Virgin Media Discussion Thread

[Caged]

Yellow is a cobra rod used to rod ducts to pull ropes in:

Mills Cobra Rod and Frame 14mm x 300m

The Mills Cobra Continuous Rodding System represents a faster and more economical solution than traditional screw together duct rods and is available in standard diameters from 4.5mm to 14mm and a range of lengths from 60 to 500 metres to suit most applications. The conduit rods are supplied in...

www.millsltd.com

There's no guarantee that it's FTTP but it could be - it could also be one person who wants a leased line.

 

[CaNsA]

That's me just placed my pre-order for YouFibre.
Hopefully be done with VM at the end of the month.

inb4 YouFibre start taking £ from my account before the install takes place.

 

[iMacMart]

It sounds like the yellow piping they use to house the fibre yeah.

“IF” it were would it be another 12 months before that might be offered?

 

[chrcoluk]

I could do with ditching VM. All I can think of is the number of times the connection falls apart disabling not just the line but the digital phone with it.

Could count on my fingers the number of times the traditional landline failed on me meanwhile VM ***** the bed a few times a week going down for minutes to hours.

Funny enough for me its the opposite.

When I moved back to VM last autumn I had a ongoing fault with my VDSL service that was going nowhere, ISP and BT wholesale going in circles. There is an advantage when the company you get the service from also owns the infrastructure, which isnt the case on DSL services which resell, openreach/bt wholesale/talktalk business.

In addition across 3 different VDSL ISP's I had to deal with outages during maintenance hours every 2-3 weeks perhaps as an average, which is way too frequent, on occasions multiple times a week.

The only outages I have had o n VM in about 5 months are.

Hub 5 firmware update, brief.
Unexplained Hub 5 reboot, brief
Local DOCSIS plant upgrade, about 2 hours dusk hours.
Yesterdays shenanigans. Probably the only unplanned network based downtime I have had on VM in 5 months.

FTTP should be more reliable than VDSL, but will still suffer from the resell issues and the internal ISP outages at night.

 

[the-evaluator]

FTTP should be more reliable than VDSL, but will still suffer from the resell issues and the internal ISP outages at night.

Yep. You're aware that Virgin Media isn't FTTP though, aren't you?

 

[ChrisD.]

I've had FTTP in my current house since June 2021, and FTTC in my previous house since 2014. I've only ever had a single outage on FTTC in the old house which was related to a fault in the local exchange which was rectified in a few hours. FTTP so far, has been flawless.

 

[iMacMart]

Yellow is a cobra rod used to rod ducts to pull ropes in:

Mills Cobra Rod and Frame 14mm x 300m

The Mills Cobra Continuous Rodding System represents a faster and more economical solution than traditional screw together duct rods and is available in standard diameters from 4.5mm to 14mm and a range of lengths from 60 to 500 metres to suit most applications. The conduit rods are supplied in...

www.millsltd.com

There's no guarantee that it's FTTP but it could be - it could also be one person who wants a leased line.

There has been activity in/on that road for weeks so I might ask one of the engineers!

 

[thebandit]

Yes, they will call you back. If the first offer isn't great, reject that too. You will likely get a follow up call from a higher tier team later, and if all else fails you can always call them a day or two before the final closure day and say you thought you'd give them one last stab before you order BT or something. Openreach are rolling out FTTP country wide, and alt-nets (smaller FTTP providers) are racing to do the same. VM have actual competition atm, and they're keen to keep customers in the face of rising dissatisfaction from people who have better offers available. Play them off - complain about recent outages and poor service, and 'all the attractive offers from FTTP competitors'. They won't know if you actually have FTTP in your street, just blag it.

@adrianB
Just to say I'm currently in this re-negotiation phase and the guy I was speaking to at Virgin in my first call was very aware of the alternate services available to me, even quoting the openreach/ BT estimated realistic download speeds for FTTC. I dont have a FTTP service available to me and this was definitely factored in to what he was prepared to offer (kept trying to offer a cheaper price but for 125Mb service, currently on 500Mb). Luckily I can get Three 5G home BB at £20 a month and on my phone I get ~300Mb dl and ~70Mb up so thats the stick I am using to beat them with. Lastly, just to say, I cancelled and retentions did call me yesterday, although I missed the call.

 

[Ayahuasca]

“IF” it were would it be another 12 months before that might be offered?

The timeframes for go live have a range of factors. Once the work is done and they've cleared off, I'd say it's around 2-3 months on average before you can order.

 

[Rainmaker]

@adrianB
Just to say I'm currently in this re-negotiation phase and the guy I was speaking to at Virgin in my first call was very aware of the alternate services available to me, even quoting the openreach/ BT estimated realistic download speeds for FTTC. I dont have a FTTP service available to me and this was definitely factored in to what he was prepared to offer (kept trying to offer a cheaper price but for 125Mb service, currently on 500Mb). Luckily I can get Three 5G home BB at £20 a month and on my phone I get ~300Mb dl and ~70Mb up so thats the stick I am using to beat them with. Lastly, just to say, I cancelled and retentions did call me yesterday, although I missed the call.

Oh they got smart! Actually shows how desperate they've become, when they're resorting to 'Well you only have this available, so we'll only be willing to drop the price by XYZ'. I can't wait to give the scummy company notice.

 

[thebandit]

Just a guess, but I bet the call staff are incentivised to offer the lowest discount posiible whilst retaining the customer, if I was in their shoes I know I would be using these tools to prop up my side of the negotiation.

 

[Scope]

Virgin have emailed me about picking up the old equipment:

Charging for unreturned kit

Please be aware, we do have replacement charges for our kit if you don't return, a charge to the value(s) shown below may be added to your account:

Item Type	Item Description	Serial Number	Value
Broadband Router	Arris Hub 4	XXXXX	£65
Set Top Box	Arris TiVo® box 1TB	XXXXXX	£0

Am I reading this correct in that I might aswell keep the Set Top Box (and see if I can use the 1tb drive for something else, as they are not going to charge me for not returning it?

 

[chrcoluk]

Yep. You're aware that Virgin Media isn't FTTP though, aren't you?

I am sitting here wondering why you asking that question.

Yes I am aware. But how did you interpret my post in that way?

 

[the-evaluator]

I am sitting here wondering why you asking that question.

Yes I am aware. But how did you interpret my post in that way?

Because you said that you switched from VDSL to VM due to problems with your VDSL and then stated that FTTP should be more reliable than VDSL. My interpretation was that you'd switched from VDSL to FTTP hence my comment.

 

[chrcoluk]

Because you said that you switched from VDSL to VM due to problems with your VDSL and then stated that FTTP should be more reliable than VDSL. My interpretation was that you'd switched from VDSL to FTTP hence my comment.

I also said in the same line FTTP about the resell issues, but yeah anyway I dont think my Virgin Media service is FTTP, although Virgin Media do have some FTTP areas and are rolling out FTTP in the future.

Most of the issues I had were during hours when people usually sleep (midnight to 6am), so those who dont use their internet at those hours wouldnt care or notice those outages, but on Sky, and AAISP, and Plusnet, I was dealing with disruptive maintenance from the ISPs.

The fault I had when I switched to VM, initially talktalk business were having massive issues with people's PPP sessions getting kicked off numerous times a day on andrews and arnold, they did eventually get it fixed, in fact within a couple of weeks (AAISP convinced TTB to move the customers over to new platform), but I had got AAISP to move me to BT wholesale to escape the outages, then unfortenatly, the BT wholesale was broken from the off, I had a weird throughput issue, that also was given me floods of random packet loss as well, the issue wasnt the DSL line which meant it was a complex problem, and I was having to be put through processes that had to be done first before they would investigate BT wholesale equipment, I got impatient and thought I would give virgin media a chance, and then havent looked back. By the time the DSL line was terminated the fault still existed. a lot of the issue was that AAISP had to report the problem to BTw who would then have to report to openreach, a game of chinese whispers. If an engineer turned up, I would find by the time the message got to him, the information was incomplete etc.

 

[SpudMaster]

Just done the dance with Virgin. Automated message offered me £3.50 off so spoke to an operator. Best they offered me was £42 for the remainder of my contract which is what I am currently paying. Told them that's not good enough and l still want to leave as my boss is paying £32 for 500mb which is then voted to 1gb. I only have 350mb bumped up to 500mb. So I got transfered to another operator who would handle my cancellation. Best they offered me was 1gb for £42 but I had to take out another 18 month contract. Didn't want that so I'm now in my 30 days cancellation period and awaiting a call with proper discounts!

 

[Karl]

Mine's still up and down a LOT. Totally unusable. I've headed in to my office, but have to take a company phone home tomorrow to tether from because my broadband is completely unstable. It goes up for about 10 mins, then comes down again and stays down for at least 20 - 30 mins before coming back up again.

I've been using their service status checker thingy, and they've decided to let me book an engineer appointment, but they're not booked to come over until Saturday 4pm - 7pm. Until then I'm unlikely to have a usable service. I don't know if:

1) It's pure coincidence and my hardware has started to fail at exactly the same time as their national outage
2) My area still has a problem even though most areas don't
3) Lots of areas still have a problem and I've booked an engineer visit using a system that I shouldn't have been allowed to access because loads of people would have had the same thought.

 

[Rainmaker]

Mine's still up and down a LOT.

Same here. We're getting a lot of errors, connection drops and self-reboots of the hub and the logs say things like:

05-04-2023 14:55:34	warning	DBC-REQ Mismatch Between Calculated Value for P1.6hi Compared to CCAP Provided Value;CM-MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00;CMTS-MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1;
05-04-2023 14:55:25	warning	RNG-RSP CCAP Commanded Power in Excess of 6 dB Below the Value Corresponding to the Top of the DRW;CM-MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00;CMTS-MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1;
05-04-2023 14:55:25	warning	Dynamic Range Window violation
05-04-2023 14:55:20	notice	DS profile assignment change. DS Chan ID: 32; Previous Profile: ; New Profile: 1 2 3.;CM-MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00;CMTS-MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1;
05-04-2023 14:55:17	notice	TLV-11 - unrecognized OID;CM-MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00;CMTS-MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1;
05-04-2023 14:55:14	warning	DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response ;CM-MAC=000:00:00:00:00:00;CMTS-MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1;
05-04-2023 14:55:12	notice	Honoring MDD; IP provisioning mode = IPv4
05-04-2023 14:55:03	critical	SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire QAM/QPSK symbol timing;;CM-MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00;CMTS-MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1;
05-04-2023 14:54:46	critical	Cable Modem Reboot via RG reboot command

It seems to have stayed up for the last few hours, but speeds are all over the place and I don't imagine it's fixed just yet...

 

[Karl]

Mine's gone back to a stable connection at 8.30pm last night, and is seemingly stable this morning.

They haven't been in touch to cancel the engineer visit on Saturday so I'm going to leave it there just in case things go haywire again!

 

[Jay85]

Funny enough for me its the opposite.

When I moved back to VM last autumn I had a ongoing fault with my VDSL service that was going nowhere, ISP and BT wholesale going in circles. There is an advantage when the company you get the service from also owns the infrastructure, which isnt the case on DSL services which resell, openreach/bt wholesale/talktalk business.

In addition across 3 different VDSL ISP's I had to deal with outages during maintenance hours every 2-3 weeks perhaps as an average, which is way too frequent, on occasions multiple times a week.

The only outages I have had o n VM in about 5 months are.

Hub 5 firmware update, brief.
Unexplained Hub 5 reboot, brief
Local DOCSIS plant upgrade, about 2 hours dusk hours.
Yesterdays shenanigans. Probably the only unplanned network based downtime I have had on VM in 5 months.

FTTP should be more reliable than VDSL, but will still suffer from the resell issues and the internal ISP outages at night.

VM has been horrendous as of late, it was great for 4 years then this year and last year it has been so inconsistent. We had an outrage more recently which lasted for 5 days!!! I had to piggy back off my neighbours wifi on his guest network to get any sort of connection. Then more recently we had another 2 day outrage without any explaination but thankfully i had already ended my contract with them.