Virgin Media/NTL

timeoner

Yes I think your totally right and to rationalise my situation this is the position I am taking "lesser of the two evils". I have no other cable provider in my area and I don't use a BT line as I use skype. When I found out about the capping process I was taken by suprise because I was paying for virgins biggest package. I must also point out that from my conversation with the complaint manager that capping is done using hardware at the exchange. Which provider do you use? Is the Sky package any good? Its the whole lesser of two evils again!

BexTech

I'm on Virgin Media cable on the xTelewest system.

It has annoyed me that there's STM, it's just other than Be there's not really another ISP worth switching too.

Sky has a 40GB cap on their dearest service, you have to make sure that Sky have equipment in the BT exchange otherwise you'll be on a dearer and more restrictive resold BT Wholesale product.

I don't really want a BT line switched back on as when I moved to cable I just had the TV and broadband and then a few months later dumped my BT landline and for over 2.5 years and used VoIP only - not Skype as I didn't like the price or the charge for a local number or the proprietary system, I have an ATA and two lines with two local numbers. I do now have a phone line, this is with cable, but I don't pay for it, they installed it free and give me free line rental and evening and weekend calls and a discount on my broadband and TV (package increased) because they wouldn't extended the offer I was on for a 3rd year, I told them to cancel the lot, they didn't want to lose me, so offered a better deal - so would be crazy to say no - silly thing is I would have been happy on my previous deal, yet they wanted to give more away!

VoIP doesn't use a great deal of bandwidth, so even with STM it's not a problem. However now I use the landline when the calls are free / inclusive and VoIP for the other calls and now have the VoIP line send out the CLID of my VM phone line. In almost 3.5 years of using VoIP I've spent around £10 in total, other than the few quid for the ATA.

timeoner

I have now received a response from Virgin Media which does qualify some of the information I requested but still from what they have said their unlimited service is not unlimited. They also make excuses for over subscribing stateing they have to control the exchange when its at capicity as its in our best interest!!!!!!! The irony!!! So they oversubscribe, dont put in the infrastructure and then limit me because theirs to many people on the network. You would nt sell 1000 concert tickets but only let 500 in would you? Here is the response in full;

Hi James,
I have looked at your account and I confirm that you are being traffic managed due to the high usage of your broadband service.
Below are full details of the traffic management restrictions in place to ensure a fair use of the broadband service is had by all Virgin Media's customers.
The traffic management does form part of your terms and conditions of the service which you would have agreed to when originally signing up for the service, I have copied the part relating to this:

We reserve the right to monitor and control data volume and/or types of traffic transmitted via the interactive services on your Virgin TV and/or Internet access. In the event that you exceed any usage allowance applicable to your Internet access or your use does not comply with the 'acceptable use policy' which you can read on the Virgin Media website, we reserve the right (at our sole discretion) to reduce, suspend or terminate your Internet access. During any time of reduction or suspension, you will remain liable for the payment of your original level of Internet access charge. We also reserve the right (at our sole discretion) to re-grade your Internet access to a different speed and/or usage allowance at the appropriate charge. If we make such changes we will notify you as soon as possible.
During busy periods, i.e. when people return home from work there is a large demand on the broadband service and we do have areas where the network does reach full capacity at these times which is one of the reasons the traffic management has been placed on accounts to ensure all users get fair use of the service at peak times.
I would like to confirm Virgin Media are investing a large amount of finance and recourses in the broadband service over the next 24 months and there is a new 50Mbps service to be rolled out later this year (subject to successful trials). This will mean an upgrade to most of the cables throughout the UK.
I trust I have answered your questions. Should you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Kind Regards
Tammy Adler

I rest my case!

rash.m2k

The LIMIT is only placed WHEN you have downloaded like 1GB or more during that day.

If you haven't you will still get the full speed.

timeoner

I download more than 1gb in the day, why should I be penalised as I am on the unlimited service? I am as the post states, a heavy user.

timeoner

Just been called by Virgin who have now stated there's nothing I can do, thats the end of the line. I asked the question "why do you still sell your services in my area but my exchange is at capacity? Correct me if I am wrong but is'nt this mis-selling?" the answer back was "no comment". The person I spoke to sounded like they we're half asleep and I got no where.

What next? Does anybody know what more I can do? I am prepared to take legal action against Virgin with regards to mis-selling and traffic management but am not confident what next step I should take. If anybody has any advice please let me know.

Optimist

There is a new voluntary code agreed with Ofcom, which Virgin have signed up to. The link below explains the process you need to go through in the various complaint procedures

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/internet/

BexTech

rash.m2k wrote: »

The LIMIT is only placed WHEN you have downloaded like 1GB or more during that day.

If you haven't you will still get the full speed.

http://abcde.co.uk/virginmedia/broadband-faq.html#q49

Even though your speed is throttled for 5 hours you can still download many GBs per day, more than many other ISPs allow in a month.

(This is VM cable broadband and not Virgin.net ADSL - they have a different system for managing traffic).

lly_1987

Virgin Media are a complete joke!! We moved to them from sky as they were ment 2 b cheaper as we had a little one on the way we wanted to save money

But after the man who sold us virgin told us that he would give us three months free on our third bill this was a lie and now he never calls us back when requested in the 150 free from our virgin home phone. we then find out that he did not make us aware of a £120 credit phone limit. He was ment to put us on unlimited calls but he only put us on evenings free!!!! now we find this out on pour 4th bill that even though we have paid up to date we r £1 over our credit limit and they have cut us off!!! If he had given us the three month free and unlimited calls we wouldnt be anywhere near our credit limit!!!]

we r so angry. they make us look like we r lying as the system notes tell them otherwise. They keep fobbing us off all the time. they never give us an adress or email addy to complain to. I am taking them to court for all this!!! it is unfair and wrong, they r the worst company going.

any ideas??

sparksoft

We recently moved house and as part of the move, I arranged for Virginmedia to move our telephone and broadband services to the new address.
All seemed to go well until I checked my bank account last week to find that Virgin had taken £207.26 from my current account via direct debit!

I telephoned Virgin and they simply told me "this sometimes happens, you were just unlucky" !!! Apparently, they generate a penalty payment which is normally stopped as you havent actually terminated, but simply moved! This penalty is normally stopped but in this case found its way onto my account. Also they hadnt bothered to take a payment for June and July so wanted all the three payments in one month. This together with the bogus penalty came to the £207.26.

They then told me they were very sorry for the mistake, but they were unable to refund the over-payment to my account; apparently, Virgin Media systems have no facility to make payments back to customers account. (I find it very strange that a large company encompassing telecomms, Internet ISP services and banking, doesn't have the facility to make payments to its customers, when I can make a payment to them in seconds!)

I was told the quickest way of getting my money back was to call my bank and to ask them to raise an Indemnity Claim to recall the overpayment. This I did, but my bank told me they could not raise such a claim just for the overpayment, all they could do was to recall the whole amount, £207.26 which is what they did.

Now, obviously, this left Virgin out of pocket so I telephoned them today to make a payment of the amount I really owed them; as I see it, they really should have been thinking about paying me, after all, all this was their !!!!-up and I was having to sort it out through my bank! But regardless I tried to telephone to make a payment. This is when the fun started.

I spent half an hour in a Virgin Media queue and gave up. I tried again later and got the same ... endless queues, but I persisted. I finally got to speak to someone and they put me through to another number, so I ended up back in another queue. To cut an already very long story short, I was on the phone, from 5:30 until 7:40. At one point I explained my problem and was unceremoniously cut-off!

Finally, I spoke to another support person who asked me all the same security questions as the previous people before telling me that I owed Virgin £207.26!!

I asked to speak to a supervisor ... as he lef the phone I heard a comment to his colleagues "ooooh life is soooo sh*t ..."; he should have put himself in my place!

After another delay, the same person came back to the phone and said that he needed to pass the problem back to someone more senior and promised they would call me back by 9pm.

Now, I was silly to accept this, as I realised as 9pm rolled past that he had simply got me off the phone until his shift finished ...

Undaunted, I tried every VirgimMedia number I could find (and I managed to find a few useful ones on the excellent website "saynoto0870.com" and finally I was talking with an Indian-sounding gentleman who spelt out his name as "Prem". Unfortunately, I was apparently a "non-cable" customer and he was therefore unable to help me ... and, sadly, he couldnt put me through through to the correct number, as, VirginMedia do not have the facility (there's a bit of a pattern emerging here!) to be able to put customers through to other departments; But not to worry - he had the number I needed to go straight through to the right department!
"Youre not going to give me a number that puts me back in a queue are you?" I asked him.
"No Sir, this is the number you want!" he assured me.
"OK, give me the number", I said.
"0845 454 2222" he read it out slowly.
"Thats the number I have been sitting in queues with since 5:30", I told him, trying to remain composed ...
"Its the only number I have sir".
So I asked him, "Is there actually anyone there now, as they all seemed to finish at 9pm?"
"Oh yes sir, they work til midnight"
I phoned the number, I went through all the menus before the girl on their message cheerfully informed me that "The office is now closed"!!

So I am no further forward than I was last week.

They still think I owe them £207.26 and I fully expect that they will either cut off my service, or they will take the £207.26 again and the whole process will begin over again.

I am losing the will to live!

As I speak, my wife is doing searches on the net regarding Virgin problems and she is reporting page after page of forums in Google endless complaints about Virgin from 2006 up to the present day!

There was a time when comnpanies made good for the stress, cost (I have probably spent £15 - £20 in calls to tem and the bank etc., mainly spent sat in queues etc. But now companies just do not care anymore. We see them everyday on consumer programmes, rattling out the pro-forma, meaningless statement such as "We are very sorry that our service fell short of our normally very high standard ... blah blah" but no one actually does anything anymore! After this lot, I should get free Internet access and phone calls for life!!

Mistakes I can understand and can forgive. Incompetence, treating customers with contempt, rudeness and indifference I cannot.

I have started a website to concentrate on the awful customer service provided by Virgin Media.

Perhaps, instead of wasting money on "space planes" for the rich, Mr Brnason should concentrate on the apalling service provided by his companies back on earth - or is he trying to escape from the crap he has created?

Anyway, the website address is:

http://www.snowmane.net/virginmedia

To begin with, their is just an email link for you to send me your stories, which I will happily post on the site. Shortly, there will be a site where you can type your problems straight into the site. So keep going back to the site. I intend to develop the site to cover other companies they reach Virgin's dizzy heights of appalling service!

To be fair, if Virgin feedback information showing they have sorted a customer's problems and compensated them for the aggro caused, I will post that too.

I look forward to hearing from you all!

Best Regards