Virginmedia Moving Home - Poor Service

markashleypatt

Hello!

I moved home on 1 October and informed Virgin Media that I would like my broadband service moved to an existing BT phone line. I was told there would be a week's delay between move and installation.

After numerous phone calls to their customer service team and ongoing promises of '10 working days for installation', broadband was not hooked up until 5 November due to their failure to register my installation request.

It has worked fine for two weeks with some service drop-out but since 19 November has been operating at very, very slow speeds. e.g. I can't download and use internet at the same time.

Given that I've had nearly two months of continually poor service (and I've been with Virgin Media for about 7 years), do I have grounds to terminate a service that isn't working sufficiently.

I've emailed a polite complaint to them. Any suggestions of what to do if they're not forthcoming?

Thanks!

M

penrhyn

You have moved from a cabled to a non cabled area? So you are on a rebadged BT service.
Could you log on to your router and post its line statistics, might give us a clue of whats going on.
It may be distance from the exchange, a line fault, or BT throttling the speed at peak times.

macman

You are now on Virgin National (big mistake) ADSL service. Which after cable service, will inevitably feel like a snail's pace in comparison.

markashleypatt

macman wrote: »

You are now on Virgin National (big mistake) ADSL service. Which after cable service, will inevitably feel like a snails pace in comparison.

I think it's more a case of something going wrong at their end. It had a reasonably fast speed for two weeks before the current drop-off.

Have tried a nearby property with a similar setup - ironically paying for less speed and yet the connection is faster.

I'm just so sick and tired of constantly phoning Virgin's customer services and them responding at the speed of dial-up.

penrhyn

Can you post your router line statistics?

markashleypatt

penrhyn wrote: »

Can you post your router line statistics?

Stats are: Ping 71 ms, download 0.23 mbps, upload 0.73 mbps

I can still get online but compared to the last couple of weeks, it's as if someone has suddenly turned the volume right down, so to speak.

I've contacted Virgin Media (again), and have recommended I connect into the phone line socket behind the screwed on wall panel and leave the router on for 24hrs, but even the rep on the phone thought it odd.

macman

Those are not your router stats:
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php#34
Your router should be left permanently on anyway, if you keep switching it off, it has to resynch each time and your line speed will suffer.
The check that the VM rep advises is correct and is to isolate your internal wiring and extensions as a possible cause, by conneting direct to the BT test socket.
Do you have know good ADSL flters on all active extensions?
If you are using wireless to connect, retest with ethernet. If the problem resolves, it may just be a wireless channel issue, if so try changing the channel.

markashleypatt

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions TxB/s RxB/s UpTime
WAN PPPoA 184736 192582 0 2899 18398 02:03:14
LAN 10M/100M 189247 186944 0 17660 2850 02:08:00
WLAN 150M 10771 4899 0 741 83 02:08:03

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 287 Kbps 888 Kbps
Line Attenuation 17.2 dB 7.1 dB
Noise Margin 28.4 dB 16.4 dB

Thanks! My desktop computer is ethernet connected, not wireless. I've also tried connecting via my PC laptop, both hardwired and wireless to rule out hardware problems. The speed is just as slow on there too. As an extra precaution VM advised changing the ADSL filter.

Oh well! There was me thinking moving home would all go smoothly.

penrhyn

Is your router plugged into an extension or your master socket?

Can you plug your router into the master test socket and repeat your line stats test?

markashleypatt

Hi there!

I had the ADSL filter plugged into the master test socket via an extension chord for the previous stats. This is a repeated test with the ADSL filter in the master socket directly as per diagram (with no extension chord):

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions TxB/s RxB/s UpTime
WAN PPPoA 3843 3691 0 1578 9751 00:03:27
LAN 10M/100M 3974 4475 0 8134 1518 00:04:36
WLAN 150M 260 0 0 154 0 00:04:39

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 287 Kbps 888 Kbps
Line Attenuation 16.9 dB 6.9 dB
Noise Margin 29.7 dB 15.9 dB

Thanks for the support!

penrhyn

Looks like you have a problem at the exchange, you need to get onto Virgin to sort it out.
With a 17 db line you should be getting a speed of around 16Mbps at least.