Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Reliance on the digital world

Virginmedia emails are a complete shambles. They lost my recent ones last week, now its down after last night's maintenance.
Also I tried to login to my energy provider to update my meter readings (no I will not have a smart meter) and their website is having technical difficulties.
A council near me is changing the way we pay parking fees. No longer a simple put a pound in the slot, now you have to have a smart phone with a particular app.
Methinks we are far too reliant on digital wizardry, and we didn't get all the cr@p on faceache etc which seems to dominate.

Virgin Media clearly don't want to support the email service. It's no longer possible to create new mailboxes and email is not available at all to new customers. All of my family have had virginmedia / ntlworld email addresses for years but I moved them to gmail when VirginMedia went down a few weeks ago.

Virgin Media have declined rapidly. I've been with them (and the predecessors) for decades and the infrastructure was virtually 100% reliable. In the last year, everything seems to have fallen apart. The Broadband is unreliable and doesn't meet the advertised speeds, TV is often pixelated and I was without a landline for 7 weeks earlier this year. I had to take them to Ofcom to get compensation and even then they didn't pay up until I started legal proceedings. I just hope that BT or one of the other fibre companies is available by the time my current contract is up.

Keep a wad of cash at home, because as sure as eggs are eggs come the day all the ATM machines are down (and it will happen) cash will be king.....

I can't recall the last time I used cash to buy anything - I'm going to say over 3 years ago, it could be a lot longer. Pre Covid you had to use cash for transactions under £5 in many shops, post Covid, they all take contactless. Most of the time (unless I'm using the Morgan) my phone is my car key too - so for quite a few years I have only my phone, no keys, no cards. Works very well and never had a problem.

I share your frustration, I refuse to have a smart 'phone but with the push to close ticket offices on the rail network, it may soon be esential. They are already charging £1.00 just to get your tickets out of the station machine. I have to say though that Talk Talk have been brilliant with broadband and 'phone.

Our western world is unbelievably fragile ... one EMP and it falls apart (an EMP over afghanistan would be just a pretty light on the sky for the majority there'd be no deep change.)

Everything here has been rejigged for profit/convenience with little thought to resiliance beyond some anti hacker firewalls ... no trucks, no food, water, power and precious few people who can even do simple sums in their head, let alone more complex skills .... we are scarily vulnerable.

K

Plusnet isn't any better. Their DNS servers are obviously stuffed (technical term), while I can get online with the laptop and tablets/phone, none of my PCs can, though there is allegedly no problem - ping and tracert (using IP address work fine) but domain names just fail.
For weeks I've had to run a network cable through the house from hall to office at the back because my wireless bridge is not getting the necessary info back from Plusnet's poor service. Don't even mention their mobile (EE) coverage!

We recently moved from BT to Zen internet - much better service for about the same price. Phone line is on the fibre cable as well. Bought our own battery backup to keep internet and phone alive during power cuts.

Every pavement in our village has been excavated by Virgin Media contractors over the past few weeks, laying fibre cable with an underground spur box at the edge of the pavement outside of each property. We are all wondering how they will get from that to the house without digging up driveways etc. IF a customer should choose their service.
I am baffled that a company would carry out such expensive works “en spec” with no guarantee of take up by customers. My conclusion is that they must be spending someone else’s money…i.e. government hand outs (tax payers money) maybe to get the nation digital?. If so, yet another initiative that has not been thought through.
Please tell me I am incorrect in my suspicions!

When they put our cable in they used a drill to get through/under the wall, then a device rather like a drain mole to pull the cable under the grass to a box on the wall of the house.