Virgin ..AGAIN

scotty76

I knew their customer service is generally regarded as not very good but as I've never had issues thankfully I've never had to call them. I hope that's not about to change!

Interestingly one guy bought a new version of the DG834G router which fixed his issues with Virgin:

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/showthreaded.php?Board=virgin_adsl&Number=3549370

and

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/showthreaded.php?Board=virgin_adsl&Number=3560536

soolin

Those think broadband threads are very interesting not least of which is that people have described the exact same experience that I have. Even the palavar withh the help line is the same, unplug your router, plug it into main BT box..etc etc.

I am loath to buy a new router though, I bought one last year after having problems with Virgin (I was gullible and believed them when they said the problem was mine and not them) paid a guy £100 to supply and fit a new one and it made no difference. If I were more techy I would try it myself, but I just have a mental block when it comes to these things and get in a awful mess.

BuddyBonthenet

I often wonder if people who have a BT line are more or less affected by connectivity problems than people don't.

Also I'm on the slowest service which 2MB which doesn't cause me any hardship at all and I'm on the internet all day as that's how I earn my living.

Is it the higher band widths that have problems and do people choose the high band for a particular reason?

I'm on cable and have very few problems.

What about anyone else on cable? Do you have same kind of problems?

soolin

I have never chosen my speed and signed up when it was a standard half meg (that's how long ago I joined Virgin!) they keep upgrading me but it rarely makes much difference to my speeds.

BuddyBonthenet

soolin wrote: »

I have never chosen my speed and signed up when it was a standard half meg (that's how long ago I joined Virgin!) they keep upgrading me but it rarely makes much difference to my speeds.

That's similar to me as I started at the very bottom (no choice, just 'broadband') when ntl introduced broadband and have graduated up (at no extra charge) to 2 MB and the only difference I've ever noticed was moving from a dial up connection to broadband at the very start!

scotty76

I too have never chosen the speed. I think I started at 1Mbps and they keep bumping it up. It has been fine until the latest "upgrade". My understanding is that this is something to do with a move to ADSL2+ which is different hardware at the telephone exchange...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adsl2%2B#United_Kingdom

My understanding is that ADSL and Cable are completely different technologies so I would imagine what afflicts one group will not affect the other.

BuddyBonthenet

scotty76 wrote: »

I too have never chosen the speed. I think I started at 1Mbps and they keep bumping it up. It has been fine until the latest "upgrade". My understanding is that this is something to do with a move to ADSL2+ which is different hardware at the telephone exchange...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adsl2%2B#United_Kingdom

My understanding is that ADSL and Cable are completely different technologies so I would imagine what afflicts one group will not affect the other.

That's what I'm thinking - maybe it is people who are not on cable that are most affected.

mazza111

I think I must be one of the lucky ones, haven't had many problems with my broadband from virgin. Yes I occasionally get caught in an outage etc, but these things have to be expected, and always get partial refund for that. I had serious problems with my phone line with them and totally objected to having to call the call centres with my mobile to get through to Indian call centres, where they couldn't understand my accent and i certainly couldn't understand theirs. This is the biggest gripe I've had with them, that and the fact they throttled my internet speed when they brought it in, nm it got me a deal from them that was cheaper and faster than i already had.

scotty76

Just to follow up on this, got home this evening, still no broadband. After plugging in the router the orange light was still flashing. I went ahead and upgraded the firmware on the router and have reconnected first time. What is interesting is that it has negotiated 8Mbps downstream rather than the previous 10Mbps. From what I read today, in my attempts to find a solution to this, suggested that an overly ambitious connection speed would result in the connection getting dropped.

So that's me sorted for now. The details should anyone need them were:

Netgear DG834G V2 router
Firmware was: 3.01.25
New firmware is: 3.01.38