Virgin Media Discussion Thread

I was with VM for years, cant remember the time they ever gave me anything near the 100/200 advertised i was lucky to break 30 Mbps at most times especially peak, i believe i was being throttled almost permanently it was even worse during peak times and weekends. I was on their hideously old V+ boxes that crashed all the time and 2nd gen router, they wanted to charge me to replace them for their newer equipment. Other than that i had no problem. Tried switching to BT last year and had a million problems during the switch so stuck with virgin.

This year made the switch to BT and my download speed has barely been below 70mbps although i'm not too fond of their TV and the shoddy aerial company they use to install it, but the bt smart hub and youview 4k box are fast and smooth although i never got to try virgin's new box and router. Also when leavin VM i got calls almost 2-3 times daily about coming back to them it was very annoying.
 
Last edited:
I consistently get over 100mbit/sec however the blurb about policing or lack of it on higher packages is BS. Download a few steam games and you definitely see lower throughput after a while.

Apart from that I can't fault them. Use the box they give you as a modem only and buy a decent router and you're Golden.
 
I've been with Virgin since the NTL days, late 2002, so 15 years now. As NTL, they were a bit rocky for downtimes during summer heatwaves. Their repeater boxes that you see on the streets are dark green which must absorb some heat. Not good when a blue or purple item dropped in a WoW raid and you missed out on the roll because you d/c'd. The summer 2006 heatwave was a nightmare for that! Since they became Virgin though, they've been a lot more reliable.

While we're at it, for those with broadband only on Virgin, how much are you paying, and for what speed? Just wondering because my bill keeps going up year-on-year. Last year it went up from £30 to £33/month and starting next month, it's going up by another £1.85. 70mbps speed. I know I can speak to retentions, but my spoken English isn't very good and I'm also hard of hearing.
 
Rilot said:
Wish I could get Virgin. Wish I could get BT Infinity too for that matter. Crappy basic ADSL is all I can get.
Click to expand...

Its not available here, never been available here, will probably never be available here. We can get BT fibre though that was put in a year or two ago but at those prices I'll stick with 15mb ADSL thanks all the same.
 
RJC said:
I phoned through on the standard number and chose the cancel my subscription option, when talking to them they gave me a 6 month offer which I declined and cancelled at this time (this was the Saturday) On the Tuesday I had a missed call and searching the number this was Virgin - a few days later they managed to call when I was home and gave me the offer.

At the time I had not signed up to anyone else.
Click to expand...

I did this last month... but when they rang they offered me 100mb + phone for £20 or 200mb and phone for £25. Went for the 200mb.

I think the key is to not accept retention's offer and let them put through the cancellation, they should contact you before the 30 day notice period.
 
Had cable for 18 years have to say it's been pretty much a flawless service odd outage here and there but never for long.
 
The product is great. I pay for 100Mbps broadband. Every speed test I've done is 102-110Mbps. With BT Fibre, I was getting 18-25Mbps.

The business itself is totally useless. I signed up a month ago. I've still not seen a copy of the contract. I've now requested this five times. Same goes for my account number, which they cannot give out over the phone. I haven't seen my bill as a result; I had to get them to read it out to me. I should be paying £25/month. My first Direct Debit was for several times that. It turns out that was in part because the first payment is for two months, in part because they were over charging me, and in part because they charged me for installation and activation, despite it saying both were free on my pre-contract. Oh, and they failed to switch my phone line over from BT.

I asked to cancel on the basis of mis-selling, as they were refusing to honour what was written on the pre-contract. I was told it's not possible to cancel as I'm outside the 14 day cooling off period, as written in my contract. I told them that they have no grounds to hold me to the contract as a) they were refusing to honour the terms of the agreement, and b) they had failed to supply me with a copy of my contract, or access to my bills and account. It literally says on the Pre-Contract that the terms are, in this situation, unenforceable without a court order (which they wouldn't likely get). The response was along the lines of "You can't just delete our emails and then pretend you haven't seen them. You've agreed to a twelve month contract and cannot expect to leave penalty-free." :eek: Yup, apparently I planned this weeks in advance, and wasted hours of my time chasing them for access to my account and a copy of my contract, just so I could pretend I haven't seen them, all as preperation for them screwing up.

In the end, after almost half an hour of arguing with him, he spoke to his manager. My tariff was changed to the correct one, an account credit was given to make up for the over-payment, the switch over from BT was actioned correctly, and he'd offered to manually send my account details through to a second email address (I asked for a paper copy, but apparently this is only possible with paper billing at £1.75/month. Once activated, it cannot be deactivated). I'm happy with that, assuming it's all correct. Another operator confirmed the changes when I phoned back half an hour later, so I'm reasonably confident I'll at least be charged correctly now.

Still no email though :mad:

They're useless TBH. If we could get high speed fibre over a BT line, we'd avoid Virgin like the plague. But 18-25Mbps for Fibre prices simply isn't good value for money. I only switched away from Virgin last year as BT were practically giving their broadband away in a new customer cashback offer, and Virgin wanted silly money if I stayed with them.

TL;DR: Great speed. Really reliable. Useless customer service.
 
Last edited:
w1ze1 said:
I had the HUB3 (its not a super hub) since beta testing and I had far less jitter than all screenshots peeps posted on 200Mb/s then 300Mb/s but as soon as I went to 350Mb/s its a mess like other users screenshots but I do not play MP.

I think it is not just the Intel Puma chipset (effects modem mode and router mode wired or wifi) bug but down to what you are connected to at VM end and if my set up changed going from 300 to 350.
Click to expand...

Higher bandwidths actually worsen the latency issue on the SH3 as it overloads the core even quicker. The reason the modem is such a POS is because of the Puma6 chipset which Intel bought from Texas Instruments using software based NAT on an x86 core rather than dedicated hardware based NAT. Do not listen to what Intel and Virgin say about a 'fix is coming' they've been saying that since the issue first arose and nothing has been fixed, because they can't fix their way out of a completely flawed hardware design. There's some serious law suites going on against Arris and others in the states over this.
I'v also heard their Puma7 chipset suffers from the same problem.
VM need to bring out a replacement for the SH3 as it will never be fit for purpose.

Just glad I stuck with the SH2AC which is a pretty fantastic ISP supplied router+modem.
 
We were with VM since the early NTL days at my parents house, then I stuck with VM throughout Uni in our student houses and then for 3 years after leaving Uni. Biggest issue we had was network congestion being in a big student area. They did work to fix this but took a while - once they did fix it, it was fine. It was rare to have any dropouts or no connection.

If I had the option, I'd still be with VM now after buying a house last year. The only reason we're not is that it's a new build estate so the likes of BT/VM are locked out and we only have the choice of (I think) 4 ISPs last time I checked, all of which use the same company for the link (IFNL or whatever they're called). It is FTTP though so can't complain too much, just don't like the lack of competition!
 
Internet is great, TV is awful. I'll be keeping the internet and ditching the TV when my contract ends in January and moving over to one of the friends and family Sky deals.
 
Just dumped BT myself, they charge too much (to pay for football!). Luckily I can get hyperoptic so I restrained myself and got the 100mbit package for £20 a month which is half the price of infinity. Could upgrade to gigabit for an extra £20 a month - but do I really need it?
 
MBennett said:
Just dumped BT myself, they charge too much (to pay for football!). Luckily I can get hyperoptic so I restrained myself and got the 100mbit package for £20 a month which is half the price of infinity. Could upgrade to gigabit for an extra £20 a month - but do I really need it?
Click to expand...

I'd love a gigabit connection, mmm those speeds.
 
Stu said:
I'm seriously thinking about leaving Sky to join Virgin, but the SH3 latency/jitter issue is the only thing putting me off... how bad is the issue really? Will it ruin Overwatch and other online FPS games?
Click to expand...
It's more than just the SH3 issues that can be an issue on a VM connection.
 
Download speeds were always great, gaming at peak times was horrendous due to being over subscribed.

BT has been much more stable for me to be honest.
 
I used to work for VM (from when they where blueyonder ) and there service was always great. downloads/internet speed and tv always fine no problems. I think i had 1 tech out in about 10 years.

Then from november last year peak times i was getting throttled and my 200mb connection i was getting around 10-20mb on a good night. The tech support was bad (worse than when i was there :P ) i got told on one occasion "just use the internet after midnight" . all i was told in numerous calls was "it will be fixed next week" 6 months later and it was still a problem. i left them in june this year and moved to bt and i am getting a more stable connection i have even got used to not having all them tv channels virgin has, less to flick through to find something to watch :)
 
Wish I could switch to VM, or Sky, or Talk Talk, or anyone actually. BT are the only provider in my area able to offer speeds above 1mb. I'd love to bundle my TV/Internet/Phone with Sky or VM but doesn't look like it will happen anytime soon.

I should add my folks have VM and they've always been great.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom