Soldato
- Joined
- 22 Jul 2014
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- 3,907
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- Oxon
Why would you go into a store when you can do it all yourself online?
Virgin Media Discussion Thread
- Thread starter macca40
- Start date
That's what happens when instead of being in control of your company, almost everything is subcontracted out elsewhere because it's cheap. It's cheap for a reason.
Your best bet is to get on the phone to their cancellations department. They are UK based and seem to be able to sort most things out. They still get let down when things have to go to other departments and then the ball gets dropped again.
The problem of course is that when things go well, everything is fine. When there's a problem, no one knows enough to go off-script, and every other ISP is just as bad nowadays. Customer service is in a race to the bottom because that is a cost that can be cut to increase shareholder value. All the ISPs are more interested in stealing new customers from each other than in keeping existing customers happy.
As long as you're not in an oversubscribed area, you should get a good service from Virgin for years, punctuated by occasional dealings with a bunch of useless chimps when things need to be fixed, and powerless reps when you phone up to complain about prices rises 2-3 times every year.
I've been suffering rubbish speed over the past few months with Virgin. i'm only on the 50mb package but most of the time only get 5mb.
Interestingly i had a engineer come out today due to a fault with our Telephone line and asked him if i was in a high utilization area so he checked it out. He looked on his phone and his words were "WHOA!" apparently this area is sitting at 99% utilization for pretty much the whole day, with 3am till 6am dropping to about 75%
I'm seriously thinking of just dropping Virgin and just trying out Sky or BT for a year, they estimate 16mb connection and if everyone around here is on Virgin maybe that would mean not so high loads on their services. The fact they are offering most broadband for free in packages might be worth a shot.
Interestingly i had a engineer come out today due to a fault with our Telephone line and asked him if i was in a high utilization area so he checked it out. He looked on his phone and his words were "WHOA!" apparently this area is sitting at 99% utilization for pretty much the whole day, with 3am till 6am dropping to about 75%
I'm seriously thinking of just dropping Virgin and just trying out Sky or BT for a year, they estimate 16mb connection and if everyone around here is on Virgin maybe that would mean not so high loads on their services. The fact they are offering most broadband for free in packages might be worth a shot.
If you're in a high utilization area, you are best to jump ship. VM will take ages (sometimes years) to sort it, and they will blame the local requirements for upgrading their network (council permits, digging up roads, planning, etc). They will give date after date for a fix, and each will be pushed back. They know this happens, and they run their utilization levels much higher than (say) US cable companies. I think they wait for people to leave the service to "fix" the problem for them.
Sure, if you can be bothered, you can phone them every month and get a credit put on your account, but that's hassle (deliberately so), and in the end you may be getting your services almost for nothing, but if they don't work, you're not really getting what you want.
I'm sure competitors will be more than happy to give you lots of "new customer offers", and if you're in a Infinity area, you'll get plenty of broadband speed for a reasonable price.
Sure, if you can be bothered, you can phone them every month and get a credit put on your account, but that's hassle (deliberately so), and in the end you may be getting your services almost for nothing, but if they don't work, you're not really getting what you want.
I'm sure competitors will be more than happy to give you lots of "new customer offers", and if you're in a Infinity area, you'll get plenty of broadband speed for a reasonable price.
I made a shocking discovery yesterday! 
I've not been getting full speed in my room due to not hvaing homeplugs powerful enough, so I wasn't aware of this. Now I thought all 120Mb connections was being upgraded to 152Mb.... well we haven't. Reading more, we should have received an email informing us about this upgrade but, what my mother failed to do is read the email properly and take out the new 12mo contract to upgrade.
Now we are paying the same price for 120Mb as those on 152Mb what's VM's stance likely to be for me to move on up to 152Mb?
I've not been getting full speed in my room due to not hvaing homeplugs powerful enough, so I wasn't aware of this. Now I thought all 120Mb connections was being upgraded to 152Mb.... well we haven't. Reading more, we should have received an email informing us about this upgrade but, what my mother failed to do is read the email properly and take out the new 12mo contract to upgrade.Now we are paying the same price for 120Mb as those on 152Mb
what's VM's stance likely to be for me to move on up to 152Mb?Now we are paying the same price for 120Mb as those on 152Mb
Just phone them up and ask them to sort it out. They'll upgrade you.
Been having a running argument with VM over the weekend, Friday I was getting 2.36 down and 12.34 up - on 152mb.
Contacted them on Friday via "Live Chat" did the reset and the hard reset, unplugged every coax in my house and still had no decent speeds.
Same thing saturday and same thing on Sunday, resorted to tweeting them on Sunday and had someone reply this morning about entering some details and they will look into it, sadly can't do this until I get home.
Going to find out when my contract is up, even though having 152mb is nice I don't think the price is worth the shockingly bad performance when we do get it.
When it is fine it's brilliant, when it goes does or get slow they struggle to be able to resolve it, at least in my area (N.Surrey).
Contacted them on Friday via "Live Chat" did the reset and the hard reset, unplugged every coax in my house and still had no decent speeds.
Same thing saturday and same thing on Sunday, resorted to tweeting them on Sunday and had someone reply this morning about entering some details and they will look into it, sadly can't do this until I get home.
Going to find out when my contract is up, even though having 152mb is nice I don't think the price is worth the shockingly bad performance when we do get it.
When it is fine it's brilliant, when it goes does or get slow they struggle to be able to resolve it, at least in my area (N.Surrey).
Sounds like your area is oversubscribed. Good luck. If it's recent you'll be waiting at least a year for a fix!
If they cannot provide the service you are paying for you are within your rights to cancel contract or not.
Saw they are upgrading ppl later this year. Wonder what 60mb ppl who got boosted to 100mb will get now. Still paying just 26.50pm for just internet can probably get it lower or do a deal about price when speed changes for me tho tbh im happy enough atm as long as it doesnt increase which it will shortly after everyone is upgraded by a few quid no doubt.
Just got off the phone to VM. We actually was paying more than I thought. Our 120Mb / Phoneline was £47.83pm! The current 152Mb / Phoneline they offer is £46.99!
After a lengthy call, I feel it worked out okay. She applied a discount on our account for £6 which will carry on each month and she also gave me the option to pay the phoneline rental up front for £164, instead of paying £16.99 a month and paying 203.88 a year.
So with that out of the way, the monthly price would now be £37.6 but because the line rental is paid, we now only need to pay £24pm for the next year.
After a lengthy call, I feel it worked out okay. She applied a discount on our account for £6 which will carry on each month and she also gave me the option to pay the phoneline rental up front for £164, instead of paying £16.99 a month and paying 203.88 a year.
So with that out of the way, the monthly price would now be £37.6 but because the line rental is paid, we now only need to pay £24pm for the next year.
I dont get why ppl get phonelines for internet its surely cheeper at least for me to get just internet for 26.50pm and a 12 month mobile phone sim only contract for 7.50pm which has 200mins, 5000 txts and 500mb net, even if u dont phone ppl u can txt basically unlimited or use skype or whatsapp for calls. Cheaper than line rental and call costs if not free etc.
Soldato
- Joined
- 17 Aug 2007
- Posts
- 2,896
- Location
- London, Moscow & Samara
I do agree with this SkeeterUK. At least Virgin has caught on and offers Internet without telephone line rental. Albeit if a customer wants TV services the customer has to take the telephone line as part of the bundled package. I also think this is where BT bamboozles their customers with infinity 2 partial fibre to cabinet and then copper to the home and you Have no option but to take line rental.
But where customers do not have access to VM their hands are forced into the mafioso line rental pyramid scheme.
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Line rental is like an old tradition. I know my mum wouldn't always rely on mobile phone networks for contacting people, she only probably phones off it for certain things or when she's out.. If she does contact someone, she will use the house phone.