* Posts by Gavin Hamer

6 publicly visible posts • joined 14 May 2007

Russian search engine Yandex's Ukraine offices raided for 'treason'

Gavin Hamer

Astroturf

Is it just me or does it smell of astroturf in here?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/05/europe-vladimir-putin-russia-social-media-trolls

Tosh to tempt laptop buyers with free HD DVDs

Gavin Hamer
Stop

Tough if you already bought one

Very generous, but it's tough titties if you already bought a Tosh laptop with HD DVD, the offer only applies to new sales. Grrr!

Also...

lol @ the Sony fanboi club

Virgin Media tech support goes premium rate

Gavin Hamer

Oh no....

...the point is that my mum doesn't know whether she has a 'genuine problem' or not until she rings them. Even then, the support is often so clueless that they wouldn't know whether it was a 'genuine' problem or not either.

25p is a lot, in fact it takes the Michael, because the staff on the other end of the line are probably only on 10-15p per minute in wages.

This is a profit making exercise, at the expense of customers that are already unhappy. Nice decision making Virgin management.

About that TV service, Mr Branson...

Gavin Hamer

Compensation...

To the guy who was refused compensation for time off work, that's exactly what I got in order to be home for an install after they botched the first engineer booking. It was based on my annual wage, and I didn't even pretend to be a brain surgeon - thus confirming my 'numpty' status, as flagged by Rip-Off-Rob above. It all depends on the luck of the customer service draw, but the good news is that you can enter this raffle as many times as you like. Using the S word seems to help things along.

More recently, they have given me a £5pm reduction in my bill after they got the amount wrong (no idea what the garbage on the other five pages was about, but I understood the bottom line).

Loads of people get reductions in their monthly bills... by asking. Fur egg sample:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=393940

Gavin Hamer

I see toys all over the floor...

Couldn't agree less with this article. It typifies the culture of greed. I want everything now, I want it cheap and if anything isn't just-so, then I'll throw my toys as far as I can. The author is completely unrealistic. All big companies are virtually the same, they cut costs to the minimum, employ masses of stupid people to fend off masses of stupid customers, play PR games with the competition, merge and acquire, pay the directors big fat bonuses. That's what they do.

Virgin are, frankly, much better at customer service than NTL used to be 5 years ago, and if you persist, you can get superb internet and superb value recordable high-def TV.

Diddums if you want to download a series of illegal TV between 4pm and midnight, just do it in the morning, or the night, or use a speed scheduler.

I'm with Gordon:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/networking/news/2007/05/14/Virgin-Introduces-Fair-Fair-Usage-Policy/p1

Screen stars: Ten HDTVs on test

Gavin Hamer

Panels

Many of the TV brands have pooled resources, sharing manufacturing costs and often sharing the same panels.

Sony jumped in with Samsung.

LG and Philips have had a long standing partnership on LCD technology.

Hitachi, Panasonic and Toshiba are also working together.

However, it isn't just the panel that makes the TV, it's also the image processing and range of control offered. I had a Samsung LCD TV and it had superb black levels and viewing angles, but it was absolutely impossible to get natural looking colours. Now I have a Toshiba Regza WLT68 and, since I found the right settings, it delivers superb natural pictures, although admittedly the viewing angle isn't quite so good.

The reviews above are a bit odd. If you got your hands on a 103" TV to properly test it, why would you only write a few paragraphs on it. Why aren't inputs and outputs considered and how can you give an award to one when the others are in completely different price brackets and may well be the leaders in their class? Odd.