Is anybody using virgin mobile

Harald

Even it they offer to pay you for using their networ - stay away!

Unbelievable mess in the system, horrible customer service.
I'm suffering eighth month since I cancelled my sim-only one month rolling contract because they failed to deliver agreed service and then tried to overcharge me for 3 consecutive months after my number has been ported out to another network. In the same time they agreed to settle my CISAS claim and ordered debt recovery company to recover non-existing debt.
There's more: their debt recovery company (Moorcrosft or something like that) is using Comic Sans font in their official letters!

chris1973

Seriously stay away from Virgin Mobile, more so if you intend on using their Mobile Internet, and this is why:-

1) They advertise as 'unlimited' which technically they are, but they also have a cunning fair use policy which is 3.5gb a month, if you exceed this then your speed is throttled back to 384kbps. They refer to this as 3G speed, which sounds cool but is next to useless for anything other than light websurfing, and basically in real everyday terms 384kbps (0.384mbps) falls somewhere in-between EDGE speeds and the very first 512K landline adsl connections dating back to 2000!

This throttling isn't just limited to p2p, streaming, youtube etc but everything including basic web browsing, and when you exceed the FUP, the throttling runs for a full 30 days from the date you went over the FUP, it doesn't reset again after the next billing cycle.

2) They compress the heck out of images, making them look grainy. Its pointless buying an expensive £400+ phone with an high res display if your internet provider compresses images and website graphics into low res quality before they even get to you, your phone display will not put back what was taken away by your network!. Unlike T-Mobile and Orange you can't control this level of compression or turn it off, so you are stuck with washed out webpages and facebook images.

The image compression and the fact it cannot be turned off is confirmed by their own rep on their own forum so its not an urban myth.

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Mobile/Image-compression-on-3G/td-p/1146481


3) They constantly move the goalposts, when I joined them last October there was no FUP on their new 'unlimited' packages, then a few months later they brought in a 10gb FUP, then it was reduced once again from 10gb to 3.5gb. If you went into a pub and bought a pint and it was only 35% full, you would complain, yet its 'OK' for a Mobile Internet company to reduce its FUP from 10gb to 3.5gb (A 65% reduction) whilst charging you exactly the same price and nobody says a word!. Would you reward them with your business?.

Also, since they have already made two major changes to the FUP in less than twelve months and also removed tethering, what else is in the pipeline? and who says they'll stop at that?. I honestly cannot recommend any company who makes so many major sweeping changes to their customers' service in such a short space of time.

And finally, their speeds even outside of the FUP are dire. I travel a lot and so am able to try different areas and masts and thus ruling out local congestion or mast issues, and these are the average speeds i've been getting during April and May.

http://s20.postimg.org/e4mu6z9cd/April.jpg

http://s20.postimg.org/9799lv7d9/May.jpg

and from earlier today

http://s20.postimg.org/7eaybabkd/21st_May.jpg

As you can see I rarely get over 2 mbps download speeds, and often its under 1 mbps. Note in particular the high ping times and consistently poor upload speed (which never ever goes above 0.4mbps) which makes general internet surfing and fetching websites seem laggy. Remember that these tests were done on different masts at different times and on different days, and so rule out issues with one or two masts.

I also use 'Three' on a Mi-Fi device, which is like Fibre compared to Virgin Mobile. On Three I get 5 - 6 mbps down and 2.4 mbps upload even on non DC-HSDPA masts and 11 - 12 mbps in DC-HSDPA areas which alongside VM makes them seem like dial up.

Plus Three offer a truely unlimited monthly allowance which doesn't slow down to 2003-esque speeds when I go over 3.5gb a month - exactly how mobile internet should be, after all its 2013 and not 1913.

Harald

Just to picture what Virgin Mobile is capable of:



10 days to port number in, 10 days to port out.

thebaldwindowfitter

good and bad then

ZhugeEX

You'll get good and bad on any network.

Just ask people about Three. Some wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. Some actually realise it's the best network for internet due to the tech it uses compared to other networks.

So in this case there is nothing majorly wrong with Virgin. As long as you're happy with a 3.5GB data cap on your phone data i'd say go for it. It's saving you money.

chris1973

As long as you're happy with a 3.5GB data cap on your phone data i'd say go for it

Depends on how you define 'happy'.

Yes, I was very happy with the original 'Unlimited' service with no FUP, which was the reason why I subscribed to their service last October, I was still also reasonably happy with the 10gb FUP which they decided to introduce a few months later, but i'm not happy with a sudden 65% reduction in the monthly FUP, which is essentially what reducing 10gb to 3.5gb was. I wonder if Virgin would feel the same way if I was to reduce my payment by 65% next month, on the basis that it would be a fair(er) use of my financial resources and bank balance.

Of course it also depends on just how long Virgin Mobile maintain that FUP of 3.5gb for, after all don't take it for granted or plan your life (or contract) around it because it went from Unlimited > 10GB > 3.5GB in just a few short months, this 3.5GB currently is still fairly new, and there is still plenty of time for it to reduce even further once they have tested the water, and got a few more thousand subscribers on board, perhaps next time it will reduce to 1gb or 500mb, eventually they may reduce it to a level which does also affect you, but hopefully you'll still be cheerful about it.

It was also only a few short months ago, where Virgin Mobile also decided that they would cap everybodies' mobile internet speed to 2mbps down / 0.5mbps up - so it wouldn't matter whether you were in an area with 4mbps, 7.2mbps or 21mbps speeds, you could still only download a MAXIMUM of 2mbps.

http://hexus.net/mobile/news/service-providers/52513-virgin-mobile-admits-capping-download-speeds-2mbps/

This cap was eventually admitted to and lifted some time later, after it was 'discovered' and reported by several sources but it does show how devious they can be and how active they are in constantly thinking up new and exciting ways to restrict their customers' service - existing ones as well as new., regardless of whether PAYG or contract.

It should also be noted in the above report that the 2mbps speed cap was a trial, and common sense would suggest that as a business you don't go to the expense of planning and trialling something unless you are hoping to introduce it or use it on a more permanant basis at some point later in the future, so who knows!, maybe that 2 mbps down / 0.5mbps up cap will once again become a topic of conversation.

I'm not sure whether those subscribers with expensive phones with larger high resolution displays will be happy with the low quality compressed images being transmitted to their phones, where, if they are on 1 or 2 year contracts, may mean its 1 to 2 years before they actually get to use the full potential of their phones display and capability and by then the phone is old and outdated. Virgin should play fair and give their customers the facility to control these compression settings, its not re-inventing the wheel, because both T-Mobile and Orange already have 'accelerator' pages which allow their customers to do just that very thing. They choose not to, but that, for some reason is their choice and certainly not the choice of their customers.

I know that nearly every mobile communications company has the right to implement data caps and restrictions and change their service throughout a contract period in their T&C's, but in my relatively short experience of Virgin Mobile, they do tend to monopolise that right more than most!.

So I don't know how anybody could believe that a business relationship with a company who inflicts so many restrictions on their customers would be tenable or viable but good luck to anybody if you decide to do that.

I appreciate that everybodies experience of a network is personal to them and I'm not a fan of any particular network and just as with politicians, they are all about as trustworthy as the next, but one thing which has to be said for '3' is that they have always stood by their 'truely unlimited' stance, and I can't recall one occasion where they changed a FUP policy three times in a few short months or removed tethering from its contract packages which were sold with tethering entitlement. I often read of people downloading 100gb / 150gb+ a month using '3' and I also know many people in rural areas where 3's DC-HSDPA speeds of 8mbps - 21mbps are a godsend over BT's ability to provide 512k to 2mb via a landline, so where it is working, it has to be said - it works well.

ZhugeEX

chris1973 wrote: »

Depends on how you define 'happy'.

Yes, I was very happy with the original 'Unlimited' service with no FUP, which was the reason why I subscribed to their service last October, I was still also reasonably happy with the 10gb FUP which they decided to introduce a few months later, but i'm not happy with a sudden 65% reduction in the monthly FUP, which is essentially what reducing 10gb to 3.5gb was. I wonder if Virgin would feel the same way if I was to reduce my payment by 65% next month, on the basis that it would be a fair(er) use of my financial resources and bank balance.

Of course it also depends on just how long Virgin Mobile maintain that FUP of 3.5gb for, after all don't take it for granted or plan your life (or contract) around it because it went from Unlimited > 10GB > 3.5GB in just a few short months, this 3.5GB currently is still fairly new, and there is still plenty of time for it to reduce even further once they have tested the water, and got a few more thousand subscribers on board, perhaps next time it will reduce to 1gb or 500mb, eventually they may reduce it to a level which does also affect you, but hopefully you'll still be cheerful about it.

It was also only a few short months ago, where Virgin Mobile also decided that they would cap everybodies' mobile internet speed to 2mbps down / 0.5mbps up - so it wouldn't matter whether you were in an area with 4mbps, 7.2mbps or 21mbps speeds, you could still only download a MAXIMUM of 2mbps.

http://hexus.net/mobile/news/service-providers/52513-virgin-mobile-admits-capping-download-speeds-2mbps/

This cap was eventually admitted to and lifted some time later, after it was 'discovered' and reported by several sources but it does show how devious they can be and how active they are in constantly thinking up new and exciting ways to restrict their customers' service - existing ones as well as new., regardless of whether PAYG or contract.

It should also be noted in the above report that the 2mbps speed cap was a trial, and common sense would suggest that as a business you don't go to the expense of planning and trialling something unless you are hoping to introduce it or use it on a more permanant basis at some point later in the future, so who knows!, maybe that 2 mbps down / 0.5mbps up cap will once again become a topic of conversation.

I'm not sure whether those subscribers with expensive phones with larger high resolution displays will be happy with the low quality compressed images being transmitted to their phones, where, if they are on 1 or 2 year contracts, may mean its 1 to 2 years before they actually get to use the full potential of their phones display and capability and by then the phone is old and outdated. Virgin should play fair and give their customers the facility to control these compression settings, its not re-inventing the wheel, because both T-Mobile and Orange already have 'accelerator' pages which allow their customers to do just that very thing. They choose not to, but that, for some reason is their choice and certainly not the choice of their customers.

I know that nearly every mobile communications company has the right to implement data caps and restrictions and change their service throughout a contract period in their T&C's, but in my relatively short experience of Virgin Mobile, they do tend to monopolise that right more than most!.

So I don't know how anybody could believe that a business relationship with a company who inflicts so many restrictions on their customers would be tenable or viable but good luck to anybody if you decide to do that.

I appreciate that everybodies experience of a network is personal to them and I'm not a fan of any particular network and just as with politicians, they are all about as trustworthy as the next, but one thing which has to be said for '3' is that they have always stood by their 'truely unlimited' stance, and I can't recall one occasion where they changed a FUP policy three times in a few short months or removed tethering from its contract packages which were sold with tethering entitlement. I often read of people downloading 100gb / 150gb+ a month using '3' and I also know many people in rural areas where 3's DC-HSDPA speeds of 8mbps - 21mbps are a godsend over BT's ability to provide 512k to 2mb via a landline, so where it is working, it has to be said - it works well.

You write a lot of pointless stuff man...

In fact you're talking to the wrong person. I was one of the people who contacted the ASA after Virgin did all that crap.

And besides people were allowed to cancel their contracts due to the FUP being reduced/implemented.

But for the OP it looks like a good fit. plus he's igning up for a 1 month rolling contract.

And yes i know Three is great. That's why i'm paying £12.50pm on the one plan with them getting speeds of 30mbps and using 150Gb+ per month.

chris1973

You write a lot of pointless stuff man...

Thanks for that, but I didn't get out of bed today and come here just to please you, nor do I ever need to win the approval or adoration of a faceless alias on an internet forum to voice my opinion. So I guess one of us is just going to have to get used to that.