Are virgin media going to pull their thumbs out?

Associate
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I used to live in a house in Bristol and recently moved into a new flat. I was with virgin media for a year in the old house - i was going to cancel the subscription however they convinced me to get get my internet with them using an ADSL line. They assured me that the line would be a 20Mb capacity and that their speed tests had rated it at least 8 Mb. I lived with 4Mb (I think) in the old house and found that to me easily enough for my needs.

I have now moved in and found that downloading steam games (I have tried downloading from websites as well: same speed). I am getting 45KBps during the day and 20KBps at night. **** *** ****? I had faster internet than that 5 years ago!

I have tried calling them a few times but generally its been around lunch time / early evening so couldn't get through. Are they going to be able to actually improve this **** service? Are they regulated? Can I complain or am i stuffed?

Any advice appreciated - not best pleased at the moment.

Monkey island special edition e.t.a. 32 hours........bah
 
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Soldato
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Virgin ADSL was the worst the internet I've ever experienced I'm sorry to say. At my sister's, pings > 300ms, speeds <2mb and a disconnection/DNS issue about 6 times an evening. I made her go to O2 and it's been flawless, bar overheating router.

MOVE provider.
 
Soldato
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not had any experience with adsl personally, but if you can try to call them at a lower peak time? they're generally ok on the phone (i've been passed around a lot by them in the past) so that would be the best thing - see if you can get an engineer out to sort it.
 
Soldato
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I've got virgin cable, and it's not overly reliable in the terms that it just cuts out every so often, think I'm meant to be getting 10Mb and get about 8 at a push (which isn't too bad hen compared with some) but I'm not sure I'll stay with them after/go back to them in the future, was just the best option out of a list of terrible ideas

EDIT, and I realise you're not on cable rather on ADSL, but surely if you're paying for 8Mb speeds, you should get them, threaten to cancel and they'll soon pull their thumbs out
 
Soldato
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Virgin Cable has an average reputation in general - ADSL however, they are beyond bad - far worse even than Tiscali and AOL etc.

If there is any possible way you can, get out now. Leave Virgin ADSL and go with someone half decent like O2.
 
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Soldato
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Fair enough, i've no idea about adsl. Hopefully the op can get it sorted by speaking to them. I actually called up the other day about a new modem and got to speak to someone in the UK for the first time in years. Perhaps their customer service is improving too.
 
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I spent the best part of 6 months trying to get them to do something to make our 8mb connection vaguely usable - never managed to get anywhere. Just checked the complaint letter I wrote to them, checking at different times of day and night over a period of a week, my lowest speed was 31kbps and the highest was 312kbps. Wow.

It occasionally became useful for an hour or two at around 4am, but that wasn't so convenient. I think my flatmates finally got some money back from them after I'd left, but I'd rather have just had them cancel our contract earlier so we could go with some other company who had a clue.

This year, O2, absolutely flawless - regularly get up to about 17mb on our 20mb line, never gone down, cheap as anything. Such a novelty to have it just....work!
 
Soldato
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Hmm got to ask what are people d/l to get speeds like 17mb/sec fastest ive ever got on a 10m cable through virgin is 1.5m/sec only ask so I can try for myself :)
 
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With a speed tester style site, it rarely goes above 12Mbps, but downloading multiple files from a decent server/several simultaneous connections, it can remain stable around 1.8MB/sec. Varies with time of day etc, but I tend to mostly be on fairly late, which helps :)

We do apparently live basically on top of the exchange, which can't hurt, but the deal from O2 was so good, I wouldn't be complaining if we were getting half that speed.
 
Associate
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Guys I could really use some advice. Virgin media are fobbing me off and getting me to run speed tests. THe website that I am directed to http://speedtester.bt.com indicates that I have a download speed of 1200 kpbs. If I download from anywhere else (fileplanet, steam, gmail, work stuff from work servers) I get 50kbps max.

Can you think of any valid technical reason for the massive disparity?

Thanks
Mike
 
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