Virgin Media - Not all bad!

Angelos_n · 29 Jun 2010 at 17:10

Hey all, i thought i would do something a bit different, a lot of the time we have threads made about the problems they are having or had with Virgin Media - including installation and aftercare. So i thought it might be fun doing a small blog/thread on how my order/install/aftercare/performance have gone through etc...

On the 16th of june i gave virgin media a call as we really wanted to get the 50mb XXL package that they offer. We had at that time and still have (for business) a sky max package down our BT line. This is fairly good however due to dodgy wiring in our house the line only syncs at 5mb(even though when we cut the wire it went up to 14mb) we had to leave it connected due to having a phone in the upstairs office. Any way onto the main subject. I gave virgin media a call expecting the worst, knowing that other people have had horrible horrible experiences with the customer service etc... I wasnt looking forward to it let me tell you

So i finally mustled up the courage to phone them up and got throught to a young man(who to my relief was from the UK) who kindly told me all i needed to know about the XXL package, all was dandy until he kindly told me i would have to not only pay £33 a month but another £53 just to have it installed, i mean i know that BT charge £130 for a brand new line but its unlikely im paying BT £33 just for the internet. Luckily the manager must have been in a great mood and by kindly asking that im getting their top tier package can i have free install, i somehow got it. So i was a much happier person by the time i got off the phone than when i started and now had an install date for the 28th of June.

Wow, i felt like the wait was going to take forever (inside i was excited like a little girl at christmas! will i finally have great Broadband?) So the days went by and i phoned up almost everyday to find out if their was a cancellation space available. After hearing multiple times that they dont show up for the original set date i was worried so tried to get earlier just incase. I was told day in and day out that their was nothing available. i was crossing my fingers that they would be here on the 28th.

So the 28th finally came round and i woke up bright and early as if i was about to go to disney land for the first time( i couldnt sleep, how sad is that!!!) and was hoping that they wouldnt miss the install date. To my amazement i watched the virgin mesdia van pull up at my house a fantastic 3 hours early(was quoted 1pm-6pm install time, they turned up at around 10am) ok maybe this wasnt as bad as i had hear. Now for the fabled "install" whoa i was regretting them ever pull up now(i needed the install at the back of the house on the 2nd floor) and as i approached then to tell them what i wanted i was replied with a "cant do it, health and safety you see". I sat there thinking theres 2 of them, they have a ladder, theres no dangerous roof tiles or anything, what the hell was the problem???? After around 10 minutes discussing it with they they for some reason agreed to do it(i have no clue what i said to change their mind) so the install got underway and the wires started going round the house, god i was happy!!!. So they finally finished the install around 30 minutes later. and they left me to set everything up which was fine as this definatly wasnt the first time and wont be the last time i have to set anything up(building computers as a hobby etc.. doing a degree and what not) so i was left to hope and pray that i got the 50mb i was sold. First thing i did was pop DD-WRT on the DLINK DIR-615 D4 they gave me and turned on my PC and to my surprise ...

So all in all im a happy chappy, so as the title said its definatly not all bad

Hope you enjoyed.

Angelos

!bluetonic! · 29 Jun 2010 at 17:22

Good to hear. You'll hear endless criticisms, but few praises.

I've been with VM cable Internet for a few years and never had a problem. I'm on the 10Mb package which is more than suitable for my needs with a VOIP phone for landline calls and Sky for TV.

By taking the phone and TV as well, the price is only a couple of quid more a month, but I personally didn't want the hassle of taking more from them.

apatia77 · 29 Jun 2010 at 17:22

I hope you have big hard drives

with 50mb and unlimited downloads you will fill all remaining free space in no time

atomiser · 29 Jun 2010 at 17:43

i had a pleasant experience re-connecting to virgin media, ordering was a cinch, booking the installation was easy, they turned up when they said they would, and i got what i asked for. i got a full 10mb consistently for the first few days, and now it averages somewhere between 6mb and 9mb dependant upon the time of day and what im up to. even when it's at 6mb it's twice as fast as the adsl connection i had at the last place (middle of nowhere) and im not the sort of person that expects 10mb at full chat 24/7 since im a networking guy and i understand that to provide everyone with a 10mb connection on a 1:1 basis would cost considerably more than the average broadband price. so yeah, overall, i'm fairly pleased with the service too. i was an ntl customer of old previous too, and to be honest that was a fairly straightforward affair too.

Glaucus · 29 Jun 2010 at 17:59

had virgin and sky on and off for a decade. Never had problems with virgin. Occasional infrastructure problems, but they sort it out relatively fast. Had loads of problems with sky/other adsl providers though.

Virgin even gave me £10 of my bill as an apology for the inconvenience and fixed the cable the Gardner cut through for free.

Robzere31 · 2 Jul 2010 at 14:03

Been with Virgin for 2 months now after being a sky customer for 10 years.
Moved everything over, (TV, phone, broadband) & I am very happy with the service.
Saving myself a few quid into the deal as well

Stickman · 2 Jul 2010 at 14:27

Been with ntl/virgin since 2005. Think I started off on their 4 meg package... then was automatically upgraded to about 10, and now 20meg. Never had any problems. About twice in that time the net was down due to some freak occurance (once floods and thunderstorms, etc).... but I accessed their service status page via the mobile which told me what and why and that they were doing all they could, and sure enough all was back to normal again within a few hours.

My bro has also been on their 20meg package for a while... and when he was short of money once he rang asking if he could go down to 10meg... and they said they'd let him have the 20 for the price of 10... he's been on that deal for about 2 years now! Talk about good customer service.

As for the capping.... once you know their traffic policy (which is very clearly printed on their website)... it's very easy to avoid.... So on 20 meg I can only download 3.5gigabytes between 3pm and 8pm... oh no.... that's only like ten standard 45min tv episodes... which I couldn't watch all of in that time anyway! If you wanna download huge amounts you can do it out of peak times with no throttling.

So without hitting the throttling, you can download: about 6gb during the morning peak time, about 3gb in the evening peak time... and for the other 14 hours you could easilly average 3.6gb per hour even if you were only getting 10mbps speed... so another 50gigabytes, bringing the days total to 60gigabytes of downloading without even touching the limit! I for one could not keep up with any more... That's an insane amount of downloading!

apatia77 said:
I hope you have big hard drives with 50mb and unlimited downloads you will fill all remaining free space in no time

I'll second that! Even with just their 20meg package I've filled an additional 4TB of hard drives in less than a year!

Duke · 2 Jul 2010 at 16:05

I've been with VM (blueyonder) since Dec 1999 when they laid the cable here. I've had 512k, 1mbit, 2mbit, 10mbit, 20mbit and have had very few issues. I think in total there has been maybe a week of downtime, which over that amount of years is pretty good going.

Glaucus · 2 Jul 2010 at 19:42

Well after all that, I know have a problem inernet in my area was down for 11hours today, they fixed the issue. But mine is still down. They speculate it's something in the cab as they can still talk to modem, just no Internet. No people till tuesday though, but he said phone back late tonight early tomorow and probably get an appointment tomorrow. I expect cancellations or something.

Also got the number for the 50mb call centre.
08000520431, nice English call centre at that. Only for 50mb customers though.