Virgin on the Ridiculous - Part One

Technology; it has the capacity to enrich our lives, but on occasions it is a source of incredible frustration. Watch TV for any length of time and you’ll see the adverts for various products, like smartphones with the disclaimer “Sequences shortened.” When you see that you just know that if you owned the product in question the sequences, i.e. the time you take to navigate between pages and applications will be a hell of a lot longer than they show on screen. Then there are the internet TV products, like You View. This type of thing is probably the future of TV viewing; while you’ll get your basic Freeview channels (if you’re not a cable or satellite subscriber, and we’ll come to that in a while) through your normal aerial, the extras, the bits you really want, will eventually be mainly available through the internet. But, and here’s the rub, You View and the like recommend that your minimum download speed be three meg or greater to use their services. Basically, under three or three and a half meg and you’ll suffer a lot of buffering if you get anything at all. So what a lot of you will be saying; these days three meg is the exception not the rule, most people are getting download speeds a lot greater than that. Well not me for one, I just ran a test through uswitch.com and my download speed is 1.3Mb and my upload speed is an even paltrier 0.4Mb and there’s not much prospect of these speeds increasing in the near future.

When the internet was all dial up and we were all getting download speeds of no more than 56Kps, web designers tailored website design accordingly with simple, easy to load pages and let’s face it, no one was downloading very much at those speeds. Then broadband came along and web designers exploited increased speeds to add all number of fancy graphics. Downloading music and movies became the norm and woe betide anyone left with just dial up access, so we all upgraded to broadband. While dial up speeds were pretty similar across the board and we all lived in a 56Kps ghetto, broadband speeds are much more varied. Like I say, my limit is 1.3Mb but a lot of Internet Service Providers (ISP) advertise speeds of up to 60Mb; Virgin are one such ISP.

Now Virgin is a company who I admire (in some ways). In my view they pretty much revolutionised mobile phone usage, they have done a lot of good stuff in the holiday arena, in flights and of course the music business, which was where the company started, so why does Virgin Media frustrate me to the point where I want to tear out what little of my hair that remains? I’ll tell you why. Many years ago a rep from Virgin Media approached me and asked if I’d be interested in subscribing to their TV and internet package. Yes, I said; I gave him my post code and when he’d checked he said that unfortunately my address wasn’t serviceable. This was no big deal; it was as I say, many years ago (pre-Freeview TV in fact) and I was quite happy with what I had in terms of the internet as in those days my use was confined to email and sporadic browsing of websites, like Tesco with whom I did online shopping. By the time we reached the summer of 2012 things had changed big time.

I guess the first moments of frustration occurred when we bought a new television to replace our ten year old Sony. We bought an all singing, all dancing LG TV; an HD, 3D, flat screen LCD set with internet connectivity. Brilliant, except the internet connection at our address means that to watch a 30 minute programme on the BBC iPlayer you’d better allow an hour or so  to account for the amount of time you’ll watch the little circle spin in the centre of the screen with the dread word “Buffering” below it. I phoned our ISP; your download speed is limited by your BT line, they said; sorry but what you’ve got is all you’ll get. Time to upgrade I thought, and as luck would have it a leaflet from Virgin Media had just popped through my letterbox. “Over 80% of your neighbourhood is connected” it said and went on to detail all of the delights of being a Virgin Media customer. Now I used to be a Virgin Mobile customer, as did my wife and both of my daughters, but we all decamped to 3, largely because they offered a better range of phones but I had no problem with subscribing to Virgin for my TV, broadband and landline phone especially as they said we’d get download speeds of up to 20Mb when I phoned them. The package seemed even more attractive when we worked out that the cost of TV, broadband and landline with Virgin was cheaper than our BT landline and our broadband through Plusnet combined. I did raise the point that I’d been previously told that our address wasn’t serviceable, but was assured that it was. Installation was set for 15^th September. Our Welcome Pack arrived; “Sit back and relax” it said; surely the words that strike more terror in anyone other than “some self assembly required.”

Come the day and the Virgin Media engineer arrived with our shiny new TiVo box and our equally shiny broadband hub. He started wiring it all up to the TV and all looked promising. Then he asked the question that sent the whole affair into the stuff of nightmares. Where, he asked does the cable come into the house? I showed him the pipe at the side of the house; there was no cable in the pipe. No problem, he said, we’ll get a team round to connect you up and sure enough, later that morning two guys arrived with a huge reel of cable that they proceeded to push through the pipe until they reached an obstruction. At this point the whole thing unravelled faster than a ball of wool in the paws of a playful kitten. It turned out that we needed a construction team to clear the obstruction. Later that day I phoned Virgin; a new installation date was set for 9^th October, with the construction team coming on the 5^th to do the necessary work. No one came on the 5^th, so on the 8^th I phoned Virgin again. “Don’t worry,” said a nice man called Akil, “the construction team will attend before the installation.” They did not, so the engineer who arrived on the 9^th to install the TiVo box and broadband hub went away with the task not completed.

A further phone call to Virgin and a new installation date of 26^th October was set. A new Welcome Pack arrived; “Sit back and relax” it said; I didn’t as I had a sense of foreboding. Which proved well founded when the engineer arrived; a team even arrived to dig up the road if necessary. Your address is not serviceable we were told, so I phoned Virgin again. I know that the Data Protection Act probably prohibits you from telling me this, I said, but do any houses in my street have Virgin Media? Yes, came the reply (obviously answering my question either didn’t infringe the Data Protection Act or the person I spoke to wasn’t aware that it did). They gave me the house numbers, one is my next door neighbour, another was a house three doors away on the other side. I went and spoke to our neighbour; yes, we’re with Virgin they said. What speeds do you get? I asked. “Up to 20Mb” they said.

So, on the one hand we have one person from Virgin telling me that my address is not serviceable, and another telling me that it is. I have a neighbour on one side who gets Virgin, and another a few doors along in the other direction who does too, so why can’t I? Well, the upshot is that the conduit that carries the cable to my property runs under the garden of my other neighbour (who is not a Virgin customer as far as I know) and it appears that there is the blockage in that area. “You need to get your neighbour’s permission to work on his property to clear the blockage” we were told. My wife spoke to our neighbour; he asked for £1,000 to allow the work to be done. Well no way were we going to pay that, and apparently neither would Virgin. I say apparently, because since November we’ve had no contact from them; no phone call, no email, no letter saying that our installation can’t proceed although I assume that that is the case. It would have been nice to have had some sort of communication on the lines of “Awfully sorry, but we can’t do anything” rather than the matter just fizzling out.

It is frustrating because I want to be a Virgin Media customer; I want to use their services, I want superfast broadband, I want Virgin TV but apparently I can’t have it. Now you might say that my argument should be with my neighbour as he’s the one obstructing things, but I live on a modern estate, it was built only fifteen years ago, I know people who live in houses that were built a hundred years ago that have cable TV and broadband and as I said at the top of this piece, the internet is going to be a significant channel for delivering TV in the future and I’m being left behind; surely it is not beyond the wit of man (or Virgin) to arrange cable connectivity to a fifteen year old property?

Having given up on Virgin (for the moment at least), I looked at BT Infinity who apparently offer download speeds of up to 76Mb! Is BT Infinity available in my area? The answer, as you’ve probably guessed is No. When will it be available in my area? That’s anybody’s guess; I phoned BT and they couldn’t tell me.

Even more frustrating is the fact that I still get regular communications from Virgin Media; a letter popped through my letterbox only a few days ago; “Over 80% of your neighbourhood is connected” it said; apparently I am destined to remain one of the 20% who isn’t.

Anyway rant over, I’m now going to try and download a film from iTunes. Next week I’ll tell you if it’s any good, assuming it has finished downloading by then.

The Obedience of Fools

Back in the 1980’s I was working at Midland Bank in Barking. The Security clerk there at the time, a chap by the name of Norman Evans, was wont to say “Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.” Norman would normally be provoked to say this when he had been asked to do something with which he didn’t agree, or where he felt there was some unnecessary bureaucracy involved in whatever he was doing. Either because I was struck by the perspicacity of this remark, or simply because I heard it so often, it stuck in my mind and over time it became something that I found myself thinking or saying when I encountered something that made no sense to do or was needlessly bound up in red-tape. At the time I first heard it said I didn’t realise that Norman was quoting Douglas Bader, the RAF fighter pilot who despite losing both of his legs in a flying accident in 1931 went on to take part in the Battle of Britain during World War Two.

It would be wrong to look at Bader’s maxim and take it as synonymous with the idea that rules are made to be broken. Rules are made for good reasons but what tends to be forgotten, both by those who make them and those who apply them, is that they don’t always fit every circumstance.  I look at this way; look at the rules, look at the circumstances; does applying the rules to the circumstances ensure a fair and appropriate outcome? If yes, then follow the rules, if no then examine why that is and act accordingly.

A well known but often misused expression relating to rules is that “the exception proves the rule” which is often used in the sense that for every rule there is an exception, but rather it is that the circumstance quoted which is exceptional, i.e. outside of the rule. For example, “Parking prohibited on Sundays” (the exception) "proves" that parking is allowed on the other six days of the week (the rule).[1]  So, to belabour the point further, the exception we are examining here is where we have an established rule, but because of the circumstances we believe it inappropriate to apply it; this may often be because applying the rule will create an outcome contrary to that which is intended or desirable.

Perhaps we can distil this a little further. There is no substitute for common sense. Sadly common sense is a quality that is in increasingly short supply these days. Indeed my view would be that many organisations positively discourage it and try to replace it with procedures (rules by another name). I was once involved in a meeting on the subject of dealing with customer queries in which we were discussing the types of queries that might be raised. These had been classified into various types, and for each type we had a workflow, that is to say a process by which having answered a series of multiple choice questions the person dealing with the enquiry could be guided towards the necessary actions to take to resolve the query.  We had one query type called Miscellaneous, which we needed in order to cover all of those enquiries that didn’t readily fit into a specific type. Because of the broad spectrum of potential queries falling into this category there were no procedures, no workflow, in short nothing to guide the user as to what to do. “How,” I was asked by one of the senior managers present in the meeting, “does the user know how to resolve these queries?” I replied that they had to use their experience and judgement. “Oh dear,” came the response, “we can’t have that.” And we couldn’t have that because this didn’t fit with bringing in someone with neither experience nor judgment, straight off the street, plonking them down in front of a computer and letting them get on with it. The idea today is that there can be a procedure or a rule to fit every eventuality but this isn’t so, there are events and situations that haven’t previously occurred or even been considered and in these it’s necessary to apply judgement to common sense to arrive at the right outcome.

Now I’m not going to blame the organisation, nor the manager from my example for wanting to pursue this particular course as it seems to be the way all organisations work these days, but let’s apply it in an analogy. If you had a problem with your car, or merely needed it serviced, would you be more comfortable with this being dealt with by Joe, who has twenty years experience in the motor trade and has serviced thousands of cars, or Fred who has never seen under the bonnet of a car before, but knows how to follow procedures? Yes, I know that twenty years ago Joe had no experience either and had never seen what goes on under the bonnet of a car but back then Joe probably did an apprenticeship and was trained by someone with knowledge, experience and common sense. Joe didn’t replace the gearbox on a car on his first day at work with nothing more than a set of procedures to follow. If he did, how comfortable would you be driving that car away from the garage?

All too often, and I’m sure you’ve experienced this at first hand as either a “victim” or someone who has had to sort out the unholy mess that has accrued as a result, rules get applied and the outcome is that not only is the issue (whatever it might be) not resolved but that matters actually get made worse. What can happen in these events is that the matter escalates, a complaint gets made and someone more senior within the organisation reverses the decision, often having to compensate the complainant financially (either voluntarily or because an industry ombudsman gets involved) and all because someone applied the rules without using any common sense or discretion.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing big business here, nor do I subscribe to the idea that the customer is always right. Believe me, I know that customers can be unreasonable, unrealistic and opportunistic. I do however subscribe to the principle of treating customers fairly; sometimes the fairest thing to say to a customer is “no.” This is where common sense, discretion and experience are invaluable. Sadly these days I think that I’m of a rapidly shrinking number of people who believe this. 

One day I truly think that I’ll ask the question, “Whatever happened to common sense?” and back will come the answer, “It was abolished in 2013.”

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule

It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.

The idea that work defines us is not an original one; the noted American psychiatrist Frank Pittman, wrote “it (work) gives us structure, it defines us as functioning, contributing, worthwhile citizens.” I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves asking, or being asked, “What is it that you do?” in social situations when we meet someone for the first time. It’s a convenient icebreaker, but it betrays how important work is in defining us; the answer we get, or how our answer is received, somehow pegs people in some arcane social hierarchy that may exist only in our sub-conscience.

Based on the answers we get, we may assume things about other people’s income, and possibly extrapolate from that what sort of house they live in, what sort of life they lead and so on. If, however the answer we get is, “I’m unemployed,” then a lot of the assumptions we make may be negative. If the person answering our question is middle aged, we may imagine that they’ve been made redundant after a long and fruitful career; the younger the person the more likely we are to assume that they are a feckless waster who is nothing more than a burden on the taxpayer.

So, after thirty six years in work, I now find myself jobless. Ok, officially I’ve retired and am paid a pension, so I can truthfully answer the question of what I do by saying I’m retired rather than unemployed, but the definition of what I am is now very different to what it was a month ago. My feelings of who I am are different too. When I started work in 1976, the prospect of retirement was not something that I gave any thought to; as time went on I thought that it would be nice to get to say fifty-five and then retire and so I’ve done that but I can’t say it doesn’t feel  strange.

On the whole I rather enjoyed working; most days I came home with a sense of having achieved something and the company of my colleagues, many of whom I consider to be my friends, was important to me. Yes, there were times when work stressed me out, yes there were times when I was placed outside my comfort zone and wished I could be doing something else, or doing nothing, but as Pittman says, I felt that I was functioning, that I was contributing, that I was worthwhile. Now I have to get used to the idea that my contribution and my function are very different. I now have the time to do all of those things that I either wanted to do, or needed to do, but that I didn’t have the time to do, but what I lack, at the moment at least is the motivation to do them. I confess to feelings of ennui and of inertia, driven by the fact that I’ve experienced a major life changing event.

Just as other life changing events like marriage, having children, bereavement etc, stir emotions in us that we have to deal with, so too does leaving work. The first time we go through any of these experiences we have no knowledge of how to deal with them and have to learn coping mechanisms. I can only really compare retirement with bereavement. 

I remember when my first wife died, suddenly and at the tender age of 34, that I would wake up in the morning and be aware that something was different, wonder what it was and then be struck by the enormity of the change that had come over my life. Retirement and the lead up to retirement is a bit like that (albeit less upsetting). In the weeks leading up to retirement it was easy to be in denial; the immensity of the idea was somehow difficult to grasp and I viewed the fact that I would soon no longer be working as some fantasy that would not actually come to pass. Now that I am retired it still seems strange; rationally I know that I no longer have a job to go to, but some part of my mind still keeps expecting me to have to pull on my work clothes and commute to the office.

Work is habit forming; it creates a routine and a structure to our lives and whether we like the work or not, it gives us a sense of purpose. Now I don’t have a routine as such, but I need one; indeed I crave routine as it is that comfort zone that I can retreat into. I know that to cope, I need to create myself new routines and drawing on my experience of bereavement, that I have to seek out the things that work for me and jettison those that don’t.  Perhaps I’m being a bit melodramatic; I’m a lot better off than a whole lot of other people who don’t have a job anymore and the fact that I don’t have to go to work isn’t the end of the world.

The idea of comparing bereavement and retirement might be offensive to some people; all I can say is that having experienced both there are a significant number of emotional parallels. 

One of the reasons for starting this blog is that I’ve always enjoyed writing, either for work or for fun, and it can be quite a cathartic process, even if no one else reads it. For better or for worse, I’m going to try adding to this blog once a week at least. If nothing else it will put some sort of structure into things.

Life goes on, but not quite as we knew it.