Issues with Virgin Media - anyone having similar problems?

[ska valley]

We had exactly the same problems with Virgin Media, and after months of struggling we gave up. All the time when we didn't have internet was not compensated and the service was as equally terrible as the internet.

[ribrob]

Key issue i have is that nobody seems to be able to offer anywhere near the speeds locally.

Or does anyone else know otherwise?

A reliable 50MB is more than adequate - and far better than a 100MB (soon to be 150MB) but totally unreliable service.

Rob

[bzgeo]

ribrob Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Key issue i have is that nobody seems to be able

> to offer anywhere near the speeds locally.

>

> Or does anyone else know otherwise?

>

> A reliable 50MB is more than adequate - and far

> better than a 100MB (soon to be 150MB) but totally

> unreliable service.

>

> Rob

Its not reliable though, sometimes the 50mb that you pay for drops to 5mb due to congestion. Well I understand that high traffic happens, but thats why as a company you have to upgrade your network or offer discounts for your shitty services.

Unfortunately there is no-one out there to protect us from Virgin Media atm. Taking it up with them on your own just ends up being a pain and it won't lead you anywhere.

I know of other areas that are having the same issue as we do, and some of the people there have brought it up with the CEO etc but they obviously receive that robotic response that "we are working on ensuring that our network is better than garbage, please allow us the time to do so..." etc.

It feels like that in our case making a formal complaint won't help much. We need to form some sort of a group where we can create a class complaint against Virgin and ensure that anyone that is having issues is compensated. (Same applies to southern rail garbage)

[traveler2]

Virgin Media Cabinet still open - week 5.

4 phone calls and complaint online via Virgin website and still no one to come to lowly East Dulwich to address the problem. Apalling!

[Rachel_Photography]

After calling up today I learned that I was out of my contract period. With a combination of price increases and slow evening speeds for over a month, I'm happy to report that I will not be suffering from any cancellation fees.

Now if Plusnet can just confirm that they can install fibre at my house, I shall be bidding Virgin goodbye.

[Nigello]

I was promised by Virgin X amount of bandwidth and was only getting Y, so I asked to be placed on a tariff that was more realistic (explaining that I did not see the point of paying for the higher amount when I was only getting the minimum amount on the lower tariff). I also got a bit of compo for inconvenience and it only took a phone call.

[jonnywalker]

if you're in contract you can still leave without fees as they are in breach of contract by not supplying what you're paying for

[ed_pete]

I spoke to VM on 27/1 to complain about their poor download speeds in the evening, (which BTW I am currently monitoring on an automated basis and it falls off a cliff between 6pm to 11pm) and they promised to rebate me until it was fixed, which at the time they reassured me would be "early Feb".

Needless to say that (a) it has not been fixed and (b) when I received my bill no rebate had been applied.

However when I spoke to them again today, they were more efficient and forthcoming and have provided a rebate of ?7.50 per month, backdated to 27/1 and fixed in place until 19th May which is when they expect the capacity issues to be resolved.

[Tractorlad]

ed_pete Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I spoke to VM on 27/1 to complain about their poor

> download speeds in the evening, (which BTW I am

> currently monitoring on an automated basis and it

> falls off a cliff between 6pm to 11pm) and they

> promised to rebate me until it was fixed, which at

> the time they reassured me would be "early Feb".

>

> Needless to say that (a) it has not been fixed and

> (b) when I received my bill no rebate had been

> applied.

>

> However when I spoke to them again today, they

> were more efficient and forthcoming and have

> provided a rebate of ?7.50 per month, backdated to

> 27/1 and fixed in place until 19th May which is

> when they expect the capacity issues to be

> resolved.

Dont believe them. About 10 fix dates came and went last year v

[ribrob]

I'm surprised they said fix date, usually they referrer to a "review" date, i.e. date by which they'll make a decision.

The decision to go ahead and fix the contention issue has not been made since the issue was first opened in Jan 2015.

Since then they've only ever reviewed the situation and set a new review date to review again.

I assume the point that they may decide they to fix it is when the level of complaints becomes too high to ignore.

Or we do something more drastic that embarrasses them into fixing it.

I don't know if that's a local news thing or a BBC Watchdog level of drastic.

But i suspect nothing will change until something like that happens.

And they'll probably blame the council or BT somehow.

[bzgeo]

problem with cutting off your contract is that there is nothing else out there offering same speeds or being reliable enough.

[kibris]

Theres only one thing to do and thats move to SKY they are very good and no problems and cheaper than virgin

[panda boy]

> Theres only one thing to do and thats move to SKY they are very good and no problems and cheaper than virgin

Having had experience with SKY in the past I would recommend the exact opposite of this, a thousand times over.

I have Virgin broadband (basic cheapest package, just broadband and landline) and have never had such fast or consistent broadband in this area, although I think i'm fortunate as someone had previously installed a fibre connection into the house.

Fastest download speed has been 53MBS, slowest in the evenings where I would expect a reduction was 33MBS.

I download and upload large files often.

Occasionally the router will update itself

Would be interesting to know why others on the same road are having such problems.

(I'm not an employee of Virgin or Sky.)

[Tractorlad]

I have finally thrown in the towel with Virgin. I plugged the BT box in Sunday evening. I've received a steady 50 mbps every time I've run a speed test whilst Virgin was languishing in the 5/6 Mbps at best 10 minutes before switch over. See attached screen shot. I have also raised a formal complaint with Virgin which has taken me months to escalate. I've asked them simply, what the problem is, why its taken so long to fix and when they'll fix it. I've also told them that I'm disgusted that their attitude so far is to ignore the residents of SE22 and "solve" the problem problem by giving ?10 rebates or inform people their welcome to leave. I'm sure they feel that people will be placated and keep quiet. I'll report back if I get more transparency than what has been reported in this thread. I'm not hold out much hope of any progress though to be honest.

[Tractorlad]

Further to a post yesterday is seems Virgin are still up their usual tricks in the Underhill Road area. As above, I have now left Virgin for BT. Whilst the TV package with BT is inferior, so far the Infinity fibre seems pretty good. I'm glad I left.

Before I cancelled I did though seek to escalate my complaint to senior management and have a small amount of additional information about the problems they now acknowledge they're experiencing in the area.

The issue relates to upgrade work that needs to be undertaken and completed on their dedicated Lewisham facility. The extra capacity required has implications for both power and cooling capabilities at the site. They tell might that not only do they need to upgrade the telecommunications infrastructure but also make changes to the fabric of the building. The person I spoke with wasn't sure that the work had commenced but it seems that the issue is complicated to resolve.

This is no consolation to existing customers but I think this is more information that they've previously disclosed.

[kibris]

Whats the big deal there are so many other company's out in the big world who would love your money. Dont just stick to virgin and moan just move EASY

[Rachel_Photography]

Just had a convo over Twitter with Virgin. They are now claiming that it'll be fixed in April. I wouldn't advise anyone to hold their breath.

https://virginmedia.response.lithium.com/portal/conversation/6567227

[major123]

It was down again today, apparently not a "fault" but a planned outage. I did question the decision making on a planned outage between 9am and 3:30pm, i.e. most of the working day, but I fear I was wasting my breath. Anyway they told me May for fixing the "Utilisation" problem in SE22, so it seems it has already slipped by a month. I love the way they call it that btw, clearly that translates as we have been greedy and oversold the service.

Anyway I have had enough now, so interested in hearing from others about Sky Broadband or BT Broadband in SE22. I can't afford to wait for Virgin to get their act together and interested to hear from others on a suitable alternative. Thanks

[Bic Basher]

I doubt there's any real difference in whatever BT Wholesale product you buy which the majority of the ISP's use. Sky and TalkTalk have their own equipment at the Dulwich exchange with no traffic shaping during the evening.

[GinaG3]

I've had success with multiple high ultilisation ticket discounts on my contract. My service was down from 10.30-12 today near Alleyns. I haven't actually had many issues in the last few months though, except the price hike they sprung on me for the first time in 6 years! I'm moving from virgin when my contract is up in 2 months but I'm not entirely sure where I'll go as Sky and BT are both worse than Virgin in my view.

[uncleglen]

Yes, I've used BT, Sky and went back to Virgin and have had no problems except once when vandals ripped the cables out of the box- but it was up again in a day.

[ribrob]

major123 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Anyway they told me May for

> fixing the "Utilisation" problem in SE22, so it

> seems it has already slipped by a month.

The date i was given back at the end of January was 18/05/2016, so May's correct.

However, remember this is just "review" date, which may mean when that date comes they simply decide there's not been enough complaints or customer pressure to upgrade the system.

They are planning to officially introduce faster connections around that time, and public wifi using residential customer SuperHubs at some point (you all know about that right?). So one *assumes* they will have to upgrade for all of that not to be a total failure.

Rob

[tas]

We signed up to VM recently with 100Mbs Vivid. After signing up, I read all these comments, panicked, called them to cancel but they persuaded me to stay on the basis of the 14 day cooling-off period after installation giving us a chance to test it out.

We are now 10 days in, and the broadband has been excellent so far, with speeds of 30-60mbs in peak times, and usually 90-105mbs off peak, no dropouts and far better than the sluggish BT Infinity service we had before. So, should we trust this to continue or do they keep the speeds high for new customers and then turn the dial right down once we are out of the cooling off period? Is there anyone who has signed up in the last few months who has had this experience?

[Tractorlad]

Tas, if you're concerned check with VM which exchange you're connected to. Its their Lewisham facility that seems to responsible for the diabolical service in SE22. If you are connected to Lewisham then expect some problems pretty soon.

[ribrob]

Tas,

The norm is to get what you're seeing in terms of speed.

However the speed can dive down to between 1mbps and 5mbps, which is slower than my mobile network.

Like i say, it's not always as bad as that, but the main problem is it's entirely unpredictable.

You'd expect Fridays and Saturday nights to be bad, but it can just as easily be Monday or Tuesday night.

It means you can't really plan anything; watch a movie or catch-up tv, play multiplayer games, because you never know what it's going to be like.

And sods law always seems to dictate that when you really need to bring work home at the end of the day, or stay at home to work, the internet will be so bad you can't get to your files in the cloud.

I'd gladly swap my advertised 100mbps for 30mbps guaranteed, but that simply isn't an option.

Rob