Posts Tagged virgin
Virgin Digital suck at testing
After installing Internet Explorer 7 last week, I soon found that my Virgin Digital application (which uses IE embedded inside it) was producing script errors on almost every page. These were not the sort of errors I could ignore, either:
I get about 5 of these, with varying messages, on every page, regardless of whether I click Yes or No. After reinstalling Virgin Digital for good measure, I contacted their tech support. Somewhat farcically, immediately after clicking the Submit button on the tech support form (which is built into the application), the application crashed. It was only 10 minutes later when I got the automated response via email that I even knew for sure whether the support request had been sent.
Today, I got a real response to the problem:
Subject: [virgindigital.com #88850] Technical query with system info attached
From: “Axel at Virgin Digital”
Sorry about that!
Our bad! The IE7.x was released a lot earlier than we thought!
(Microsoft pre-released!)
Rolling back to IE6.x will resolve the issue for now, for sure!
We are not up to date!
We will launch our all new site by Monday the 6th. of November,
though!
Sorry about that!
Best regards,
Axel
VirginDigital.com
Are you kidding me? Your excuse is that IE7 was released early and you just weren’t ready for it?
Even if that were true (which it isn’t, as the release was announced by Microsoft weeks in advance), the public Beta 2 version was released in April. You had six months to get ready. Six. Count them.
You also lose 20 points for ending every sentence with an exclamation point. I can only hope that English is not ‘Axel’s’ first language, because the alternative is that he is a moron.
Not being ready for the latest version of the most used browser on the planet, and the core product supporting your service, is simply incompetent. It’s worth noting that Virgin’s 2 biggest competitors that use the same technology (Napster and HMV Digital) have no such problems with their services (I know, because I checked). The only reason I haven’t cancelled my Virgin account already is that they claim it will all be fixed by next week. The ‘all new’ site had better have some UI improvements along with it, or I’ll be taking my business elsewhere.
Virgin Digital: Mostly competent but a bit slow
Well I bit the bullet a couple of weeks ago and subscribed to Virgin Digital‘s unlimited streaming and download service for £14.99/month, which includes being able to transfer to Elizabeth’s Zen Micro.
In case you’ve wisely forgotten my previous rant, this is essentially music rental; if I stop paying the subs, any music I download stops playing at the end of the month. The poor quality I previously bemoaned on Napster was, it seems, not down to the encoding method, but down to Napster’s retrograde encoder, since Virgin use the exact same format and their’s actually does sound better. Who would have guessed their advertising was actually true?
They have, however, shown varying levels of competence on other fronts. When I first signed up they actually managed to bill me twice according to their own records, and three times according to Barclaycard, but they have now refunded the extra two charges. Amusingly, my Virgin account history now claims I’ve never paid them a penny, yet they let me use the service anyway, since I have actually paid.
Also, when I first installed their software, downloading just didn’t work at all – tracks in the download queue would just get stuck and never finish. I emailed the tech support, but after a few hours got bored of waiting and researched the problem myself, and had it fixed in about 30mins. Out of curiosity I let them believe it still wasn’t working to see how long it would take them to reach the solution I had reached.
The answer: 9 days.
In all fairness, they did respond with the exact fix (which was pretty obscure) on their second email to me, but taking 9 days to do so would have pissed me off if I had actually been unable to use the service all that time.
Apart from that, the software is pretty good; definitely more polished and easier to use than the Napster client, and with far fewer bugs. Music selection is about the same as far as I can tell. All said, I’m pretty happy with it, and with Elizabeth using it to fill her Zen Micro up with music too, I think I’ll stick with it for now at least.
Why are all music download services rubbish?
All I want right now is a legal music download subscription service that isn’t awful quality. Unfortunately, I don’t think such a thing yet exists.
So far I’ve looked at Napster, HMV Digital, and Virgin Digital, and they all use 128k WMA. Now I’ve listened to music at this quality, and it sucks. I don’t care what their PR monkeys say, I can hear a substantial quality loss at this bitrate. Maybe I have better speakers than most, or maybe I can just hear better than most people, but nonetheless, it’s frustrating that nobody offers a higher quality service. I’d even be willing to pay more for it. How they have the gall to call it ‘near-CD quality’ is truly astounding.
