Virgin Media(!!!)

OK, long story short(ish), I live in Central London, Openreach installed a cabinet at the end of the road in 2012 and they have yet to put FTTC there and wont do anytime soon (according to their website). BT screwed up my broadband prior, for whatever reason, it went from 18meg (which was ok) to 6meg and also changed my phone number as a consolation prize. But they forgot to tell me about the phone number until I wasnt receiving any calls.

I told BT to go forth and multiply and tried a couple of other ISPs till I found out I could get VM. Got their 200meg and TV package and all seemed to be OK. I do remember when I had it installed the only VM router I saw on my WiFi was mine and no other in range (unlike now). Then I got a free upgrade to 350meg which was OK too but then I had some major issues. After that (like a fool) i upgraded to the 1gig service which is total overkill for what I need. Its fun but the problems persist.

In 2018 over the Easter weekend, the broadband and TV went down. For 10 days. Irate wouldnt even begin to describe it. I got £25 off my next bill, which was fine but I would have preferred to have my service. After that it started to get flaky. I live in a block of flats so to me it seems that the more people who gets VM, the more flaky the connection.

So there were outages, not on the scale of 10 days, the longest was 2 days but the TV worked. In the past 6 months the packet loss has been all over the place. Last December the packet loss was so bad it was almost unusable, and its continuing now. Some days its fine others (like today) its not.

The real rant is the absolutely rubbish customer service and either not knowing their patchwork network isnt up to the job. Granted, I dont think anyone would have envisaged Covid and the work from home explosion, but they could have done something. I made complaints, but apart from the £25 off my bill, nothing. This is what I feel I have been getting from VM customer service: "Bad service, dont care. No internet, dont care. Dont understand the complaint, dont care.". This is just a flavour of the problems and I've had enough.

G.Network has been laying fibre outside the flat so I might be able to get them soon. Openreach should pull their finger out and finish the job they started in 2012. But in the meantime, I dont care if I am on dial up, I am getting rid of VM as soon as possible. I was with Sky and I dont even remember complaining about them once. So when my contract is up in June, my broadband might be 100 times slower but I wont have to put up with VM and their shoddy customer service.

I appreciate it's been a week, have you followed their own complaints process?

https://www.virginmedia.com/shop/the-legal-stuff/con...

Section 2.

Sounds like my situation literally a year ago for 6 months, its been sorted since and I am now on £21 a month M100 talk weekend calls and fully unlimited sim with VM and it seems to be working at the moment.

If you need support use the forum team, they are the ones that lowered my price because of all the issues.

I know i will be leaving when FTTP arrives in the next 6 months and the contract ends in may, that's unless they offer me gig one with all the other benefits for less than 40 a month. as 40 is equivalent to fibre 500 with TalkTalk which has a higher upload, one of my reasons for wanting the change.

If you do not need the speed of your connection (when you have one) down grade your connection speed to to the slowest fibre speed you will get a price reduction and you may find that connection is more reliable. I did this and I am pleased with the result.

Edited by DRW (Tue 18-Jan-22 16:42:57)

In reply to a post by DRW:

If you do not need the speed of your connection (when you have one) down grade your connection speed to to the slowest fibre speed you will get a price reduction and you may find that connection is more reliable. I did this and I am pleased with the result.

Glad to hear it, not sure why my post was replied to, when I had replied to the OP but never mind.

In reply to a post by CJT:

In reply to a post by DRW:

If you do not need the speed of your connection (when you have one) down grade your connection speed to to the slowest fibre speed you will get a price reduction and you may find that connection is more reliable. I did this and I am pleased with the result.

Glad to hear it, not sure why my post was replied to, when I had replied to the OP but never mind.

Sorry for the late reply, its been a bit of an odd couple of weeks for me. Anyway, having complained at least 10 times in the past 2 years alone, I dont trust them to do the right thing by me. I just dont feel like a valued customer (cheesy I know) and I am paying a lot for this service.

I *may* stay with them as the flat I am in can either have VM or Sky TV on its own, but not both. With no FTTC or FTTP coming anytime soon, 6-10 meg isnt really going to cut it for me. VMs TV service is fine apart from no Sky Atlantic, but thats not a real loss. Plus I couldnt get Sky Q due to the way the place is wired up for Sky (so I have been told by Sky)

Another thought I had was to get Sky Glass and keep VM at the lowest speed. In addition, the junky way the flats were set up for Sky/VM/Freeview is that now I have VM, the aerial socket has been disconnected. I dont know the technical ins and outs, suffice to say its a bodge. So If I do get Sky Glass and the network is down, I will have to fish out my old portable aerial and hope for the best.

But if I do stay with them, the 1gig service is definitely gone.

Having a look at the Hyperoptic website, when I put my postcode in, it comes up they are looking at the building and to be honest, installing any new service in this building wouldnt be the most easiest of tasks. Also the landlords of my flat are not very co-operative in these situations. So whoever installs here will have to deal with that issue.

In retrospect, I seem to have very limited options (i.e. one) for fast broadband at the moment. Its either hold my nose and stay with VM or put up with sub 10meg ADSL.

Have you looked to see if any of the Mobile networks have decent 4G/5G in your area?

Ideally you'd need a recent device (So it has a decent modern chipset) and to run a speedtest on various networks either using prepaid sims or ask a friend who's already on that network.

4G/5G varies massively from area to area, so it could be a non starter or you could find it delivers 100's of Megabits.

In reply to a post by dragon2611:

Have you looked to see if any of the Mobile networks have decent 4G/5G in your area?

Ideally you'd need a recent device (So it has a decent modern chipset) and to run a speedtest on various networks either using prepaid sims or ask a friend who's already on that network.

4G/5G varies massively from area to area, so it could be a non starter or you could find it delivers 100's of Megabits.

Yeah, I have looked into that, the wierd thing is that the 5G signal around here isnt great and the best I can get is about 15meg on a good day although one day last year I did see 100meg for about 5 seconds(!!) then it went down to 15 and I have never seen it that fast since. I'm on EE and my partner is on O2 and there doesnt seem to be any difference in the speed of either network. I have ran a speedtest lots of times on my phone and its goes between 1 to 15meg and nothing better. But I will keep it in mind in the future.