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If you live in the United Kingdom, chances are you will have to settle with a less than impressive internet connection and over the last 3 months I have been chatting with some Virgin Media customers, who are less than happy with their ‘premium' service.
I use Virgin Media myself in the UK and generally during the day the connection is fine, but after 5pm it is almost as if 50 people are using your wifi connection to all download warez files. My download speed will often drop from 100mbit to around 5mbit, even before I download a single file in the evenings.
Kitguru reader Jacob Langing said that the service in Manchester is just ‘abysmal'. He said that for a couple of days last week he was unable to access the internet at all.
When he rang support he got a less than helpful response. “I called Virgin Media tech support from 151 on my phone and got put through to an Indian support representative who told me to reboot my router and he then took over my computer with a software program they ask you to download. He accessed my router from the admin interface, then said he would make some adjustments and to try again. He would call back tomorrow to check on my status”.
Sadly it didn't resolve his issue Jacob added “No one called me back, and my internet was completely down next day. After calling back I spoke to another representative who said there was a problem with my signal and that an engineer would have to be called out. I do appreciate that problems will happen with any ISP, but my big problem with Virgin Media is that they seem to change their responses every time you call. One support guy will go through an automated process while the next one might find an issue with the signal strength or the way the wind is blowing. When I got my connection back, after 5pm my connection speed dropped to around 300k download, its dire. It is just excuse after excuse”
Jacob said since that incident he has called to cancel and is going to try another provider.
Another reader, Ken Hanson from Liverpool says his Virgin Media connection is good one day, then terrible the next.
He has complained so much that Virgin Media have refunded him 6 months service as a ‘gesture of goodwill'. He said “I have never really had good internet service from Virgin Media, the line speed is up and down all day, and at night, you are better just investing in a 3G dongle and surfing online with that. I haven't been able to use basic sites like ebay or Amazon in a week now'.
When I asked if he had raised the issue recently with Virgin Media he said “Yes, I complain every other day, I even know most of the support staff now but they never seem able to resolve the issue. I think they are oversubscribed and there is no way they can deliver the speed they advertise. This is why they say ‘up to'. No other industry in the United Kingdom would get away with that. It is almost like buying a car and the sales guy saying ‘The car may start some mornings, but not always, deal with it!'”
Weeks ago Virgin Media sent out letters to all their broadband customers claiming that many of their routers would have a power supply which could catch fire. There was a diagram of the power supply in the image with a hotline number to call to get a replacement. When I called it to check, it registered your phone number and said that a replacement, safe unit would be with me next day. Virgin advised their customers to turn off their router and not use it until the replacement arrived. I called on a Thursday and it arrived Tuesday the week after with the Home Delivery Network, one of the worst courier companies you can use in the UK. I didn't turn my router off, but could you imagine being left in a situation without internet for almost a full week? No offer of a partial refund either when I complained.
Yesterday The Register in the UK published an article about connectivity issues. They say “The Register has learned that a “sizeable” number of VM's subscribers are frustrated with the ISP for failing to offer a workaround to the ongoing connectivity nightmare. Stack Overflow – a popular forum for computer programmers – is just one of the websites cut off on the network.
A Virgin Media spokeswoman told us:
We're aware some of our customers are having difficulty connecting to stackoverflow.com and we're liaising with the network provider to understand what may be causing this specific issue and help resolve any problems. We'll update as soon as we can.”
The company forum manager Mark Wilkin said “We've done extensive tests inside our own network and we're confident that it's an issue between us and the affected site. At that point all we can do is contact the networks down the line where the problem appears to be happening and ask them to investigate.
Also for reference the majority of the internet (excluding dedicated peering connections) still operates on the basis of ‘you pass my traffic along and I'll pass yours' agreements that operate on a ‘handshake' basis.
So in this case we don't have a SLA [service level agreement] with the network where we think the issue is. We're talking to internap at the moment and we're also currently attempting to contact stackoverflow.com as well to talk to them about getting this sorted out.”
So basically all in all, Virgin Media is still the same mess it was when we raised the issue way back in 2011.
Kitguru says: Have Virgin Media customers got good alternatives? post a comment or email me [email protected]
I’ve had endless connectivity problems for the past 7 months now and Virgin Media have been unable to fix or even find the issue. Phoning up only takes you to a bunch of Indian Phoneworkers that have no idea what they’re talking about and if you, by some miracle, get through to the actual support they still don’t help. The only place you can sort’ve get support is their forums, mostly from non-employees. I do get fed up with them, but they’ve got the best download speeds in the UK and I’d rather not lose it; it really is a case of just having to deal with their shit service.
I left VM about 6 months ago for the reasons listed in the article.
I was subscribed to the 100mb package and the reliability was awful. I had to reboot the router almost daily, I would often be left with no internet for a few hours, one time it was a few days. I would always be told there was no problem with the signal whenever I phoned to complain.
When I phoned them to cancel the service they even had the nerve to charge me a cancellation fee even though I had been a customer for several years.
You guys want to be thankful your not living in Hull, we only have one choice of ISP, the monopolising retards in KC Communications (Karoo). Most people here are lucky if they get above 6mb, MAX, at any time, any day.
Oh goodie! Somewhere to talk openly about my experience with Virgin Media.
Well. My problems started back in january. I noticed that in the evenings, I could not stream videos from websites like youtube.com and twitch.tv, without severe buffering. I called to see what the problem was and was told that an engineer would have to come out and replace my modem.
2 days later, the engineer comes out, replaces my modem, and off he went.
Next day, nothing had changed. Still the same problem with video buffering. Speedtest.net showed 10mbps (I was on 30mbps at the time)
I thought ok… Maybe I should upgrade my package, and I’ll be moved onto a more stable part of the network, which higher paying customers should obviously be on.
Worst thing I ever did. The problems still persisted, worst than ever, and after numerous phone calls, I was then told that it was an over utilization issue, and there was nothing Virgin could do about it. Absolutely disgraceful.
I went on a rampage on the Virgin forums. Voicing my disgust at everyone who posted there. Tried my best to discourage users from upgrading if they had speed issues. I was even given a date by a VM rep that my issues would be resolved.
This date passed, and nothing change. This was the last straw. I gave BT a ring, and 2 weeks later, I have a solid 75mbps download and 16mbps upload 24 HOURS A DAY!
My advice to anyone in the same position I was in: If you have the option, switch to BT’s FTTC services. Im on Infinity 2. It’s the best thing I ever did. Theres just no way I was going to let Virgin take the piss out of my for months and months, without even offering my any credit to my bill.
My final bill is apparently £88 (despite the fact my bill is normally about £39) I have cancelled my direct debit, and they are not getting another penny from me.
They should be shut down, and their business practice, in my opinion, is borderline criminal.
Absolutely disgusting, abysmal excuse for a company.
I don’t have any problems with mine. I think it’s expensive, but I get the speed I’m supposed to be paying for. 20meg down, 1meg up, and 10ms ping. It doesn’t seem to change depending on time of day.
It’s rare that I download anything going into gigabytes, but a could of linux distro torrents will easily do that – and now the upload speed is being cut as well. It seems to be 75% drop in speed for all offenders based on the data transfer between two bands of time daily (one band for upload). Between the bands, you can download or upload as much as you want. The amount you can transfer is based on the type of package. On my package, I can download up to 7 gigs from mid morning to mid afternoon, or 3½ gigs in the evening. From 10pm to 10am and for a couple of hours in the late afternoon I can download as much as I want, all without the speed dropping.
If I wanted to be downloading at full tilt all the time, I could manage my timings and get more than 136 GB per day. Seriously – who needs that much data?
I’m based in Staffordshire (Stafford, UK) and have had almost no problems with Virgin’s customer service at all. Been using them for 5 years for Internet and my only complaint is their consistently slow speeds. Supposedly we’re on 30mbp/s fiber optic Unlimited and what this actually equates to is generally around 1.5mb p/s download and 200kb p/s upload.
Upload speeds are clearly capped while they give priority to sites such as Speed Test to make themselves look better.
I’m based in Staffordshire (Stafford, UK) and have had almost no problems with Virgin’s customer service at all. Been using them for 5 years for Internet and my only complaint is their consistently slow speeds. Supposedly we’re on 30mbp/s fiber optic Unlimited and what this actually equates to is generally around 1.5mb p/s download and 200kb p/s upload.
Upload speeds are clearly capped while they give priority to sites such as Speed Test to make themselves look better.
I don’t know about Virgin, but BT sure aren’t any good either. I’m on Infinity and during any sizeable download after 500mb my speed drops to around 3kbps. Trying to download games from steam or films of iTunes just barely works. By switching servers in steam I normally get around it (but have to switch servers 5 to 10 times in the course of a download). Just ridiculous.
Add me to the long list of unhappy customers, if i dont pay my bill they are quick to let me know but if there service falls short of even being considered a service oh thats ok because they already have my money.
No more I’m off to sky I used to have a great connection but the last couple of months its been steadily getting worse. The last couple of weeks I have been at times unable to even watch a 10 minute youtube video in 1080p and I am on there 120 mbit broadband. It got so bad that I called them to ask what was happening and just to explain how bad it got, I started a video before I called them and I was 11 minutes into the call and the video had barely made it to two and half minutes.