How can Virgin Media get away with such a blatant misleading

of their customers?

I am currently on their 152Mbit connection. I originally reported on their forums in May 2014 of a large reduction in speed at peak times (down to 100Mbit). Little did I know then how poor the connection would degrade. In September 2014 the connection had degraded down to about 15Mbit at peak times - they finally acknowledged the issue as a fault in January 2015.

They admitted at this point utilisation was an issue and they were planning to carry out upgrade work, and it would be looked at in Feb 2015. This was then moved back to May 2015, then to August 2015. My connection at peak times is now 5Mbit.

Clearly the network is massively over sold beyond its actual capacity - this is almost something I have come to accept from internet providers nowadays - to me this is not the worst bit. What I really want to know is how they can get away with the massive purposeful misleading of customers in their forums.

Here is my thread there. http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Speed/120-Mb-Pac... This is almost a perfect example of how these threads go, sometimes over time spans of a year or more.

I started reading other threads where there were admitted over utilisation, I read over two hundred threads and every single one was pushed back at least twice, mostly three times, most of them pushed back 9 months or more from their original estimate date. I could not find one example of any over utilisation thread that was dealt with on the initial review date. This leads me to believe that the VM staff are purposely posting dates that are in 2-3 months time, to stop consumers leaving. This then gets "pushed back, and they are really sorry" at that point for another 2-3 months and the cycle continues.

Does anyone know if this would possibly breach any Ofcom guidelines?

Lets just ignore the fact my broadband is running at 3% of it's advertised speed. Is there anything for such a blatant reduction over the advertised speed?

What gets to me more though is the systematic lying to all the people in over utilised areas. I'm not really in a position to shift as ADSL is even worse here, we do have FTTC but as I am moving house in 6 months I can't take on the 12 month contract. Any thoughts welcome!

Ask if you can switch to a slower package. You may find that slower packages are less contested and have more consistent speeds. If VM are willing to tell you what the contention ratios are, you will have a better idea if the switch is worth trying. Do you really need 150Mbps? I chug along quite nicely on less than 10Mbps.

If it works, keep shtum or everyone will do the same and you'll be just as badly off. I have always suspected that super-fast broadband makes for great political headlines but, until it becomes commonplace, little else.

Edited by micksharpe (Wed 12-Aug-15 22:35:56)

Most ISP's will do a free house move within a 12 month period in return for a new contract being taken.

OR get one with a monthly like pulse8 or AAISP on 6 months. Lots of options!

But do what I did - choose FTTC and dump VM's [censored]! I've never looked back!

I've had utilisation problems on my 50Mb Virgin line for about 9 months now, not to the same degree as yourself but I'm on my 4th review date if I remember correctly.

I don't think it's malicious, but from what I could make out from the complaint I put in back in February or so - it's just how they operate. That is, the networks area keep close tabs on what's actually being done and timescales, and use "revew dates" for everything. It's quite a large source of complaints by all accounts.

From reading and posting on cableforum, it seems they're actually in quite a good state at the moment for capacity issues, but the issues they do have are longstanding ones. Seemingly, their trigger points for raising congestion faults are far too high so as to allow for when fix times become protracted. http://tinyurl.com/prmcsvx is one thread, but there are a couple.

I presume at the very least, that you've got a fault reference and using that to get monthly bill credits. I'm extremely happy with Virgin on the whole, but I see it as a point of principle that a longstanding issue like this should be matched with longstanding credits.

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

Most ISP's will do a free house move within a 12 month period in return for a new contract being taken.

OR get one with a monthly like pulse8 or AAISP on 6 months. Lots of options!

But do what I did - choose FTTC and dump VM's [censored]! I've never looked back!

+1

Adding to that, FTTC with Pulse8 is also monthly!! (When looking at Pulse8 FTTC prices it is important to realise they include the line rental).

My phone moved to Pulse8 a couple of weeks ago, and tomorrow (Thursday) my FTTC moves to AAISP Home::1 80/20.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 12-Aug-15 23:23:49)

I switched from Virgin in January after 5 years of utilization issues, Virgin have never tried to hide that there's an issue but it seems that they have and still struggle to bring it under control.

The issue is still ongoing with most reporting that even at less busier periods of the day they still can't achieve a full or respectable speed for their packages.

There has been points where some changes have been made and service has improved but them it just goes back downhill within 72 hours again.

many have moved over to fibre packages from the other providers like myself... I can say this has caused some small issues for folk like myself though the issues aren't congestion and only have slight affects on speed... this is due to the cross talk between cables in the fibre cabs.

I'm currently visiting relatives in South Birmingham where there is nothing but VM or 2meg ADSL... luckily the Virgin network here seems to be OK.. thought its not a solid as it used to be just 2 years ago, unfortunately this will be due to lack of maintenance and possibly equipment damages, either way 50meg pretty much stays 50meg around the clock.

So the moral of this story is, don't hold your breath for a full fix within the next 12 months, or even few years if they continue the way they have with other area's.

Or... alternative as we had this issue when I lived in London.. complain, then they will give you money off till they sort out the problem.

We managed to get 6 months at over half price even though the issue got resolved in about 3 months...

My advice, complain.. and ask for a discount in the meantime.