Should I switch to Virgin broadband?

BexTech

PROLIANT wrote: »

Yeah, I get that impression about virgin, and a lot of other companies are taking the same route, talk to you like a kid, "don’t worry mummy and daddy will sort it for you" simple baby speak, this is where people will start to become even more less responsible and start blaming companies for their own mishaps.

Yeah, this is often getting fedback on the virginmedia.feedback group. This group is for letting VirginMedia know what you think of their services.

These groups were what xTelewest (xBlueyonder) people were used to, always had them.

When the company merged and renamed, they then opened the groups up to xNTL people and renamed the groups from blueyonder.* to virginmedia.*

Sadly at the beginning there were some xNTL members who just tried to trash the groups as they felt they had to fit in with xblueyonder way of organising things, and they made their own group which they seem to stay in.

junkeyslutz

DO NOT switch to Virgin, their "unlimited" is actually limited to 5 gig a week download limit, then you are capped from 8meg to 2meg AND then to add insult to injury you are throttled, yes that's right THROTTLED

We are in east london and the only reason we found out about the 5 gig a week limit was because one of thier tech guys got angry and threw it in my face, oh and the customer services is RUBBISH.

Try ringing up as a potential customer and see if you can get anyone to deny or confirm what you're download limit will be.

Absolute rubbish, the direct debit has been cancelled and I look forward to meeting them in court.

pinkdrink

I too am with VM (was Telewest which i have been with for years). I am on a landline phone, TV (XL package) and wireless broadband which is costing me £70pm...get the feeling i'm being ripped off reading some of these posts but don't hav the savy to know what to do to get the cost down. The broadband service is pretty awful...reminds me of the old dial-up days to be honest. I ping google and yahoo occassionally to test it and its always got a timed out or 50% packet loss. Sometimes we loose service entirely for 10 days at a time and they claim it will be fixed in 24 hours everytim we call. One person even told us they couldn't help with our query and to call another number...the number she gave us was the number we had already dialled and were speaking too, how dumb is that. I'm getting increasingly frustrated at the slow speed of the broadband, glad to hear i'm not alone in this. Anyone think i should jump shipo and go to sky?

BexTech

junkeyslutz wrote: »

DO NOT switch to Virgin, their "unlimited" is actually limited to 5 gig a week download limit, then you are capped from 8meg to 2meg AND then to add insult to injury you are throttled, yes that's right THROTTLED

We are in east london and the only reason we found out about the 5 gig a week limit was because one of thier tech guys got angry and threw it in my face, oh and the customer services is RUBBISH.

Try ringing up as a potential customer and see if you can get anyone to deny or confirm what you're download limit will be.

Absolute rubbish, the direct debit has been cancelled and I look forward to meeting them in court.

I take it you mean Virgin ADSL (Virgin.net) and not Virgin Media Cable broadband (NTL / Blueyonder).

1) As you mention 8Mbit and 2) a Download Cap.

Two separate services.

Virgin Media Cable (xNLT & xTelewest) don't have a download cap as such, as in you can download several hundred GBs per month, however during certain hours of the day they check how much you are downloading and then throttle the connection for 5 hours if you have downloaded the set ammount.

Cable STM:-

http://www.abcde.co.uk/virginmedia/broadband-faq.html#q49

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

ADSL Traffic Management: http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

The problem is all ADSL providers have some sort of restriction or other even many others that advertise unlimited, they have fair use policies and many unlike Virgin they simply say you can only download 2GB per month or 10GB per month or 40GB per month and you can get kicked off. It all started to go pear-shaped for ADSL users about 3 years back when BT started charging ISPs differently - they started to charge them for usage, hence many ISPs block P2P, Newsgroups, have hard caps etc.

About the only ADSL ISP with a decent download limit is Be.

Rev

I've been with Virgin/Telewest for years, since the only speed they offered was 512. Can't fault them, very rarely have downtime, always get the speeds I'm meant to.

Customer service is appallingly bad, but thankfully I've only had to use it a handful of times.

BexTech

pinkdrink wrote: »

I too am with VM (was Telewest which i have been with for years). I am on a landline phone, TV (XL package) and wireless broadband which is costing me £70pm...get the feeling I'm being ripped off reading some of these posts but don't have the savy to know what to do to get the cost down.

The broadband service is pretty awful...reminds me of the old dial-up days to be honest. I ping google and yahoo occasionally to test it and its always got a timed out or 50% packet loss. Sometimes we lose service entirely for 10 days at a time and they claim it will be fixed in 24 hours every time we call. One person even told us they couldn't help with our query and to call another number...the number she gave us was the number we had already dialled and were speaking too, how dumb is that.

I'm getting increasingly frustrated at the slow speed of the broadband, glad to hear I'm not alone in this. Anyone think I should jump shipo and go to sky?

On Sky's top broadband package you have a download limit of 40GB, you'll get a couple of warning if you go over, then they tell you they no longer want your custom.

Sky are currently paying the BT phone line install charge if you push them. There's currently an offer with BT for £30 install.

You can get with Virgin Media XL TV package, L broadband and L phone for £35 - Direct Debit and eBilling, if you call to cancel and tell them that's how much it is for the same service with Sky.

I'd post in the excellent support newsgroups with your issues - see: https://www.virginmedia.com/newsgroups (Remember not to top post reply)

For cable broadband support the group is: virginmedia.support.broadband.cable

Don't give out any personal info, just your alias (the part of your email before the @ and state BY for example pinkdrink @ by) so they can locate your account.

I have to admit I have no problem at the moment with xBY Virgin Media Cable.

BexTech

loaner wrote: »

Virgin unlimited isn't capped at 5G/week. Throttling is in everyone's interest, if you want to download Gigs of data, do it outside peak hours.

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

Cancelling direct debits will probably screw up your credit status.

That's for the cable service, junkeyslutz is an ADSL customer, their traffic management is at: http://www.virgin.net/helpme/broadband/faq/basics_traffic.html

It is because of heavy users leaving their computers uploading and downloading 24/7 that is causing the problems, ISPs have to do something as there is simply no way any ISP could have capacity to allow so many people to be running 24/7. So I agree with your comment.

Cancelling Direct Debits will also automatically add £5 to your bill each month.

BexTech

Rev wrote: »

I've been with Virgin/Telewest for years, since the only speed they offered was 512. Can't fault them, very rarely have downtime, always get the speeds I'm meant to.

Customer service is appallingly bad, but thankfully I've only had to use it a handful of times.

I think CS depends on where you get through to, if it's India it can be dreadful, but when I get through to Liverpool, Edinburgh or Midlands the CS has been excellent. I found instead of dialling 150 / 151 and used an 0800 number I always got UK, but it has been a while since I last called and the numbers have been dropped.

However for any phone or TV problems I have I always use the support newsgroups as they are excellent, xTelewest customers have had these for many many many years, recently xNTL customers are also able to get support via this means.

If your internet is off then the newsgroups are no good, unless you get someone to post on your behalf, but OK for intermittent or sluggish problems.

They are there 08:00 - 22:00.

I've only had few issues, usually due to a fire at the cabinet or kids ripping out the cabling.

BexTech

loaner wrote: »

"There are still no limits to how much customers can download. We believe in unlimited downloads and will not cap the amount of data you download over your broadband service."

That's not actually strictly true.

On both Virgin ADSL and Virgin Cable service your speed is slowed down, therefore you can't download as much as you could if your speed wasn't slowed down, plus even if you could go full pelt 24/7 there is still physically a maximum you could download due to your speed. Someone on 20Mbit could download more than someone on 2Mbit.

Whilst they don't actually say you can only download 40GB for example like virtually every other ISP, there is a physical limit you can download - due to the speed of the broadband provided and then due to the physically reduced speed when throttled.

All ISPs likes to bend the truth or bend the lies so to speak.

I understand why the throttling has to be brought in and I'd much rather have the Cable STM than what happens with other ISPs when you can only download a few GB per month, you can download more GB in one day on VM than most ISPs let you in one month.

BexTech

loaner wrote: »

You are always going to be limited by time, (and if in peak hours throttling), but that is in their T&C's.

I have never heard of anyone triggering their FUP. Whatever level that is setup at, it is far more than 5GB/week, and rarely if ever acted upon.

Afraid I don't really know about the ADSL side of things, just the cable side and many people are triggering the STM on there as the support newsgroups have people asking if they have hit the STM or not. Only 1% of users use newsgroups, so there has to be a lot lot more hitting STM that don't ask in the support newsgroups and think their broadband is playing up and then decide to dump VM due to poor speeds, not realising why their speeds are slower.