Virgin Media - poor connection

Munchkinsmum

Hi, hoping someone could offer a little advice or share their story with a positive outcome. We have had virgin media broadband for years, for the most part happy. We moved last June (2020) to a new larger house and took out an increased package, we’d had some issues with connectivity up until then but were told by VM it was due to more users due to the pandemic. When we moved as the house is bigger we took out a better package, we are quite heavy users as a family of 6 with a lot of tech. It hasn’t been working perfectly since day 1 - we initially put it down to the pandemic but have contacted VM numerous times, including them replacing the router about 4 months ago. 

Our internet has now in the last 2 weeks ground essentially to a halt. The router is in one bedroom and the study across from it has just about passable connection . The bedroom next to it is poor, and two back bedrooms are non existent. Downstairs, the living room section of our open plan area has passable connection, the dining room side has none, the kitchen has none. None of our phones remain on WiFi as the connection isn’t strong enough, my husbands computer in the study works ok but will go slow or stop. My laptop when on zoom meetings is constantly distorting, telling me the connection is unstable, and stopping. The only thing that seems to connect in bedrooms are the smart TVs for netflix etc but even then they can stop.

Obviously five of us can’t all have meetings in the one room with just about consistent internet. VM have asked for many tests which we’ve done, and they say it’s fine, and if we want we can buy their booster service. 

Is this our only option? If we were
having occasional poor issues then I can see it being an issue but it’s consistent and doesn’t seem right that we need to pay extra just for internet to work? 

wongataa

Do you only have problems with Wi-Fi?  You need to see if there are issues when devices are connected to the Virgin box.  If everything is OK with a wired connection then Virgin won't do anything as they won't guarantee Wi-Fi connections.  Virgin are only contacted to provide a certain speed and connectivity at their router.

If you need to improve Wi-Fi you will have to provide your own solution.  ISPs aren't going to guarantee Wi-Fi connections because there are so many factors that can affect it.  BT guarantee theirs if you sign up for their mesh Wi-Fi system.  You can always provide your own mesh system.

Munchkinsmum

Thank you. I’ll chat to hubby and see if wired works. Do you know anything about the VM Boost service?

jefaz07

Munchkinsmum said:

Thank you. I’ll chat to hubby and see if wired works. Do you know anything about the VM Boost service?

Don’t do the boost. It’s woeful. As is the equipment they send. I had exactly the same issues with WiFi connectivity. 

I bought a mesh system £130 from memory. It’s a TP Link M4....although there are plenty others. 
Easy to set up. I now have 200mbps in the bedroom. Worth every penny and I’ve not had the internet drop out once. 

Munchkinsmum

Thanks jefaz07. Will that work for a bigger house? It’s not giant but as a family of 6 we have 4 bedrooms etc.

Munchkinsmum

 Apparently the boost system has been changed to pods which is a mesh system 

jefaz07

It does up to 5 bedroom (I think) but you can add extra units around the house. I must say I’m really impressed with it. 

In my pic you will see the app (excuse the network name, I named it to wind up my son) you can control who is on your networks and set individual restrictions. Set up guest networks see who’s using bandwidth  

jefaz07

I found my information from this thread when I was having issues. Note is says M5...M4 is cheaper and does the same job. The biggest issue is putting you current router into modem only mode. 

It does explain how in the thread. 

Hope all this info helps. 

Munchkinsmum

Sorry which thread? Thanks for this info I’ve sent on to hubby

jefaz07

Munchkinsmum said:

 Apparently the boost system has been changed to pods which is a mesh system 

The ones I received plugged in...this is very recent they sent them too. 

I think they also want £2-3 a month for the pleasure.
In my opinion, worth the money I spent on 3rd party ones. 

And as it’s not VM it’s open to use how I want. 

prowla

jefaz07 said:

Munchkinsmum said:

Thank you. I’ll chat to hubby and see if wired works. Do you know anything about the VM Boost service?

Don’t do the boost. It’s woeful. As is the equipment they send. I had exactly the same issues with WiFi connectivity. 

I bought a mesh system £130 from memory. It’s a TP Link M4....although there are plenty others. 
Easy to set up. I now have 200mbps in the bedroom. Worth every penny and I’ve not had the internet drop out once. 

The "m" should be uppercase "M"; ie. Mega bits per second, not millibits.

jefaz07 said:

It does up to 5 bedroom (I think) but you can add extra units around the house. I must say I’m really impressed with it. 

In my pic you will see the app (excuse the network name, I named it to wind up my son) you can control who is on your networks and set individual restrictions. Set up guest networks see who’s using bandwidth  

The "K" should be lowercase "k"; ie. kilobits per second, not Kelvin bits per second.

As for Virgin; I've spent at least 2 months trying to get them to sort out their internet provisioning, which included 3 engineer visits (confirming a issue with the signal to the house), promises of WiFi Pods then withdrawn, then told they're not even in the country to be sent out. One engineer telling me everything is fine and it must be my house, an hour later (I called back) another one saying there was an issue with my router and they'd send another to me and an engineer. It got to the point where I'd had enough, so I gave them my notice; I then had two retention folks call me and I accepted the best deal to stay. The company is completely disjointed and apparently orders/whatever are logged into a system where there aren't enough people picking things up, so they get lost.