Virgin Media Broadband in S8 (and beyond?) - avoid

[munky 10]

There are also satisfied customers commenting on this thread. In my eyes it brings some balance to the fact that we are all regularly bombarded by ads telling us how great companies like Virgin are.... Truth is they arent delivering what they advertise!

 

Happy customer replies on the back of a customer complaint. My point is that generally no-one who is happy ever bothers to state this in a public environment without prompting.

 

And as stated in my previous reply, if you have a working broadband connection then they are providing exactly what they're advertising.

[jaxter30 10]

for anyone waiting for the virgin media contract to end..............

 

you have to give a months notice. so if your contract ends in november, you have to let them know your cancelling the contract in october. other wise when your contract ends, and you say im cancelling you will be charged for 1 months services at full whack which is anything up to £400.

 

you could do what i did and reduce the package, no phone just incoming calls, 20mb internet and freeview tv, cos im was on vip package the xl one it cost me £32 instead of £37. when i get a bit more money (damn this decorating and refurb malarcky) i can add channels to the package.

[mattleonard 10]

Bad Analogy. The gas and electrical suppliers charge you on how much you use. Your paying for a broadband connection where as with virgin, your not charged on how much you use it. So if you have a connection that is broadband (i.e not narrowband using telephony frequencies) then jobs a good 'un.

 

A better analogy is car rental. Your paying for access to a car that maybe able to go upto 150mph. You wouldn't complain to the car rental company that you weren't able to get anywhere near than speed, due to traffic, congestion or whatever other circumstances surround it.

 

Well actually your analogy is fairly flawed. You are trying to apply an analogy to Virgin Media, in which case for your analogy to work this car rental company you are describing would also be responsible for the state and layout of the roads, and for managing the allocation of traffic on those roads.

 

Actually, I wasn't applying an analogy to Virgin Media, but to you, who seem to think it's perfectly acceptable to pay for services regardless of whether you receive that service or not.

 

And in reply to Nicoracle - "this post lets others know what real customers experiences are"

How many happy and problem free customers post on forums saying "I'm with xxxxx and I don't have a single problem"

 

There's absolutely nothing to stop them. And as Nicoracle pointed out, other customers have pointed out that their connections are fine. And as of last night, I was getting 6Mbps, which I'm very grateful for. But the argument that if some people get a perfectly fine connection then the complaints of those who don't are invalid is nonsensical.

 

Only unhappy customers complain, so posts such as these give a rather one sided view.

 

Well, yeah! Although, if in addition to being happy to pay for services which you don't receive you would also like to complain about how happy you are then feel free.

[hevydevy 10]

It's been shocking for us in S8 too - just been speaking to them on the phone and they say they're oversubscribed and there is on-going maintenance work, and will be fixed "in time". We are getting 0.2-0.4 Mbps, utter cr*p.

[cheekychimp 10]

I have to agree with the OP on this one, my parents live in S8, near Abbey Lane and they can't wait for their 12 months with Virgin to be up, they pay for the top end broadband package, not sure how many mb it is, but every time i visit i do a speed check and it has never been above 2mb. Not only that but in the past 4 months they have had 5 new boxes, as the boxes change the channels and set reminders by themselves, also over the past few months they are having a constant problem with films appearing on the bill when none have been ordered, they are refunded but it is so much hassle for my parents to have to sort this out every month.

At least once a month the cable and broadband just cuts out completely, and it isn't sorted until an engineer comes to fix the box, at one point they went without both for five days as no engineers were available, and Virgin refused any kind of refund or compensation.

On top of this on several occasions my mum has phoned up and spoken to what can only be described as the most rude, unhelpful staff in the world (not every time though some are very nice).

The last engineer that came recommended that after all the hassle my parents have had they write an official letter of complaint and switch to Sky!

 

All this and my parents are paying for the top packages, it's a disgrace, not what i would expect from a company like Virgin at all, sounds silly but the problems my parents have had have actually put me off the idea of booking flights to Florida with Virgin, even though we were offered a very good deal.

[Squiggs 11]

I remember drooling open mouthed at my kazaalite speeds on 512K

 

I thought then 1mb was just for showoffs

[Ravenger 10]

Had a 10 meg upgrade, from 4 meg a few weeks ago, and since then my speeds have become extremely unreliable.

 

When I had 4 meg the connection was consistently near max speed, with low pings, now I get random pings, and random speeds. It's fine in the mornings, but in the evenings it drops to below 1 meg. The other night I had a max download speed of 26kb a second!

 

Tech support via the newsgroups say there's a high TX load in my area. I honestly don't understand why VM is traffic shaping when it's patently not working and I can't consistently get decent speeds.

 

I used to game online a lot, but that's getting almost impossible to do now with such an unreliable connection.

[Magilla 510]

Sorry for starting a new topic, but I think it deserves it as the other thread refers to S5.

 

Same in S7, down to dial up speeds in the evening. After much checking VM say that most of Sheffield is oversubscribed.

[Magilla 510]

Had a 10 meg upgrade, from 4 meg a few weeks ago, and since then my speeds have become extremely unreliable.

 

When I had 4 meg the connection was consistently near max speed, with low pings, now I get random pings, and random speeds. It's fine in the mornings, but in the evenings it drops to below 1 meg. The other night I had a max download speed of 26kb a second!

 

Tech support via the newsgroups say there's a high TX load in my area. I honestly don't understand why VM is traffic shaping when it's patently not working and I can't consistently get decent speeds.

 

They haven't had the backend bandwidth to cope with the demand for a long time now. Virtually zero network investment but a massive customer facing advertising drive. Clearly squirting more people down the same pipe doesn't work.

 

All that traffic shaping has done is make everyone who uses their connection wait until 9pm before they begin, so after 9pm my speed drops to dialup.

 

It's a bad state of affairs, the only time you can get decent speeds is when the traffic management is in force, but then you only get decent speeds for 30 minutes until you are capped. Outside of the managed times it seems to be universally crap. You can't win no matter what you do.

[Magilla 510]

apart from the occasional speed issue, is otherwise perfectly stable and usable.

 

Not at all my experience.

[Magilla 510]

.......................

[Magilla 510]

A better analogy is car rental. Your paying for access to a car that maybe able to go upto 150mph. You wouldn't complain to the car rental company that you weren't able to get anywhere near than speed, due to traffic, congestion or whatever other circumstances surround it.

 

But clearly you would if the car were knobbled to only go 10Mph regardless of congestion or any circumstances. Which is exactly what VM do at present.

 

As for your car rental analogy, how does it stand up when you realise that cars rented from a different rental company are allowed to go faster on the same stretch of road in the same conditions? Should you complain then?