Are Virgin Media terrible/FTTP options?

[McBain]

Backstory:

Moved into a new build which only has FTTP and Virgin, limiting my BB options. BT/Zen seem very expensive for their service so placed an order with Virgin to install on Saturday.

Engineer rocked up, played about a bit then said "Sorry, can't install until the 14th as some external maintenance work needs to take place"

2 hour phone call to Virgin gets me nowhere, all off shore so naturally utter garbage customer service. This doesn't bode well for the future service, or getting in touch with someone if there's a problem. Are they always this bad?

Im wondering whether I should just bite the bullet and pay for Zen, 150MB at £60 a month is a bit hard to swallow though

 

[barmyllama]

I've been a VM customer on 3 separate occasions and am currently.

Over those contracts I've had some deeply frustrating times with customer services.

But generally speaking 99% of the time the connection is good and speeds seem as advertised.

But like all major ISP's they are pretty poor in customer service and only offer decent packages to new customers.

After your contract runs out, you really have to be prepared to leave before they'll offer you a good retention deal.

And the Super Hub is far from super, but so is the equipment supplied by the rest. At least with VM there's the option to run in modem mode and use you're own router.

There's also a dedicated VM thread in the Networks section. Maybe worth asking in there as well.

 

[SFFNoob]

I've had awful service, drop outs left right and centre, service being down for days but them not mentioning a thing, only when you complain and complain, they check to see there's some downtime in the area....

I'm cancelling ATM, but funnily been disconnected before my due date! Two/Three more days of no service, anything of it, no refund, nothing...

 

[Axil]

Been with virgin ever since they took over the cable in our area (from NTL if I remember correctly so at least 10 years) During that time I've not really had any issues. Reliability has been pretty good (I think the last down time was about 5 months ago and that was a main cable fail for the whole area)
I did have an issue when I upgraded to the latest superhub when I lost any connection). When I phoned in the issue i had an engineer in less than 48 hours. The problem actually turned out to be the original house cable installation from NTL when the cable looped over the house and had failed finally and the enginner ended up having to install a brand new line (wasn't charged for it either) The engineer actually stayed until he was happy that everything was working properly with the correct speed (actually faster as I get 160Mbs even though i pay for 150 )

So I've been pretty happy with the service especially when compared to the service I had from Orange and BT when I was working away for a few years in the Midlands (constant drop off of speed) plus Oranges technical is the pits (only talk talk is worse in my experience).

 

[enkoda]

Having lived in non-VM areas for the last 13 years we decided to go with them when we moved a couple of months ago. I only wanted reasonably fast internet, basic TV, and none of the other suppliers could match the deal I went for.

Even though the area had cabling the house we bought didn't, so it took about 3 weeks for them to sort that out - apparently they needed council permission for ground works, etc, so I'll have to take their word for that.

I'm fully aware that their customer service appears to be woefully lacking from the stories I've read, but I'm prepared for that battle if needed!

Paying for 5.2MB/s but actually getting 6.4, so really happy tbh.

 

[Terminal_Boy]

Used them in London for over a decade. Had a fault in the local cabinet that they fixed the next day. Maybe 3-4 area/regional outages that lasted less than a day in that time.

Their engineers are great.

Their customer service is appalling.

The Super Hubs aren’t. Modem mode it and use your router.

 

[NorthstaNder]

Been with virgin media for years now. I can count the broadband outages on one hand and I've had no problems with the tv service.

currently have a really good deal with them. top tv with sky sports/movies etc. 500mbps broadband. landline and mobile with unlimited everything for £99 a month for 12 months then it goes up to £129 (still not bad). But I'll ring them when the 12 months are up as they're normally pretty good at putting me on some kind of a deal.

 

[Kol]

In the same boat as OP. We can only get FTTP or VM. Wanted to give FTTP a try but 300mbit with BT is only a little less than I pay for both broadband and TV with Virgin. Currently pay £75 for 350mbit, talk anytime and all channels except movies. I had a month recently where there were significant outages, turned out our cabinet was damaged, they'd tried fixing but had a few issues out of their control. I think they credited us about £30, without asking for the credit, just reported the issue.

Same as above, in that respect, apart from that in the past two years it's been rock solid, we run the SH3 in modem mode feeding a unifi USG and various unifi equipment. Ping is great, you'll get some people coming in saying that VM have somehow managed to 'fool' the likes of thinkbb's ping monitor (they haven't) and they suffer from issues but the majority of us don't appear to (and I'm in a very busy area but suffer no slowdowns or issues with ping. Sure *they* might have this issue and others too but it's area dependent not a blanket problem.

You have 14 days anyway so if you sign up and it's crap, oversubscribed etc. you can always cancel.

 

[McBain]

Thanks for all the feedback chaps, I'm still yet to be installed after a number of lengthy phone calls (mostly 45 minutes in a queue each time) and escalations there's nothing they can do

Problem is I rang Zen and they said up to 2 weeks to be active so at the moment Virgin will still potentially be the fastest installation.

I already heard the Superhub was gash so have bought a router to use with it in modem mode!

 

[Jamesyboyjim]

Been with Virgin at 3 different properties, service has always been acceptably reliable and faults resolved within a few days usually. The frustrating thing about them though is when you are trying to get setup initially and if you do need to ever call to query anything.

 

[mattyg]

300/50 with ZEN here but business. Not ZEN's fault but it took 5 months to get installed, and we were only 8 foot from the pit

Annoyingly after it was finally installed we found a Virgin install....

However cant fault it yet. its been rock solid so far

However my 500mb virgin rarely gets above 300