Sick of Virgin broadband. Who should I switch to?

kissenger

kissenger

kissenger

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10 Apr 2008
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I've been dealing with this recurrent problem on my Virgin connection where for most of the evening I get a really erratic ping. It will fluctuate from between 25ms up to as much as 250ms. Needless to say, this makes gaming or streaming video or anything like that practically impossible.

On top of that their customer support is useless. I've been having this problem on and off for months now and I'm sick of it. I'm thinking of switching but I don't know who's best. I don't want to get locked into a 12 month contract and have to deal with even worse issues, so do you guys have any recommendations?

I saw that Sky are doing a deal for unlimited broadband for less than £20 a month, but I don't know if that is really 'unlimited' or if their customer support is any good.
 
Virgin ADSL by any chance? They are widely regarded as one of the worst ADSL BT wholesale type ISPs you can have. To keep themselves cheap and competitive they buy a little bandwidth from BT and then cram as many customers onto said bandwidth that they can, so everyone gets a rubbish experience.

Any LLU provider should be a vast improvement. If the Sky package you are looking at is called Sky Unlimited up to 20mbit then you'll be fine (and it is unlimited) but if you see it called Sky Connect up to 8mbit then avoid like the plague as it's just the same crappy rebranded BT wholesale connection as you are struggling with now.
 
No mate. It's one of the Virgin broadband cable connections. It doesn't go through the phone line.

TBH, outside of peak times the service is fantastic (apart from the tight fair use policy). Download speeds are solid. It's just the jitter that is the problem.
 
Beware of going ADSL if you are more than a few kms from your exchange as you'll find it tricky to go from a decent cable bb speed to 2-3mbit.
 
So I checked that site and it said I'm 1.25km from the exchange and that I can get all of the BT services, a load of Sky, etc LLU services and cable. But when I click on the details for the BT services it says that the max speed I can get is 0.5Mb. WTF!

I checked on the BT website after that and it said I can only get one of the crappier packages (4Mb max), then I checked the Sky site and they say I can get 14Mb max. So Sky is the way to go?
 
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kissenger said:
So I checked that site and it said I'm 1.25km from the exchange and that I can get all of the BT services, a load of Sky, etc LLU services and cable. But when I click on the details for the BT services it says that the max speed I can get is 0.5Mb. WTF!

I checked on the BT website after that and it said I can only get one of the crappier packages (4Mb max), then I checked the Sky site and they say I can get 14Mb max. So Sky is the way to go?
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in my opinion no they aren't.

if you're that far away from the exchange by the time anything reaches you you'll be fuming and wishing you hadn't swapped.

Sky tell me i can get between 5mbps & 11mbps but i'm 2k from the exchange and only ever received 2mb.

Personally i wouldn't bother swapping from Virgin. Complain to the retentions and they'll sort it
 
Estimates are not always correct. Im 1.5 km from the exchange (straight line distance) the line will be longer. Currently with sky and sync at just under 8 mb.
 
My sky call centre is based in Newcastle so I'm lucky and when I had issues it was fixed within 2 days. Sky dont throttle on their llu services but I know for a fack that 02 are using traffic management but hey have relaxed their download caps.

If you stay with Virgin get them to sort your line as U should see a decent speed. I'd get them threatend with going to sky if its not sorted and they will be hot on their heels to fix teh issue.
 
By retentions I take it you mean the people you speak to when you're about to request a cancellation?

I do want to stay with Virgin and if they can sort this problem out I will be happy. But it seems as though they are really ****ing up at the moment. Their forums are full of people all over the country with the same type of problem.

Talking of their forums, what a joke they are... They have a policy where if you post a problem and request help from the team and then bump your thread or just post anything else in it you get sent to the back of the que. Basically it's just a way to stop people from causing a fuss on the forums over **** service.

Their customer service in general is terrible and they just don't seem to have the infrastructure in place to support their current user base.
 
kissenger said:
By retentions I take it you mean the people you speak to when you're about to request a cancellation?

I do want to stay with Virgin and if they can sort this problem out I will be happy. But it seems as though they are really ****ing up at the moment. Their forums are full of people all over the country with the same type of problem.

Talking of their forums, what a joke they are... They have a policy where if you post a problem and request help from the team and then bump your thread or just post anything else in it you get sent to the back of the que. Basically it's just a way to stop people from causing a fuss on the forums over **** service.

Their customer service in general is terrible and they just don't seem to have the infrastructure in place to support their current user base.
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Yes the retentions is the cancellations dept and are based in the UK. which helps for a start.

Just explain the issues and (i assume) the fact engineers have been out and still it doesn't work. BS if you have too and say the engineers have suggested a re-pull. this basically means they'll replace your cables to your house.

Alwinchurch should be able to give you more info as he's a virgin engineer and can help you further.

but regarding their forums. avoid like the plague. you don't get any answers.

As for problems. you've to remember Virgin have inhereted these issues from the old cable provider. unless problems like this occure and are reported they have no knowledge about them and can't get them fixed.

but get on the blower first thing tomorrow. good luck
 
If your power levels are fine then they usually would not sort a repull for you and if the problem is utilisation then a repull will fix nothing.

Virgin Media are resegmenting literally the whole country and I know that a lot of places where I work have been completed. Basically a resegment consists of virgin media pulling another 3 fibres (YES 3!) for each existing fibre meaning that each node area will have 4 fibres. All of the resegmented areas have utilisation at no more than 2% and Virgin have invested in better monitoring software that will flag up any low signal to noise problems and other stuff which they get people to fix hopefully before anyone has too many problems.

Ask them when your area is being done and kick up a fuss. Hopefully your problems will be sorted soon :)
 
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