Virgin Media very unreliable broadband - cancel without cancellation charges?

JamieStapleton

I am having a nightmare with Virgin Media. I am 6 months into a 18month contract. Since Xmas I have been experiencing really poor reliability - lots of dropped packets (5% at best, sometimes periods of complete outages) and very high latency (70 to 100ms).

This has been the case on and off for months. Virgin have acknowledged the faults and I have evidence of the poor connection and service via screen captures of their Service Status page plus a quality monitor I setup with ThinkBroadband.com. I have contacted Virgin a three occasions and got partial refunds for the loss of service.

The continual reoccurrence of these problems is more than just an inconvenience, this is not the service I signed up for and pay for.

I am considering cancelling the contract, however by my calculation I would owe Virgin around £180 as a cancellation fee.

I have scoured the T&Cs on the contract and there are two areas that focus on cancellations. The standard area covering Virgin for terminations and the other for the customer. There doesn't seem to be a clause covering cancellation by the customer without a cancellation fee. I didn't expect one to be honest.

I feel that this continued loss of service should allow me to exit the contract without penalty as I am regularly being denied the service I pay for.

Thoughts?

chanz4

nope only a refund for the sevice not recieved for the day, cancel without fee would be a gesture only

DMS12

I am having exactly the same problem. I upgraded to the Tivo/Phone line/Broadband package at the end of last year and haven't paid a full months bill yet because every month I've had to call and complain about the broadband service.

They have also acknowledged a problem and have told me it wont be fixed until 15th May but this isnt the 1st date they have given me so I dont hold any hope with this latest one.

Surely they are not for filling their side of the contract and therefore we have the right to terminate it without a cancellation fee? I know advertised speeds now quote 'up to' but I am not getting 10% of this most of the time which makes it not fit for purpose.

macman

Broadband is defined as 256kbps upwards, so, yes, contractually it is 'fit for purpose'. There is no 'percentage of estimated speed guarantee' whatsoever-if you have already received a credit for the slow service, then that is all you will get. No SLA exists on a residential contract.
If you terminate, you have nowhere to go without the provision of a BT-based landline.

chaos2

Having the same problem. BB speed sometimes only 0.5mbs during the evening. Have been complaining past month deductions of £30 of my bills, this month £25. So just keep complaining, and if everyone does that than they might just get their fingers to sort the problems out quickly.

Buzby

DMS12 wrote: »

Surely they are not for filling their side of the contract and therefore we have the right to terminate it without a cancellation fee? I know advertised speeds now quote 'up to' but I am not getting 10% of this most of the time which makes it not fit for purpose.

Have you read the contract ? It is a fault if you don't get within 80% of the advertised speed (at some time). Actual usage is affected by network loading and the number of users. That said, VM cable is consistently more reliable than any ADSL ('infinity' included) and the contention rates are also lower. Just keep reporting - I'm on the 60Mb service - I get 3Mb high peak, 28Mb average an 56Mb off peak. So I'm happy.

JamieStapleton

My problem is not download speeds it is the service in general.

I get regular periods, every month, of complete outage.

I want to cancel because, depsite being refunded for lost days, I cannot rely on this connection and as such am not being provided the service I pay for.

macman

JamieStapleton wrote: »

My problem is not download speeds it is the service in general.

I get regular periods, every month, of complete outage.

I want to cancel because, depsite being refunded for lost days, I cannot rely on this connection and as such am not being provided the service I pay for.

How can that be so if you are receiving a full credit for the downtime? You are paying for exactly the days you get. No provider guarantees 100% uptime.

kwikbreaks

Buzby wrote: »

VM cable is consistently more reliable than any ADSL ('infinity' included) and the contention rates are also lower.

Sorry but you are plain wrong on that one for many areas. Cable can be very bad indeed when VM cram more users on a segment than it can reliably serve. Upgrades do eventually get done but you can see poor performance for months on end.

There is no contention ratio quoted for ADSL services these days and there never has been for cable but the biggest current downstream pipe is 8 x 50Mbps. Upstreams will be 18 or 2x18Mbps. Those pipes will be supporting 200, 300, or maybe 400 or more customers who will each have been sold something between 30 and 120Mbps and told it's unlimited - it only takes two or three to treat it as unlimited and you have several hundred very unhappy customers.

cloey

Last year I was going through the same problems with Virgin Media and it had gone beyond a joke and was also quoted the same £180 to cancel.

This has actually happened twice in 2 different properties, first time the council had cut through out cables then concreted over so we didn't get tv, second time our phoneline would stop working every week, engineers kept turning up before there appointments and leaving angry letters etc. Wouldn't have let it happen twice but it was about 3 years apart and two different areas, and I genuinely thought they would be the best

Every time I had problems I phoned up, because after so many times they have had faults they will eventually offer to waive the gesture. Last time I had to email the CEO (http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!/) (apparently I cant post links google "ceo email") and was contacted by his assistant who waived the charge.

Don't give up, if you really want to get rid of them. Keep phoning retentions

*I know I sound mental but hey ho I wasn't happy paying £60 a month for no phone line, dropping broadband and no catch up tv

Buzby

Last contention rates I had was 1:20 for BT Openreach connections, 1:10 for VM. In certain areas this loading is higher for both, but is usually pending a re segmentation.

That said, on AVERAGE a cable connection will always outperform xDSL, due to a number of factors - so if BB is important to you and you have the option of cable, it is a no brainer.

You have to ask why BT were touting 'fibre BB' as a differentiator when it isn't? They always used fibre previously, but how come it is magically transformed just because it is a little bit closer than it was preciously? The gullible public are being suckered big time - when (eventually) fibre is actually used (FTTP) what they going to call that? SuperDuperFast BB?

Smoke and mirrors - ADSL is a short-term enabler in much the same way ISDN2 was, and folk should realise this.