In reply to a post by DrBC:

I should have remembered to post an update here for anyone considering a Coms>Xilo move, but sometimes I have the memory of a goldfish.

Matt has summed it up well; the migration was a disaster due to the BT engineer being an idiot, but has been mostly sorted out now (VoIP not working yet, but should be in a few days). The new connection is *vastly* better than before, working precisely as expected. No more packet loss, crazy dial-up speed throttling, timed out web sites or randomly broken TCP connections.

I want to say a public thank you to Matt for his help with this, which has been a textbook example of how an ISP should do customer support. The contrast with Coms, where support seems to mean failing to fix anything while constantly asking what model of router you are using, couldn't be more stark.

I like what I hear here: do you think it would be worth my while to try again with Xilo? Will they now consider a working line take-over? (Perhaps this is a question for Uno, like the post above.)

<rant> On Friday I had yet another issue with Coms - my connection was down for nearly 12 hours, and 11 hours in their websaite was still showing "no known issues" even though the problem was known about (it was an authentication issue with their supplier). When I telephoned to report the problem, the response (by someone technically savvy, thank goodness) to the problem was clear, but when I mentioned the website he just said, "Oh yes, we must get something done about that". What's the use of a website that's not kept up to date? </rant>

Andy

I'm very pleased with Xilo so far. The connection is fine and their support is very good - actively trying to get things fixed rather than just barely going through the motions as Coms seem to do.

I couldn't shake the feeling that Coms has either lost interest in their purchased ex-ADSL24 customers or more likely just doesn't have the necessary skilled staff to actually enable them to function as an ISP and is trying to fill the gaps with people who don't really know what they're doing. Delivering service that shockingly awful is actually quite rare and potentially points to something very serious being wrong internally at Coms.

I don't give them a snowball's chance of survival in the medium-term, which was just added motivation to flee to calmer waters.

Paulcoms PMd me about the takeover of ADSL24. He said the staff are made up of very experienced people who have worked for both larger and smaller ISPs. How many of them are left, who knows. They do/did have people that could get things done - DanComs was very good but who knows if he is still around

Im assuming the migration for you was straightforward?

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 03-Dec-14 20:10:20)

In reply to a post by DrBC:

..... just doesn't have the necessary skilled staff to actually enable them to function as an ISP and is trying to fill the gaps with people who don't really know what they're doing.

This is exactly what I have thought myself and feel about Coms sadly.... they should have just kept to VOIP or whatever they did first.

Just placed an order with Xilo - let's hope this one goes smoothly

You had issues before with them or something?

Edited by bobble_bob (Sat 06-Dec-14 18:01:07)

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

You had issues before with them or something?

See my previous post in this thread (Sun 28-Sep-14)

Sorry just read it now, whats a working line takeover? That something to do with moving house?

I have my phone line and BB with Coms, not just the BB. So to move I have to move the phone line and the BB service. It seems that it's much easier if the phone line is with BT, but I didn't know that when I got the combined package from ADSL24. Moving both the phone service and the broadband service at the same time, without the interruption that would be caused by ceasing the line and taking out a new contract, is known as a "working line take-over"

Edited by deleted (Sat 06-Dec-14 18:11:14)

Ah get you. Yea not sure why in 2014 its not a straight forward procedure to migrate if you have a fully unbundled service