Virgin Media 152Mb Fibre

dickie999 · 2 Nov 2014 at 19:46

Evening Guys,

More VM woes, i recently upgraded to 152Mb, well I rang to cancel and the bloke offered me some loyalty discount and 152mb, i questioned him on 152meg as i was not due it til January but he says he can offer it but they say January as they connect people slowly to stop over-utilization so I accepted as I like fast.

But since I upgraded my speed is 25 meg now and again ill get 80, where as on my 120 meg i got 126meg. Been onto phone with them and basically is down to over-utilization. So I am a bit ****ed as he offered me faster speeds on a over-utilized network which he even said speeds might be a bit slow at first.

I asked to go back to my 120 meg but she said no as it was not available no more. So I am looking on advice where I stand on this matter.

Could I cancel without penalty or have I been screwed? :confused:

Dickie

MasterOC · 2 Nov 2014 at 19:52

In theory if they can change the terms of the contract and not deliver then you should at least have a strong case for cancelation , in practice however I'm unsure . To be fair in the old days it used to to take 2-3 days for the new speed to stabilise ... Upgrading to 100mb from 30 had me bouncing from 2mb! Up to 150mb and uploads not in excess of 1mb .

The dilemma I had when threatening to leave is they are still the best broadband supplier with the highest speeds Imo ... So I just GAS on the phone till they get I'm ****ed off and decide to do something about it or I recieve compo gestures.

dickie999 · 2 Nov 2014 at 20:01

yeh, they are the fastest. I had no issue with 120, it been nearly 3 weeks now and iv had these speed :'(

Rackerz · 2 Nov 2014 at 21:42

I'm afraid a lot of people are suffering from over-utilisation on the VM network on 152MB speeds. I am one of them. It is clear they had not upgraded sufficiently prior to offering higher speeds, only interested in being top of the broadband board in the UK.

Raise a fault, get a reduction on your bill and keep your fingers crossed its sorted in 6 months.

llamadal · 2 Nov 2014 at 22:03

MasterOC said:
The dilemma I had when threatening to leave is they are still the best broadband supplier with the highest speeds Imo ... So I just GAS on the phone till they get I'm ****ed off and decide to do something about it or I recieve compo gestures.

Pretty much this.

ask for manager > solved? No > His manager > solved? No > that persons manager - keep going untill you get what you want, it might be as simple as sending a senior engineer out to get stuff done.

APM · 3 Nov 2014 at 08:49

might be worth checking how many splitters you have on your system,replacing a splitter with a straight through can give you a surprising gain,may be worth suggesting that on the phone and they'll send an engineer to do it for you.

Tute · 3 Nov 2014 at 10:32

Rackerz said:
I'm afraid a lot of people are suffering from over-utilisation on the VM network on 152MB speeds. I am one of them. It is clear they had not upgraded sufficiently prior to offering higher speeds, only interested in being top of the broadband board in the UK.

The story of Virgin Media no?

I remember they were over straining their network a good few years back. Nice to see absolutely nothing has changed.

dickie999 · 3 Nov 2014 at 17:47

APM said:
might be worth checking how many splitters you have on your system,replacing a splitter with a straight through can give you a surprising gain,may be worth suggesting that on the phone and they'll send an engineer to do it for you.

have one splitter for tv, but if i went straight through id lose my tv wouldn't i? or i am getting this wrong?

APM · 3 Nov 2014 at 18:21

dickie999 said:
have one splitter for tv, but if i went straight through id lose my tv wouldn't i? or i am getting this wrong?

you could try swopping them over,tv for pc and vice-versa see how it goes

you can find the splitter connections and one side will have a 4dB gain on it

over the years here they've put attenuators on here and amplifiers on there etc and after a recent bout of issues a guy came and took all that old c r a p off and I've not had a problem since.

They fitted a new psu in the cabinet about 20m from my gate about 6 months ago so I guess that gives me a better signal than I've had in years and I can do without all the tweaks.

I don't know how it is for you and how long you've been where you are etc but it's always worth asking if there's been any infrastructure upgrades in your area when you're on the phone to them I think.

asim18 · 4 Nov 2014 at 03:44

Rackerz said:
Raise a fault, get a reduction on your bill and keep your fingers crossed its sorted in 6 months.

This really. Not much else you can do.

Make an account on speedtest.net it lets you export results.

Every month send them a report that you're not getting what was advertised and tell them they need to reimburse you for the price of the broadband until they can provide what has been advertised. Make sure you inform them that the fact they are taking money for the services before being able to even potentially implement them is already stressful enough.

Then in 6-12 months they will either cave in and increase the bandwidth to your node or they will just wait until enough of your neighbours cancel their services freeing up some much needed bandwidth for you.

jfish · 4 Nov 2014 at 11:29

dickie999 said:
Evening Guys,

More VM woes, i recently upgraded to 152Mb, well I rang to cancel and the bloke offered me some loyalty discount and 152mb, i questioned him on 152meg as i was not due it til January but he says he can offer it but they say January as they connect people slowly to stop over-utilization so I accepted as I like fast.

But since I upgraded my speed is 25 meg now and again ill get 80, where as on my 120 meg i got 126meg. Been onto phone with them and basically is down to over-utilization. So I am a bit ****ed as he offered me faster speeds on a over-utilized network which he even said speeds might be a bit slow at first.

I asked to go back to my 120 meg but she said no as it was not available no more. So I am looking on advice where I stand on this matter.

Could I cancel without penalty or have I been screwed?

Dickie

welcome to the club same as yourself, every day without fail between 9pm and 11pm I lose connection for a few mins, just dont bother calling VM support up anymore

dayloon · 5 Nov 2014 at 07:35

Send an email to the CEO. That's what i did after several engineers came to my house and didn't fix my broadband issues. Within 2 hours i had a phonecall from an area manager for the engineers. 2 senior engineers and 1 manager came to my house and fixed the issue.

jimjamuk · 5 Nov 2014 at 11:45

left VM i the end - had the normal evening throttling on my line when I had it. They bascially sell too much and oversubscribe every service they have.

TBH faster does not mean better

smogsy · 5 Nov 2014 at 12:48

never had a problem in last 3 houses ive been in

was on 120MB got 120MB most of the time if not 100MB+

this house im getting 161MB, It stay like this 24/7 steam loves it as do i

maybe my area is not got heavy load as bunch of old folk in my area

only me & 1 other virgin user in the whole road

Avalon · 5 Nov 2014 at 17:16

MasterOC said:
<snip>To be fair in the old days it used to to take 2-3 days <snip>

Once the profile is updated it's live, no 2-3 day wait or settling in period, it's not a DSL based product.

Also they're correct in terms of the 120mbit package not being available, all they do is change the profile associated with the product code on the a/c but they normally do this on a per area basis so if everyone gets a free upgrade from 120 to 150 the 120 config is essentially changed to a 152mbit config. Legacy codes may exist for some products but not in this case.

TBH node capacity issues in September/October are relatively standard, you get loads of student installs taking place and each node takes a hammering. Planned upgrades take place and it gets better but in the next 12 months the speed gets bumped and the whole cycle repeats.