Virgin media not providing the services stated.

Sg28 · 13 February at 4:43PM

I switched from sky broadband when my contract finished and price went up.

In looking for a new supplier I found VM to be reasonably priced for a faster speed, however what sealed the deal for me was the in depth parental controls offered. Specifically the ability to pause the internet on specific devices and the ability to block individual sites (youtube!) On top of the standard isp safe browsing functionality.

However. None of this actually works. Websites in the blocked list are not blocked on any devices, and the internet pausing function gives a permanent "we are working on fixing this asap" error.

But worst of all, the standard safe search does not work. Pornography, violence etc is just a google search away.

I've contacted them on several occasions and been taken through various reset steps but with no resolution.

Out of frustration I posted on the vm community forum and discovered that this is actually a long term issue and has no timescale for being fixed. (There are unresolved posts from 1 year ago with the same issues) and now all the posts there asking about parental controls have been locked!

So my question is do I have grounds to cancel my contract without paying any cancellation fees?

Thanks!

Neil_Jones · 13 February at 9:08PM

Other solutions exist for parental control, like this for example:
https://nextdns.io/

Internet pausing can be dealt with by unplugging the router.

Not that blocking "YouTube" may not be 100% effective at just saying "block youtube.com" because YouTube will use other servers/services that don't specially mention youtube - and the advert servers are often pop-up ones as well.

Sg28 · 14 February at 10:30PM

I know other options exist. But id rather the option im already paying for worked.

GYK · 12 May at 2:44PM

If the parental controls aren’t working, you usually can’t cancel the contract without paying fees. These features are treated as extras, not the main broadband service. First, just raise a written complaint and give them some time to sort it out. If nothing changes, then you can take it further to an ombudsman.