Virgin Media/NTL

Diamond78 · 22 March 2008 at 12:31PM

stiffnuts69 wrote: »

ive just moved to sky on 16mb for £10 a month. I cant speak highly enough of them at the moment. Set up vey fast, adsl modem sent out within a day, and I am regularly getiing speeds of 14MB. Wish I done it sooner.

Virgin will try and rubbish adsl, old copper wires, distance from exchange etc etc, but I was on a 2mb connection for £10 a month and was lucky speeds of 0.5 - 1mb (explain that virgin). There traffic shapping is horrendous and is a result of them spreading themselves to thin.

I would never ever go back to virgin again even if their service was free.

Good on you and glad you have got a better and faster service. I hope when I find a place to move to I can go with SKY. Im happy to pay more for a better service but luckily SKY works out cheaper.

BexTech · 22 March 2008 at 6:08PM

At least with VM though you aren't hit with a 40GB limit each month even when told unlimited.

ch4ndresh · 22 March 2008 at 6:17PM

i am glad i am on BT for my broadband.....when i did have the old telewest broadband...it was not that great.....

stiffnuts69 · 22 March 2008 at 6:51PM

BexTech wrote: »

At least with VM though you aren't hit with a 40GB limit each month even when told unlimited.

why who does that

MoneySaverNeil · 9 June 2008 at 9:43AM

Thnak for this useful thread. I suffered all of the above, overcharging, ignored promises etc. Final straw was last week when I called to cancel, and was told I'm on a 12 month contract until December. Seems one of my conversations with them resulted in a £8 per month discount for 3 months (never actually applied to my bank account) and put me back on a 12 month contract (not mentioned by the incompetent operator of course)

I emailed a Formal Complaint to the email address mentioned on Page 1 of this thread. Within hours I had a very efficient secretary from the Head Office on the phone. All was immediately sorted out...

Neil

coolsolution · 9 June 2008 at 10:59AM

Thank god i left ntl a long time back thinking that i was the unlucky one.One thing for sure that no more contract with ntl/VM .They make you feel guilty just by signing the contract.

Good luck guys....

timeoner · 8 July 2008 at 5:17PM

Hi Everyone

I have been having terrible trouble with Virgin Media. I pay for 20 Mbps and have been limited between peek times. Here is my letter of complaint which tells my story. Please let as many people know as possible. the only way things like this will be rectified is if people do something? I have as yet received no reply.

Dear Sir / Madam

I am writing a letter of complaint after numerous emails, complaint forms, phone calls etc.
I was migrated across from NTL after Virgin’s takeover and noticed a change in my service. The bandwidth I was previously receiving is now intermittent and sometimes unusable. I subsequently called / emailed / complained etc. and finally after a long period of time managed to get my service rectified, or though I thought. I have been upgraded to the highest package 20Mbs as a result of my complaints last year for the same price as the medium and even if I hadn’t complained I still would have wanted the top bandwidth package.
I have been noticing for some time now that my service in peak hours has been very poor. I put this down to network usage which is not good but at least I knew what the problem was. I play Xbox 360 Live, have two laptops and my house mate has two desktops which we use on a regular basis. The Xbox now at peek times is virtually unusable and the internet service is extremely slow. As I am on the XL package I thought this to be rather odd.
Subsequently I have monitored my service religiously for the whole year and this downturn in service in peak times is now at the point of ridiculous. I then came across an article in the press where BT have made a complaint about Virgin and the way it advertiser’s its internet packages and how Virgin are not delivering what they advertise for download / upload rates. Reading further down the article it also mentioned that Virgin, between certain hours were capping heavy users during peak times and subsequently as I have found out, not telling them! This for me was when the alarm bells rang. I am a very heavy user but I pay for the top service so therefore it shouldn’t effect me. I was mistaken.
I called Virgin to ask if I was being limited and if so why? How? Etc. I then took 2/3 days trying to speak to someone over the phone or via your email complaints system. I had the phone put down on me twice (which is on your records as told by adviser) and I had questions back over email which I could not answer as the bottom of the email read “PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL AS THE PERSON WHO SENT THE EMAIL CANT RESPOND” here is the email-
REFERENCE : 3336104

Hi James

As you have aready spoke to our tech support department I will get in
contact with them to discuss your account and give you a call. Did they
say you were on the correct speed or is just the traffic management
policy that is slowing your speed down?

Please note if you reply directly to this e-mail your response will not
be received.

Kind regards

Adam Hughes
E-Contact Team
Virgin Media

As you can see this wasn’t very helpful. The Indian call centre I got through to were bad, really bad and that’s all I will say on the matter. The Scottish call centre were better and the Swansea call centre were excellent.

I finally spoke to a complaint manager at the Swansea call centre called Stephan Davis on Friday 04/07/08. I told him my concerns and my problems and he was very understanding and had a good knowledge of the products and systems I use. The bombshell then came that ‘yes’ I had been identified as a heavy user and with effect have my service limited between peak times 3-5pm & 6-9pm everyday. So thats why my service has been particularly bad, although I have the top package and pay for those services. Stephen Martin then went on to say, and I summarise with questions that I would like answering in the first instance:-
- “Your exchange is at 100% capacity every day at 7.00p.m.” why have Virgin oversubscribed in my area when it knows that the infrastructure is not in place? Why sell a service to people that you a) cannot deliver & b) limits your present customers on the same exchange?
- “Change the way you use your internet connection, if you download que them up for after peek times” no problem I’ll change my lifestyle for Virgin, or not as the case may be. I come home from work 6pm fire up my laptop and turn on the xbox, check mail, watch I-player etc. I then finish about 11ish and go to bed. You are basically telling me when I can use a service I pay for and you advertise at an unlimited rate? whatever the time or date! I pay for the XL service, I want 20mbps all the time, therefore I pay for it and get nothing! I think trading standards may have something to say about this. You cannot sell something advertised as 20mbps and then give 5mbps.
- “we know its a problem but there’s nothing I can do from here” not what I wanted to hear, you know its a problem but your not going to do anything “send in a written letter” you are a media company in the 21st Century and you want me to write in. Ever heard of email??? Oh I forgot you cant respond to email (oh and I can’t contact Stephen again as he has no contact telephone number or email etc, total rubbish).

Please see my comments below and please answer each individual item as this is these are the main points I want answering within my complaint;

- I have never signed any documentation informing me that my service could be limited at peek times, where / when did you inform me of these changes?
- At no time throughout any of my complaints did any one of your advisers tell me that Virgin were limiting my service at peek times. Why was this? My complaint was about bandwidth and this is band width realated!
- Why am I being limited when I pay for the high end service? If I was a heavy user on the lower packages I could understand a little bit. If i am on the 20mbps and get below 2mbps at peek times then if I was on the 2mbps would I still be limited or would I get full service?
- Why is my exchange at capacity @ 7p.m. every night? This would mean you have oversubscribed therefore where is the new infrastructure to cope with demand? Why send a virgin meadia rep door to door in my area selling Virgin broadband when you know its at capacity? This is not good.
- My original NTL contract does not mention at any point the limiting of my service, how can you now in turn limit my service? You are contractually obliged to honour previous arrangements, has this now changed?
- Why am I paying for a premium service / unlimited service and not receiving what I pay for? How can you do this without being taken to the cleaners?????
Please would you be able to deal with this matter urgently as I feel like I am getting no where and I want answers. Your complaints system does not inspire me so I am sending this letter to numerous people requesting that they investigate the matter accordingly.

As you can see I ve had no end of problems and cannot see anyway i can rectify this. You have been warned.

BexTech · 8 July 2008 at 5:31PM

I'd leave some feedback in the VM feedback group.

See: www.virginmedia.com/newsgroups if you haven't used newsgroups before (though they were around before the www we know now).

Then 'subscribe' to: virginmedia.feedback

There's support at: virginmedia.support.broadband.cable

Though note, Virgin didn't take over NTL or Telewest.

NTL and Telewest merged and created NTL : Telewest.

NTL : Telewest then bought Virgin Mobile, Richard Branson became a 10.5% shareholder.

NTL : Telewest pay Richard Branson an annual fee to use the name Virgin Media.

It is still NTL : Telewest running the company.

xTelewest customers have been saying that Telewest was fine until they merged with NTL. We've seen latency increase and short routes to sites now go through some NTL servers and add additional hops.

Best not mention Virgin taking over in the newsgroups as there will be several people who will jump on that to put you right.

I use the TV service for the iPlayer, prefer watching on the TV and not utilising my broadband.

timeoner · 8 July 2008 at 6:33PM

Hi, thanks for the advice. Its nice to see there is help out there. I am following your advice as I write this mail, hopefully someone could help. Its strange to think that I am being watched and capped, I thought that if you pay for a service thats what you got 'service' but this doe nt seem to be the case. It should also be noted that in Canada they are currently looking at pay per site packages which is totally unworkable but this shows how the ISP's are trying to run the net and make you pay! I will keep posting until I have a qualified response.

BexTech · 8 July 2008 at 6:53PM

timeoner wrote: »

Hi, thanks for the advice. Its nice to see there is help out there. I am following your advice as I write this mail, hopefully someone could help. Its strange to think that I am being watched and capped, I thought that if you pay for a service thats what you got 'service' but this doe nt seem to be the case. It should also be noted that in Canada they are currently looking at pay per site packages which is totally unworkable but this shows how the ISP's are trying to run the net and make you pay! I will keep posting until I have a qualified response.

It's a difficult situation really. VM need to make sure loads of people are running computers full throttled 24/7 as no network can cope, whether it cable or ADSL.

ADSL providers usually have small download limits for what you can download in a month, for example some only 2GB per month, some 5GB, 10GB and a fair few 40GB, these then either throttle your connection for the the rest of the month down to really low speeds or give you 3 warnings or you're kicked off. A couple ADSL providers allow a couple of hundred GB per month.

Many ADSL provider restrict P2P at all times and there are many legit P2P uses out there, the downloading version of iPlayer for example, legit software on bittorrent, some restrict binary newsgroups.

Virgin Media cable decided after consulting customers that it wouldn't just block certain traffic and let people use the service for which ever way they want to download, be it HTTP, NNTP, P2P etc etc, however at the moment they need to balance the load, so if you download too much during certain hours of the day they throttle the service for 5 hours, then you're back to full speed again. This does mean you can still download a lot of GB per day and VM are happy with that.

Yes, I'd rather not have this STM throttling, but I'd rather have this where they don't put an actual cap on the amount I can download per month than having a set cap, such as 40GB. It's the lesser of two evils.

Virgin Media/NTL

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