Virgin Media - pay for 8MB, get 0.11

Cos2k3

Same problem since day 1. Poor connections previous provider was very quick or so it felt (3meg downloads) im getting 200k.

Uploads are quick but downloads are terrible.

I cant play Halo 3 tonight as every game is unplayable!

Dutchie71

I have spoken to VirginMedia and they have admitted that they are having serious network problems affecting most broadband users with typical download speeds of 240kb/s. The cancellation team (0845 045 0709) stated that the fix will be in place by Friday 16th November and you should see speed improvements back to normal. They have given me a month's service free as a goodwill gesture, but they still require me to put in proof of my speeds via the http://www.speedtester.bt.com/ web site, which is not easy as it is very busy at the moment!

I have told the Cancellation Team that they were in breach of the 12 month contract that I signed up for back in October and that if they did not allow me to cancel my contract without having to pay the remaining months (£100) then I would cancel my direct debit and let them take me to court, as I have independent speed test result that show the actual speeds that I am getting (www.speedtest.net). This will be my evidence in court.

Let us see what happens next week. If the speeds continue to be the same and VM Tech Support have been fibbing (even the Cancellation Team said "I hope that they are not fibbing") then I will take this matter further.

Good luck and will keep you posted.
Brian

kisk

Dutchie71 wrote: »

I have spoken to VirginMedia and they have admitted that they are having serious network problems affecting most broadband users with typical download speeds of 240kb/s. The cancellation team (0845 045 0709) stated that the fix will be in place by Friday 16th November and you should see speed improvements back to normal. They have given me a month's service free as a goodwill gesture, but they still require me to put in proof of my speeds via the http://www.speedtester.bt.com/ web site, which is not easy as it is very busy at the moment!

I have told the Cancellation Team that they were in breach of the 12 month contract that I signed up for back in October and that if they did not allow me to cancel my contract without having to pay the remaining months (£100) then I would cancel my direct debit and let them take me to court, as I have independent speed test result that show the actual speeds that I am getting (www.speedtest.net). This will be my evidence in court.

Let us see what happens next week. If the speeds continue to be the same and VM Tech Support have been fibbing (even the Cancellation Team said "I hope that they are not fibbing") then I will take this matter further.

Good luck and will keep you posted.
Brian

Good for you Brian.

I would like to withhold payment but would be worried my credit rating would be damaged.

Date

14/11/07 12:37:13

Speed Down

194.88 Kbps ( 0.2 Mbps )

Speed Up

84.17 Kbps ( 0.1 Mbps )


I thought I was OK but no back to slow speeds. Just have to wait and see what happens on the 16th.

Kisk

BrixMorta

bazza1603 wrote: »

Hi,

I was a happy Virgin customer until feb 06. I was on a £24.99 for 1/2 a meg. Speeds were 450 and I was on a month by month basis.

I took notice of one of there emails and swopped to upto 8 meg with evening and weekend calls for £14.99. worse thing I could have done. I now cannot manager 100-200 kbs a second at best. Lots of 404, lots of calls at 25p per minute which make me want to punch things.....

Worse thing of all is that I tied myself into a 12 month contract even when I tried to cancel after 7 days due to terrible line speeds.

Roll on Feb 07.

Bazquote]

This is exactly my experience too. Speeds are painfully slow. I have a Napster account to stream music and can't use it.

Virgin are rubbish dont touch with a barge pole!!

kisk

Only getting 4kbs today! Phoned all the numbers including 25p one but no joy. Now after rebooting router no response from server thus I am now on dial up and it’s faster than I’ve experienced recently.

Is the network down as I thought some fix was going ahead today.

I’ve even resorted to sending emails to [EMAIL="Richard.branson@virgin.net"]Richard.branson@virgin.net[/EMAIL] as below.

Wonder if it is his email:rotfl:

From:
Sent: 16 November 2007 13:18
To: 'richard.branson@virgin.net'
Subject: Broadband poor service speeds

Well Richard

My speeds today have hit an all time low. I carried out speed checks, as required by Kerstin Maile of you’re Virgin Media Correspondence Team, on http://speedtester.bt.com and the two tests I managed to carry out were 4kbs and 7kbs.

Phoned you’re help people but no one could help they even suggested I could go online and chat to someone live about my problem? Me - “but my speed is only 7kbs, it took about 10 minutes to load the virgin customer page”, Virgin - “ sorry sir but I’m not technical you’ll have to phone the technical help line”, Me - “but that’s 25p a minute and I don’t have a technical problem as its on virgins side”, Virgin - “sorry sir but you could log online and get assistance via the internet”, Me - “oh no…………………………”.

Phoned technical helpline and a nice chap tried to help by netsh my ip and flushing my dns. Told me to reboot and all should be fine – I didn’t want to hang around booting my PC at 25p a minute so hung up. After reboot could not even get into speed tester but router was showing 3kbs.

Anyway the spare time I have allows me to correspond with you as I can’t surf the net but I will look out a telephone lead later and hook up via my trusty 56k modem.

I hope you can see the funny side of my problem cause I cant all I want is a MAC code to allow me to migrate away from Virgin forever. Oh and I’m not willing to pay the £101.67 termination fee that Stacy quoted today.

Kind regards

From:
Sent: 15 November 2007 06:15
To: 'richard.branson@virgin.net'
Subject: Broadband poor service speeds

Dear Mr Branson

I don’t know if you are aware of peoples experience with Virgin Broadband. Have a look at the following thread and others on the site with people’s frustration at the connection speeds being delivered.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=560009

My last 2 online help enquiries have gone unanswered meaning I have to use premium rate phone number and be on the phone for anything up to an hour waiting for a representative or send a registered letter.

I would very much like to leave Virgin broadband but have been told I will have to pay the remainder of the 12 month contract. I hope that you can resolve this as the very minimum service speeds are not being achieved and this puts Virgin in breach of contract.

Look forward to you’re response.

griff.

It's good to hear (sad that it's having to happen in the first place of course) that other people are considering their position with regard to Virgin Media's 'contract' when they are clearly not delivering their end of the bargain. I would be interested to hear from anyone else who Virgin is intending to take to the courts - and happy to swap notes. The more people stand up against this nonsense the better - and of course, we may see in time, Ofcom taking more interest in protecting the consumer from broadband providers who oversell their lines. I currently pay £17/month to Zen - and never have a problem now with speed.

Btw - has anyone come across any websites specifically set up to help consumers in the midst of this? Would there be an interest in setting one up?

SilverScooby

Thanks for the steer Albatros - I wondered "what on earth is a BAM?" so I googled BAM NTL and found this great utility.

I used it and I'm now getting my full 2MB on a Saturday :j which is unheard of.

It works with a Netgear DG834G/GT or a USB modem. Details are here:
http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?PHPSESSID=013fc09fc62cd5d92173e3905f58ab1f&topic=1082.msg39732#msg39732

Download it here:
http://bazza.dyndns.org/files/BazzasGoodBAMFinder.zip

Info on how to tweak the script is here:
http://www.the-scream.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=210104&postcount=4

Bazza :T :T :T gets my vote for "superstar of the week"!!!!

kisk

My service with Virgin goes from bad to worse. I have not been able to connect since Friday evening.

Phoned 0906 217 0001 yesterday and eventually told there is a fault but since then no feedback. The Virgin status page says there are problems for cable users but Im ADSL.

Should I phone again or is anyone else having problems? Im in Aberdeen so dont know if its local or nationwide.

kisk

tightrs

i too have not been able to connect with my wireless router (philips sna5600)since friday ,only 3 lights lit the online light will not light ,i tried everything then today i tried my speedtouch modem and it is working all be it slowly.

mcbazza

SilverScooby wrote: »

Thanks for the steer Albatros - I wondered "what on earth is a BAM?" so I googled BAM NTL and found this great utility.

I used it and I'm now getting my full 2MB on a Saturday :j which is unheard of.

It works with a Netgear DG834G/GT or a USB modem. Details are here:
http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?PHPSESSID=013fc09fc62cd5d92173e3905f58ab1f&topic=1082.msg39732#msg39732

Download it here:
http://bazza.dyndns.org/files/BazzasGoodBAMFinder.zip

Info on how to tweak the script is here:
http://www.the-scream.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=210104&postcount=4

Bazza :T :T :T gets my vote for "superstar of the week"!!!!

Hey!! That's my script!!
I'm famous!!

As of this morning, I've re-worked the script to support modem/routers that have Telnet access.

Tried and tested on my Belkin 7633.
I'm not making it available for general download yet. Need to complete stability testing on it.

Baz/Bazza/mcbazza