You are currently browsing the Philip Nicosia weblog archives for October, 2006.
I kind of forgot about this but as of 1st October 2006 EasyMobile have a minimum charge of 1 minute. That means the minimum call charge is now 15p unless you are calling another EasyMobile phone where it will cost 3p.
Seems a big hike from the per second billing that they used to offer with no minimum charge. I think I will have to look around and see if I can get a better deal.
TalkTalk broadband was featured on BBC Watchdog last night and we’re told they have received more complaints about TalkTalk than any other company ever featured on the program.
Charles Dunstone from TalkTalk says he’s disappointed that so many customers had complained to Watchdog. What does he expect them do?
He also said “Talk Talk is connecting hundreds of thousands of people to free broadband every week.” He added that half a million have already signed up and the offer has been so successful, the company has been overwhelmed” Now do the maths on that one, hundreds of thousands of people are connected each week yet only half a million have signed up for the offer since April. At the rate they are going it would only take 5 weeks to get to that figure. Doesn’t seem quite right to me.
He also said “that he has introduced a process for handling cancellations and outstanding accounts”. Doesn’t mean it works though. I’m still being billed for broadband that I haven’t had since the 5th September.
He showed a board on the wall that stated that calls were being answered within 15 seconds and there were no calls waiting. When I tried to call them yesterday (five times) after selecting the option I needed I was immediately cut off. Maybe that’s why there is no-one waiting.
My advice to Charles Dunstone is to try calling in with a problem himself and see how his staff deal with things. Only then will he truly understand the problems his company has.
Even though I left TalkTalk broadband on the 5th September I am still being billed for their service. Trying to call them today you get to their automated service that says “for Broadband Press 4″. I tried 5 times this morning and each time I pressed 4 the line got cut off immediately.
Now that’s what I call Great Customer Service!
Update: These instructions are for the original Sky Netgear router. For instructions for the new black Sky router see further down.
In a previous post I mentioned that someone at Skyuser.co.uk had figured out a way to find out your Sky Username and Password which is hidden within the router. This involved flashing the software of the router with a new version from Netgear. Whilst not difficult it might not be for the faint hearted.
Someone else has come up with a much easier way and quicker way of finding out this information. All you need to is log into your Sky router by typing into your browser 192.168.0.1 and then entering in the username admin and password sky.
The next step is to enter the following url into your browser
Once you have done that enter in http://192.168.0.1/netgear.cfg and save the file to your pc. Open the file with a text editor such as Wordpad and you will see your Sky Username and Password listed.
With this you will be able to use a different router other than the Sky provided Netgear one.
If you want to use your Sky router on another providers broadband then you would have to flash the software as mentioned earlier to get access to the Username and password fields you would need to enter your existing details in.
If you want to see what else you can do with your Sky router then visit NETGEAR DG834GT Hacking
New Black Sky Router Netgear DG934G
To get your username and password from the new black Sky router go to https://www.cm9.net/skypass/ and enter your MAC code and serial number and it gives you the username and password. This has been confirmed to work by other readers.
Obviously some bright spark has managed to figure out the algorithym used by Sky that creates the hidden username and passwords.
Just curious as to why Google search results are different to Google Toolbar search results.
If I enter www.philipnicosia.com into the Google Toolbar it takes me directly to this site. If I enter the same search term on Google.co.uk it lists search results instead.
The funny thing is I’m not number 1 for that search term. Google doesn’t think that www.philipnicosia.com is the most relevant result for www.philipnicosia.com.