Hi, does anyone else on here use this company for Broadband?

We have noticed that for the past three days it has been constantly not working, and when it is, horrifically slow.

Does anyone else have this problem with them?

Thanks!
Dan.

phone them up, it is probably a problem with the box at the end of the street or the cable modem. Getting a solid 850k/s earlier at my folks house.

The annoying thin is, is that they charge some ridiculous amount just to call their helplines, even if they provide your phone as well. 😕

you can check service status here: http://status-cable.virginmedia.com/vmstatus/summary.do

On Virgin Media here:

Fine here (Edinburgh)

They've not charged for the helpline for a while now, its all free.

At the moment, they are up dating the lines, and upgrading customers.

Im apparently getting upgraded from 2mb to 10mb for free!

The '150' and 151' lines are free, 151 is a 'technical support call centre' 150 the far more helpful customer support.

I phoned 150, politely asked how to go about canceling my subscription and was told the Virgin cable network is being upgraded from 2-10mb and some older modems can't work with the higher speed.

I ended up with a free new modem & wireless router plus about £10/month off my sub 😀

the new modem took a couple of days to arrive and as soon as it was connected the service was very good, getting from about 3-6 megathingies now and no giltches…….

As above, give them a call on 150 – I've always found them very helpful and they've bent over backwards to keep my business when I said I was going to sky because they were offering an HD SKY+ box for free. Now have XL TV, L broadband, L phone and a V+ and second box all for about £50 a month which is pretty good…

The annoying thin is, is that they charge some ridiculous amount just to call their helplines,

Not my experience… water got into a junction box in the cellar and killed the phone line, though web and tv still worked (it was a seperate phone junction box that got damaged). Phoned them on a mobile on friday evening (obviously can't use land phone) and they credited us 5 quid for the inconvenience of using a mobile to call them – didn't cost anything like that in mobile charges.

guy came round last night, sorted out a new box and re-cabled the cellar. all sorted quickly, came when they said they would and no charges.

broadband has been very good – very fast and reliable.

Yes.
Ours has been a bit slow the past few days over the weekend.
Was crap for a long time then pepped up about 6wks ago. Then went shit again last week.
CableForum is a good place for the latest cable info.

You using wireless? Just had to 'fix' my inlaws laptop, windows wireless manager said v.good signal, virgin crappy applet said "oops can't find your wireless router". Scrap the virgin applet and connect using windows manager. Job done.

Well, it doesn't connect even to the computers connected to ethernet, so I really don't know why. The signal strength is fine when it's up.

I am possibly Virgin Media's "unluckiest" customer. Faulty equipment, replacements breaking after a short while, time off work each time an engineer needed to attend. A never ending cycle of shite. I then refused to take anymore time off work for another engineer visit until they agreed a complete new install/cable pull. This was promised, but when the time came the engineer had only been sent to replace the cable box. I dug my heals in, wrote a letter of complaint, then wrote another to complain that my complaint had been ignored, then refused to pay them anymore and finally got paid a few hundred quid compo and 3 months free service as a "sorry". I'd have dropped Virgin like rock if my road hadn't been cable-only but until I move I'm stuck using the ****. OK I may be a tad biased but I say Virgin Media are shit and should be avoided like the plague.

enfht – you're cable only? You don't have a BT phone line laid to your door, but you do have cable? Where are you in London? I'm really curious – this sounds like the weirdest thing, and I'm pretty sure you can actually demand a phone line from BT (although it'll cost a £150 install fee).

I ask because I cover this stuff as part of my job, so hearing what users have to say about a service is always helpful.

FWIW, I've been using the 20Mb service for almost a year now, with few problems – I work from home, so the connection is pretty heavily used 9-5, with a bit of browsing in the evening when there are more people home. If *can* fall down, but so far restarting the modem and wireless router has fixed the problem every time. I know the old 'try turning it off and on again' cant is frustrating, but in the case of a DOCSIS modem, this really can work, as the modem sends back to the head end for a fresh config file every time you do this.

The connection is not as solid as our BT Business Broadband ADSL connection (which only delivers 2Mb), but it has only been restarted approximately once a month in the year I've been using it. We tend to turn t'internet off every now and then, so about half of those have been holidays or periods when we're not going to need an internet connection for a weekend.

Virgin is about to complete a network upgrade from US DOCSIS 1.1 to EuroDOCSIS 3.0, so pretty much all areas will get 50Mb capability. the 2Mb upgrade is a freebie, and if you are on at 2, then call up and ask for an upgrade.

50Mb connections, by the way, require a new modem and an engineer installation, not least because the bottleneck goes from the access network to the homeowner's own home LAN.

I have VM; had loads of problems getting installation sorted a couple of years ago – would arrange an appointment over the phone then no one come and so I'd call and they'd have no record of the appointment! Happened a few times but I stuck with it and did get some sort of compensation – eventually all installed and OK after about 4 months. I can't think that I've lost the internet – maybe for a few hours once or twice. Currently phone line not working which apparently is due to damage to the cable in the road – not affected the internet connection though for some reason…. Gonna take 3 or so weeks from reporting the problem for blokes to fix in the road which is a pain. Upgraded speed of 10mb seems guenuine when I've tested it – I live in a village in Surrey if that makes any difference.

I am cable-only, no copper in the entire road. I pay for internet, TV and telephone, all of which frequently fail. Most recent being the telephone 3 weeks ago. I work in IT and had to get "technical" with them in order for their "customer service" to see sense. I could rant for hours about how Virgin FAIL at every given opportunity.

The problem as I see it is their inherited infrastructure combined with "engineers" who aren't paid to use their brains, coupled with the world's most useless customer service "Team" who are fragmented across the globe

One funny thing though, they made the mistake of asking me to complete a customer survey on which I suggested their head of Customer Services meet up with me for a fist fight. Oh how I'd have chuckled if they actually knocked on my door and beat me up!

Faultless generally inmy opinion and free calls to hlp line including technical support and cheap + catch up TV and the abiloity to view 😉 SKY whats not to like?

Signed up to these last night for our up & coming house move – hoping we don't get the enfht experience! 😯

My internet keeps on droping out,and talking to some far Eastern person with poor English is a total joke. I'm on 2meg and it realy is pants at the mo.
Also lost the cable to my hi-fi, so I have no digital radio. The helpline deos not include that problem in there press this button if your totaly pissed off messages.

Sounds like it's very variable across the country which isn't really surprising I guess since it's been made up of several companies (eg I was with Telewest before it became Virgin) some of which are better than others.

Haze – I did the same last July, and was lucky – pretty good so far. Seems it's a real Marmite experience! I seem to remember that there's a 28 day cooling off period on the contract, so perhaps it's worth checking that up. If your service is terrible, dump Virgin and go elsewhere.

Bear-uk – you must have been on cable for a while if you're still on a 2Mb connection – Virgin's minimum is now 10Mb. How long have you been a customer with them? Could you ask for a disconnection?

Might be interesting to map happy & unhappy customers against the old NTL and Telewest networks, as well as the upgraded nodes. Mind you, I think Mudshark lives fairly close to where I am. Hmm…

Oh, one other thing; I worked on a consumer magazine a while back, and we took a lot of calls and emails from people who had had crumby customer service from their ISPs. At first glance, it looked like BT, Virgin Media and Tiscali were absolutely shocking. Then we plotted the number of complaints against their respective market shares, and it started to make sense. BT and Virgin Media have more internet customers than any other company in the UK. So if 5% of all ISP customers across the board get crumby experience, then 5% of a large market share is a lot more than 5% of a mom & pop ISP…

I've just moved from them. Had the 20mb package in Pompey and typically only got about 9-11mb. Just moved to sky package deal and saving £30pcm

bent_udder
Been with NTL for years now. I'm no good at negotiating deals, so they fob me off.

Bear – don't negotiate, just leave and rejoin a few weeks later. 🙂
As long as you don't mind the 12 month contract, it's an improvement. If you're using NTL kit as well, then it's bound to be shonky. The Samsung STBs and Ambit modems are a huge improvement, although the quasi-custom firmware on the Netgear routers is a bit annoying

Slow for weeks here – but the best we ever get is about 750meg, and slow is 620meg, price we pay for not living near an exchange….

Been with them since September due to a combination of (apparently according to BT) having no BT line to the house (despite the BT phone points around the house) and no external aerial in the room we wanted the telly in. However the house did already have cable points. So I phoned them up and 2 days later we were fully connected with phone internet and telly.

The only complaint I have is that the remote for the telly is shite. I mean really bad you need to be no more than 3m away and pointing it directly at the box! I have never come across such a poor remote most will work if you hold the behind your back (like the rest of the remotes in the same room) but no this one.

Does anybody else have an iffy remote should I bother complaining? If I did would I get a remote that worked?