Is Virgin Media 'on demand' worth more than 12p/year?

Charlton_King

I had this service (the basic rather than the V box) added on to my Virgin package under a special deal which gave it me for an extra 1p per month. The anniversary of this sad occasion has just come up.

In that time, the thing has been an unmitigated disaster. I've had 2 changes of cable box ending up with the Samsung they don't like giving out unless you scream blue murder - and it still won't work properly, at least as far as the 'on demand' service is concerned.

A classic and absolutely typical situation is that I'll be in the middle of watching some catch up or other on demand prog - and then a grey box suddenly appears in the middle of the screen announcing that the service is temporarliy unavailable, all while the prog continues to play perfectly well (but, of course, annoyingly semi-obscured) on the screen behind it!

Either that or the service genuinely won't access half the time.

I'm at my wits' end. If I was paying anything like serious money for this crap I'd ask them to cart it away and I'd never deal with the company again.

Am I the only one who thinks this technology was untested and rushed into service? Why the hell should I have to 'pull the plug at the mains', which seem to be Virgin's answer to everything? I know of no other household appliance where this farcical practice must be applied.

Is everyone else's system working perfectly, then?

Nilrem

It sounds like you've got a potentially bad connection, as we've had NTL for about 7 years and most of the time it's extremely reliable.

We did have a problem with the boxes frying themselves when they tried to access on demand, which eventually turned out to be an "attenuator" put in backwards when NTL first installed the boxes back in 2000 (it blocked the return path which was needed for ondemand to work).

BillScarab

On demand isn't the most reliable service but it generally woks OK for us. Occassionally it's unavailable but uusually it's fine. I've never seent he error with a grey box coming up midway through watching something. However I don't use On Demand that often as we have V+ so tend to record what we want on that.

Paul_Herring

Is everyone else's system working perfectly, then?

While I wouldn't describe it as perfect, it certainly works most of the time.

Sounds like you've just been unlucky, and under your circumstances I wouldn't be prepared to pay full wack until they could prove that they've solved any porblems you've got with it.

Nicifer_noonoo

I had problems with mine too...they gave it to me for free, so I opted in. The guy came round to install it, and that was me with no TV for a week!!! It wouldn't come on at all. After arranging for them to collect it twice and both times failing to show, I told them I'd leave it in the garden if they didn't arrive the next day. They did, they took the box, credited my account with £60 and gave me a £20/month loyalty package on my phone. Worth it for £0 and a week without TV

I hope you manage to get it sorted. Couldn't you give them a call and tell them you want to move to Sky? That's what seemed to jolt them into action with me.

Hippychick

Recently on my standard V Box I received the same message saying it was unavailable, I called virgin and the technician made me read out some settings to her over the phone, she diagnosed the fault said it was the box and an engineer is coming out tomorrow to replace the box.

Call VM and make them come and fix it. When it works as mine does most other times VOD is excellent value for money.

Good luck.

Charlton_King

Hippychick wrote: »

Recently on my standard V Box I received the same message saying it was unavailable, I called virgin and the technician made me read out some settings to her over the phone, she diagnosed the fault said it was the box and an engineer is coming out tomorrow to replace the box.

Call VM and make them come and fix it. When it works as mine does most other times VOD is excellent value for money.

Good luck.

Yes, well, when you've 'called' them as many times as I have and they've 'come and fixed it' as many times as they have for me and it STILL won't work, you get a distinctly different view as to what 'value for money' it represents....