Some STW consumer advice….

We have been experiencing very poor broadband speeds for the last few weeks, we live a fair way out of town, so no fibre broadband.

Previously internet speeds were between 2-3mbps, enough to stream telly, you tube, etc without buffering.

Having just done a speed test we are now getting 500kbps, insufficient to stream anything, even downloading pics is a struggle. It has been like this for about 2 weeks now.

We spoke to Virgin and they have told us its “routine maintenance at the exchange” can’t tell us when it is going to be complete… they just keep fobbing us off. Reminding us that nothing has changed since we last phoned (we know that). The ultimate insult is having to pay to phone Virgin to complain about the service.

While I accept this maintenance may be outside of their control as all the broadband in this neck of the woods comes through BT infrastructure. How long can they fail to provide a service for which we are paying??

We have been told that there will be no consideration of a reduced rate for the time the service has been limited as they are ultimately still providing a service……

try bringing it up on there facebook or twitter page, this seems to get a better response than calling them.

Ring them up and tell them your not paying ..

It works ..

We had the same thing near us for a while although it speeds were still high, just not had high as usual and the occasional lack of service. When they’d done the maintainable our speeds were something like doubled overnight….. I’d stick with it if I were you!

Virgin sold adsl to talk talk… You should have received a letter.
Same has happened with my speeds

Routine maintenance – sounds like a load of rollocks to me. More likely they’ve switched off one of several internet links or over subscribed their existing capacity to me, could be wrong though.

Have you done a line test (either on BTs website or perhaps Virgins?

Had the same issue years ago. I got out of my contract early as the service was shocking.

Phone up and ask to speak to the retentions department.
There you will find people who will do everything they can to help.
That’s my experience anyway.

I assume you have a standard BB service through your phone line. I have the direct fibre service, basic speed is 50mb. 😉

Out of interest, this speed test is from a PC yes? What speed is the router showing as connected at?

Cougar,

Where can I check that info.

Have had a couple of laptops, phones and my tablet all showing the same issues so don’t think it can be the laptop….

Demand a upgrade to 100mb and request the superhub 2. We had this at work, there is a known fault with the 50mb service with no fix planned. Shocking company.

On the router’s web interface. Where exactly I don’t know, I’ve never seen Virgin’s offering.

Not necessarily suggesting it’s the laptop, just trying to ascertain where the fault is. A connection speed in line with what you’re seeing on the computer would suggest a problem from the router out (ie, a problem with the line, the exchange, Virgin’s core or your home wiring). A vastly different speed would suggest a problem from the router in; shonky wifi, a son hammering the connection by secretly downloading porn music, that sort of thing.

I hate to state the cliché but, have you tried turning it off and back on again?

g5604 – Member
Demand a upgrade to 100mb and request the superhub 2. We had this at work, there is a known fault with the 50mb service with no fix planned. Shocking company.

Yeah, awful. Keep upgrading the speed on my internet without charging me more even though it’s already many times faster than any other competitor. Shocking.
Come out next day to replace TiVo box free of charge even on a bank holiday. Awful.
Give me a mobile phone deal which is many times cheaper than their competitors and had better coverage in our area. The horror!

Thanks Rob, you are obviously one of their target customers. I can’t imagine they are too bothered if they lose me as a customer as I “only” contribute £30 / month for phone and a now practically unusable internet connection.

They offered us nothing by way of notification, apology or even explanation as to when these “routine Maintenance” works are due to be completed!

Their manner on the phone seems to be to remind us that nothing has changed since we last phoned and they will text us once the works have been completed. Thanks…….

Step 1, make sure the problem is theirs, options;

1. Connect laptop direct to router using cable, then run speedtest and screenshot result.
2. connect to router and read connection speed.

personally i’d just do (1), but do remember to take readings over a period of time (every day, or once a week).

Step 2, escalate.

– Report fault to broadband team (get a reference)
– if unhappy, contact retentions team (FYI the itu definition of broadband is >2mb/s in europe).
– twitter can be useful (post link to spedtest screenshot), as can the VM forums.

If still unhappy, give notice to cease contract, citing failure to deliver…. or escalate to ofcom.

Dont get irate, dont swear, dont shout….. tempting though it can be.

Long time ago I became annoyed by VM’s slow – dead slow – stop service on Friday nights and all weekend. I looked on here…

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Broadband/ct-p/Broadband

… and decided it wasn’t worth complaining, betterer just to move to another supplier.

I haven’t been back since to see if it’s improved: it seemed then that folk were reporting problems that had dragged on for years. It didn’t help that when I phoned VM the nice lady there tried to blame my anti-virus stuff.

Seems to have reached a new low tonight….. on the third time of asking I got a result:

Why does it think your ISP is TalkTalk?

Ah.

Virgin sold adsl to talk talk… You should have received a letter.
Same has happened with my speeds

As you were.

Ahhh so it’s not the fibre service then just a crappy phone line service. We can only get 1.5mb if we are lucky at our house so I feel for you, it just simply isn’t fast enough nowadays.
Probably not virgins fault unless you had faster speeds previously. They only rent the line off someone else then sell it you I think.

If its the line, its due to a fault as previously it was 2-3mb.

Should you be phoning talk talk then?

Ring them up and tell them your not paying ..

It works ..

My opening gambit in cases like this is “Is there anything wrong with the money I am reliably giving you each month ? Is it in any way faulty ?

No ?

Right then…”

Report the fault to virgin… at the minute.

You’ll probably be losing your virgin email address too…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/household-bills/11377380/Virgin-broadband-customers-told-were-moving-you-to-TalkTalk-and-youll-lose-your-email.html

Im a virgin / talk talk customer.. My speeds go from 5 (right now) to 0.5 in the evening.
It makes it useless for streaming anything in the evenings.

Absolutely boils my ……..

Ring Customer services on their chargeable number (150 no longer works), ask to be put through to the Retentions team…… girl there was completely uninterested in my issues, agreed to send me through the code to change to another supplier.

Problems with the account? No fault registered. No issues with supply. sorry but I don’t thing 0.4 mb/s can actually be called a supply. Plus this is a different story to what I was told last week.

Refund for loss of service? There hasn’t been a loss of service as I still have a usable supply! I need customer services, back to the offshore call centre who want to know my password. I give my account password, the same one as has just been accepted by the retentions team, not the right password sir, it is the right password, not the right password sir, please ring back with the right password….

Phone thrown at the wall….. time to switch suppliers.

…..and the ultimate insult is I am being charged for the call…..

I’ve just been through this as detailed Here and it is incredibly frustrating!

I also had a 2-3 mbps service with Virgin and was reasonably happy, after the switch to Talk Talk it dropped considerably and was constantly failing. After a helping hand from a fellow forumite I got put through to a helpful lady at TT who got me a new router that they could actually support after the tech team managed to pretty much kill mine. Speeds are back up to semi-useable levels (can’t stream anything though) but still disconnects every hour or so, I’m giving it a month before deciding what to do next.

I have found out though that I can now get Fibre (was switched on today according to the OpenReach guy fiddling around outside this afternoon) so I will look into switching to that soon.

From my experience so far the TT call centres are completely useless, you need to get to someone higher up to make any headway whatsoever. God help me getting a switching code in the future!

@milky – sorry it’s still not great, but thanks for the feedback on the state of our contact centres.

From the middle of this year you won;t need a leaving code – Ofcom has changed the rules so you just need to contact the provider you want to go to and they will cease your existing service.

The saga continues……….

Well after deciding that if Virgin could give me no sort of fix I decided to switch to BT. Rang up on the 7 May, was told I would be connected on the 14 May. Awesome.

14 May comes and goes…… nothing…..

Ring BT who confirm they cancelled my order as Virgin wouldn’t release the line “would I like to renew the order”?

So I renew the order and now have a connection date of 29 May, very best possible date as virgin take 11 working days to release the line, yet there was no mention of this when I accepted the offer with the connection date.

Is there no such thing as customer service anymore??

We’re on Virgin Cable and it’s been getting slower and slower over the last year. Just got 1.39Mb/s this evening. I think their whole network is creaking at the seams….

My Ookla test will now not finish.

A BTW speed test shows 0.15 MP/s which Virgin still call an acceptable service.

Unfortunately living out of town there are no BT hotspots so I am completely stuck.

I think their whole network is creaking at the seams….

Getting 45Mbps right now. OK in the Glasgow area.