859, sort code 09-07-20, quoting your invoice number
� Cheque - to be made payable to 'Timico Limited'
� Credit card - we will not be supporting payment by Credit Card in the future, so we will be asking customers to establish a new Direct Debit mandate with Timico

Coms was in financial and operational difficulties when we acquired their telecoms assets. We're still unravelling some things, so we may not always have your details to hand if you get in touch. But over the next month we'll keep you updated about moving your billing and services fully across to Timico.

Some changes to broadband services
From 1st November 2015 we�re going to make some changes to broadband services to bring Coms broadband services in line with Timico broadband services.

Timico broadband usage allowances are measured 24 hours a day, whereas Coms broadband usage was only measured from 8am to 8pm. To compensate for this change we are increasing all broadband usage allowances as follows:
Current Coms broadband allowance New Timico allowance from 1st Nov
30GB 60GB
50GB 100GB
100GB 200GB
500GB Unlimited

We are also withdrawing the pay-as-you-go broadband usage top-up facility. From 1st November customers who use more bandwidth than is included in their monthly allowance will no longer have their line speeds restricted. Instead lines will continue to work normally but usage above the included allowance will be charged at £2.25 excluding VAT per GB. From 1st November our MyTimico portal will be available to you, so you can track usage levels and setup usage alerts. You can find out more about our Standard Charges and pricing on our website.


More information

If you have any questions about what is happening, or want to talk to our Customer Service, Technical Support or Account Management teams please reply to this email, call 01636 858919 or visit http://www.timico.co.uk/contact-us

I've received the e-mail and obviously very disappointed, 100GB extra is really nothing to compensate for losing the unmetered portion given even a single Xbox One game can be a 50GB download.

I don't understand the change as it seemed entirely reasonable before to restrict usage during peak hours when more people are using the system then leave it unrestricted when most people aren't using broadband.

As a further frustration the area I'm in has fibre but they're not taking orders at the moment as it's a high demand area so can't get away from all this onto fibre as planned, will have to be another adsl provider.

Edit - seems orders are open now for Fibre so this is the push I needed to get moved off Coms/Timico

Edited by Johnmcl7 (Thu 01-Oct-15 12:03:42)

Hi there,

I'm sorry if this is disappointing, I do understand your position.

Unfortunately the network platform and billing system at Timico are only configured to measure, track and bill usage on a 24 hour period. We'd have to do quite a bit of development to change all the systems to cope with different usage periods.

I agree though in the future I'd ideally like to offer unmetered overnight usage when the network is quiet, but unfortunately we can't at this time.

Good luck with your new provider if you do choose to leave.

I can see it from both sides

Broadband prices are falling yet usage is increasing. So ISPs need to make money obviously or they cant offer a service, yet at the same time with HD streaming and game downloads going digital usage limits arent always appropriate for the user

Saying that some ISPs do offer unlimited usage pretty cheaply like Pulse8 im on, or offer the old Coma usage times like Xilo/Uno

I appreciate the honesty in your response but I'm baffled how a company can have such a restrictive system. One of the main reasons I joined ADSL24 years ago was because of their fair metering system, I was sick of companies offering 'unlimited' broadband that ended up being tightly restricted at peak times or just very slow.

Having a peak/off peak system seemed entirely fair particularly when companies still seem to struggle with peak time usage, a reasonable cap discourages people from using a lot of bandwidth during peak times and keep bigger downloads for quiet times.

In reply to a post by Neil_A:

If you're a Timico broadband customer as a result of the Coms acquisition earlier this year, you should be receiving an email today or tomorrow with some changes to broadband allowances.

And even if you're no longer a Coms customer you may be receiving an email too...

*Sigh* It's just taken a month to get back the £51 Timico randomly stole from my account despite me leaving Coms in February, and as part of having to sort that out I requested I was really removed from the customer base this time.

The fact that I've just received this email clearly suggests Timico STILL think my account is active. If you take money again I WILL bill you for my time and interest on the money held.

Sorry about that, a pretty rubbish experience.
Can you PM me your name, old account number. email address and I'll make certain everything is fully removed and ensure you're not billed again.
Thanks

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

I can see it from both sides

Broadband prices are falling yet usage is increasing. So ISPs need to make money obviously or they cant offer a service, yet at the same time with HD streaming and game downloads going digital usage limits arent always appropriate for the user

Saying that some ISPs do offer unlimited usage pretty cheaply like Pulse8 im on, or offer the old Coma usage times like Xilo/Uno

I agree about prices and usage which is why I think it's more crucial to have a system that discourages people from big downloads in peak times and encourages those downloads when it's quiet. The new system seems a step back for both users and the ISP, I can't download as much as I want any more but I can download more during peak times.

Post deleted by bobble_bob

Neil - PM Sent

No out-of-hours unmetered allowance any more! This is a major change to the contract. I've noticed many adverts on tv for 'totally unlimited' internet but we've now gone backwards with everything being metered 24/7.

Apart from people using the internet more for everything from banking, shopping, playing games etc on a pc there has been a revolution in how tv works. Smart TVs connect to the internet and can stream TV over a users broadband in the background. But it's not even obvious which TV channels are actually using streaming, for example Motors TV appears in my normal (over the aerial) list of TV channels but where I am streams over broadband. More and more TV channels will use streaming with HD and 4k channels being talked about. All this uses bandwidth...and ours is now all metered. Only in the UK..

So can someone suggest a reliable reasonably-priced unmetered USP in Kent? Don't wanna go with BT, Sky or TalkTalk. Is Pulse8 any good bobble-bob?

Hi Neil

my email mentions nothing about the usage and has the following instead

We'd like to get to know you

To serve you better and make sure we understand your business, a member of our account management team will be calling you over the next few weeks. We'd like to introduce ourselves and answer any questions you may have. We know it may not have been easy to get issues and queries resolved by Coms in the last year or so, but we're ready to help you in any way we can.

Once we've spoken with you, we'll assign one of our account team with the best skills to look after your account, depending on the services you use and the type of business you're operating.

i am not a buisness user as mentioned and are different customers being treated differently?

Hi there,

Yes, we're sending different emails to different kinds of customers. Obviously we don't want to bore residential customers with an account manager calling them about their office phone system, mobile fleet or hosting requirements

But it's fair to say the customer database we've inherited from Coms needs a fair bit of cleaning!!! So I'm sorry if we have you misclassified as a business user - could you PM me your details and I'll look into this please?

In reply to a post by Neil_A:

Hi there,

Yes, we're sending different emails to different kinds of customers. Obviously we don't want to bore residential customers with an account manager calling them about their office phone system, mobile fleet or hosting requirements

Oh, hang on

In reply to a post by nofish:

Hi Neil

my email mentions nothing about the usage and has the following instead

We'd like to get to know you

To serve you better and make sure we understand your business,

i am not a buisness user as mentioned and are different customers being treated differently?

Looks like someone is being economical with the truth

In reply to a post by Neil_A:

Unfortunately the network platform and billing system at Timico are only configured to measure, track and bill usage on a 24 hour period. We'd have to do quite a bit of development to change all the systems to cope with different usage periods.

I agree though in the future I'd ideally like to offer unmetered overnight usage when the network is quiet, but unfortunately we can't at this time.

Edited by deleted (Fri 02-Oct-15 18:49:03)

They use Talk Talk Business. No complaints at all from me so far

Neil i sent you a PM. I got an email even though you said i was removed months ago. Getting abit annoyed now

Very sorry about that
Will reply to your PM shortly.

Hi Neil.

I see there has been no mention of the "Unlimited" LLU connections. Coms defined unlimited as a Terabyte per month.

Any change in this?

Hi Neil.

I see there has been no mention of the "Unlimited" LLU connections. Coms defined unlimited as a Terabyte per month.

Any change in this?

I am very much interested in this answer as well - specifically in regards to the "Coms DSL Unlimited" package (referenced here)

Hi there,

No plans to change the Unlimited products.

I can't get fibre for now so I need to reconsider ADSL options, is there a price plan for the new plans on Timico? I've had a look on the Timico site but I'm not having much luck, i'm wondering how much more the unlimited plan costs over the 200GB one.

Hi there,

If you email [email protected] and let us know your details, we'll be able to give you some options.

N

Hi Got my new Timico account number today which was nice . Only thing is I left Coms in February .

LOL

Hi there,

Sorry about that. It is fair to say the customer data we inherited from Coms was not of the best quality! We�re working hard to clean things up and sort things out now.

Can you PM me your details and I'll make sure the account is fully cancelled and we stop pestering you by email.

Wonder how many customers Timico thought they bought compared to how many that were actually left

Hi folks,

A reminder for any Timico customers who were previously with Coms or ADSL24. As of 1st November usage allowances have been doubled as a result of changing how it is measured.

Everything is now managed by Timico and the old Coms systems are being retired. If you register for MyTimico (https://my.timico.co.uk) you'll be able to see usage graphs and set usage alerts.

If you receive a welcome email but you've already left please PM me or email [email protected]

More info on the systems integration here: http://www.timico.co.uk/blog/2015/10/19/welcoming-co...

Thanks

Agreed, I spoke with sales and couldn't find something suitable (the only unlimited option was their minutes/line rental + 24 month contract).

So, I selected a Uno account with an unlimited nighttime period like the old ADSL24 setup.

Well the 15th has come and gone and as of this morning, 18th, no direct debit payment has been taken from my account.

Free broadband anyone?

Hi there,

If you'd like me to look into this please PM me your account details. Otherwise, feel free to run the gauntlet and see if the finance team spot the missing payments and catch up with you in a month or two

Thanks for the offer to look into this issue but the matter is already in hand. I tried out your ticket system

There appears to be something that was not communicated to everyone.

Thank you for your email. As this is your first invoice from Timico, we have postponed the direct debit until the 23/11/2015.

The reason we have done this is to allow you to have more time to digest the information on your new invoice and dispute anything if needed.

Moving forward all future invoices will be taken on or around the 15th of each month.

I've checked all email I have received to find there is no mention of the above.

Crossed wires somewhere no doubt but problem solved all the same..... I hope

No worries, sorry about the confusion. Ticketing system works pretty well but if you ever have problems do let me know here.
Thanks

Is there any way of purchasing additional download allowance? I'm currently up to 79%. I'm still a bit miffed that I've lost my off-peak unmetered that I had since ADSL24 days.

RWJ

Hi there,
If you want to email [email protected] they'll be able to see if there's a better package for you.
Thanks.

Thank you Neil. This loss of offf-peak unmetered is really going to cost me a lot of money unless I find a better tariff, or another ISP. Thanks also for your PM with my account details. I'd unsubscribed from your marketing emails, but it appears that also put a stop to everything else.

RWJ

I emailed service@ but got no reply. I've searched the Timico site for details of your ADSL packages - I can't find anything. The site assumes that nobody who visits it is a residential customer. If I can't find anything suitable - or Timico don't tell me about their packages - I'm going to have to shuffle off elsewhere, after having paid £loads in out-of-package data charges. Does anyone know of a comparable alternative to Timico who also offer a /29?

RWJ

Sorry you've not had a reply from Service yet - I'll chase them now

In the meantime there's this page on the site:
http://www.timico.co.uk/unlimitedfibre/soho

Thanks Neil. I can't justify VDSL, so I'll be sticking with ADSL2+. What other plans do you have for that, and can usage be topped up on my current plan?

RWJ

Hi. You've just had an email from [email protected]

The 23rd has come and gone and yet again no payment has been taken from my account.

Hi there,
Sorry about that. Coms had several (6 I think) different Direct Debit collection OINs (originating identification numbers) collected by several different payment agencies. We've tried to migrate all of these into Timico to collect directly, but we're having problems with one of them. The finance guys are retrying at the moment - don't worry we'll take your money soon!