Download difficulties

"Get the facts right" is a tenet that needs to be respected by any person aspiring to write in newspapers.

Unfortunately this principle was discarded by correspondent Christopher Zarb writing in the prominently boxed letter to the editor entitled "OnVol dis-service" (November 3).

The correspondent is not in the company of other OnVol subscribers who have seen and are enjoying a tangible improvement to service in the last few weeks. We can now claim, with more than sufficient justification, that OnVol's service, reliability, download speed and other parameters are more than within our customers' expectations, for all our browsing surfers, peer-to-peer, gaming and, of course, e-mail subscribers.

We do accept that it still takes some time to contact our customer service agents but even here investment in new technologies, and an increase in staff who are currently being trained before being assigned to their duties, will soon result in a remarkable improvement of speed of response.

For the record, the correspondent was contacted and chased by our customer service agents at least three days before his letter appeared in print. The correspondent, who was recontacted once again on three occasions, did acknowledge that our customer care agents, once contacted, had given him sufficient indications, instructions and assurances that the fault did not lie with OnVol's service.

The gentleman did indeed face the download difficulties that he complained of, but OnVol quickly ascertained that he was registering higher upload speeds than download speeds, a definite and sure indicator of virus or trojan activity inside his particular personal computer. This erratic behaviour of his computer can in no way be attributed to OnVol's internet on cable service, which, we are proud to say, is currently second to none in Malta.

As he himself admitted to our staff, he noticed the first troubles some three weeks ago, after he had upgraded his operating system software, regretfully without taking the necessary precautions to download the security patches offered as an excellent service by the supplier, thereby leaving his computer exposed to viruses from whichever environment he was downloading. That he went to print to blame us for what is not manifestly attributable to our service, is patently unfair, and has abused the courtesy of The Times to the detriment of our company.