Paul Woods

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"You are turning me OFF"

Virgin Broadband… we need to talk.  Our relationship over the last six months has been a little rocky. 

Remember when we first met?  You were so fast with your HSDPA connections.  Sure, you dropped out every now and then, but it felt great to have you as my rebound telco… sticking it to that Telstra that I had stayed with for far too long.

I loved you so much with your speed, price, and lack of copper wires that I ripped up your 30 day guarantee with glee

But over the last few months, you seem to have been a little distant.  Your slowing down.  Hey, I can live with being a passenger on UTMS whilst we ride along the information superhighway.  But in the last couple of weeks it has got even worse…

GPRS…

GPRS… are you kidding me.  I can still get HSDPA on my mobile phone at home, yet all you have to give is GPRS.  I am sick of hearing "what about me, what about me, you have to pay the bill" when you can’t even give me the time of day (literally - I can’t access the time server!)

And I love you you put my "Broadband" connection on hold when the phone rings.  Just what I need when I have already waited 5 minutes for ninemsn.com.au or whirlpool.net.au to load (without images!) is to have to wait another 30 minutes when the Chief Financial Officer is on the phone to her family!

To appease the CFO, I thought I would try and call you at home… but you left me on hold for over 45 minutes.  You left me hanging for 45 minutes!  Don’t you even know me?  I’m from Gen Y - I lose patience and concentration after about 5 minutes!

I tried to ping you, but you can’t be bothered… all I got was:

C:\Users\Paul>ping virginbroadband.com.au

Pinging virginbroadband.com.au [202.139.186.149] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 202.139.186.149:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

"Request timed out"… are you trying to ignore me?

I even tried emailing you from work… and it took you a week to respond! 

Virgin Broadband… I thought we had something special…

You have broken our heart, and I am sure you will break my wallet when I try to get out of this contract.  I think it is time we started seeing other Telco’s. 

Any Telco’s out there looking for some love?

We are a young professional couple (I’m a Marketer, she is an Accountant) with disposable income and what will be a very large Customer Lifetime Value for a Telco that treats us right!  You can have the lot - broadband, home phone, pay tv, mobiles, our first born… whatever it takes to get good service, good speeds, and ultimately a great experience.

Optus, Primus, iiNet, Internode, TPG, Macquarie… heaven forbid even Telstra!!  Are you out there?  Will you take us back?  You can even take the money every month from our AMEX… no questions asked!  I promise not to dump you again.

Until then… I guess we are stuck with this no hoper