What is the Cable experience like

How would you rate the service and customer support?

to me not particurly great.

its a big postcode lottery. VM is great when it works (or used to be before the shaping stuff) but if something like congestion occurs you could well be with it for many months if not permanently.

My experience with CS has been OK but I've only called a few times and always got the UK. You will find plenty of horror stories.

My speeds in general are OK now although initially were a bit ropey. My upstream is constantly down on the headline rate and I certainly don't get my 20Mbps down 24x7.

I'd say that right now is not a good time to sign up though as there are big changes afoot with the introduction of shaping which could make VM a place to avoid or alternately could be OK. The other thing to consider is that the price of 50Mbps for new customers was reduced from £28 to £25 with no fanfare and no mention whether or not this would also apply to existing customers. It could even be a pricing error on the website. Anyway I'd say it's definitely worth sitting on your hands for a while to see how things pan out - certainly if you sign up at some given price and it drops a week or so later I doubt VM will drop your contracted price until at least your year is up.

In reply to a post by kwikbreaks:

The other thing to consider is that the price of 50Mbps for new customers was reduced from £28 to £25 with no fanfare and no mention whether or not this would also apply to existing customers. It could even be a pricing error on the website. Anyway I'd say it's definitely worth sitting on your hands for a while to see how things pan out - certainly if you sign up at some given price and it drops a week or so later I doubt VM will drop your contracted price until at least your year is up.

Is it just me that can't see a price for the 50Mb upgrade for existing customers?

If you look at the "Payment" section, it looks like it's £13.49 if you have a phone and a paper bill but I think that's the price if you *don't* pay by direct debit.

But £13.49 + £11.99 = £25.48 seems too good to be true?

(I'm currently paying £31.99 for 20Mb/s and a basic phone. Jeez, I'd been forking out £25.50 for years just for 4Mb, and then 10Mb.!)

If you log in to My VM than take the "upgrade my broadband" link you will get a page that says,...

Pick your new package

The price you pay for broadband is dependent on your existing package and may differ from the prices below. Prices quoted are for customers with a Virgin Phone line.

Your existing package is Virgin Media broadband Size XL.
Upgrade to Virgin Media broadband: Size XXL from £28.00 a month

or at least I do on 20Mbps and still in first year.

I'm not sure if the £28 just hasn't been updated to £25 like the main 50Mbps info page or if they'd want £28 (which with the other page showing £25 would be in their dreams in my case).

Well I'm on virgin 50mbit and get insane speeds, I used to get about 3.4Mbit from my old copper phone line and now I get 50mbit, soon to be 100, I don't know how you can argue with that.

I've never really needed customer services, the line went in and has been up most of the time, I think there was only 1 outtage and I called up and they said they were working on it and later on it was back on.

As I understand it there are some areas where VM is a bit more congested traffic wise so speeds can be slower, VM do seem to upgrade these areas eventually but as others have said It can be a bit of a postcode lottery.

If thats all what is holding you back is there any kind of cancellation fee time with VM that allow you to try their service and then cancel without charge in the first X many days? Cos i'd go with that if you're unsure of speed in your area.

50Mbit is night and day with anything I've ever used, crazy fast.

In reply to a post by wingco1:

How would you rate the service and customer support?

service = 10/10

customer support = 10/10

50Mb has 24/7 uk support on a free phone no...so you dont have to deal with the offshore dept...

now this is just my opinion regarding the service side of things...100% happy here with it,but as others have said there can be areas that dont seam to get a service that they are entirely happy with..

but all in all it does what it says on the tin for me..

Edited by djfunkdup (Sat 06-Nov-10 09:46:57)

Too early to say Broadband wise... as everything has just worked... Speeds are v good even on the 10mb basic... not noticed any slowdowns even after Son No had downloaded most of the demos on XBox Live in quick succession....

did have recourse to call support when ITV 1 HD started to pop up "you are not authorised to watch this channel" and then freezing... got through quite quickly and was advised to turn the box off and turn back on after going through a few settings... Being lazy I switched off at the mains which promptly cut me off having turned off the cordless phone at the same time... what was impressive was that 20 seconds later my mobile rang from the same CS guy to continue the conversation and see if the fault had rectified... so 10/10 on that basis for service so far...

I have had the 50mb for over a year now i think, and it has been faultless in my area!
never had to call customer service either so i am afraid i can not comment on that.

I had a few problems when I first got it installed as my power levels were way out, took 3 engineer visits to sort out. Having said that, I sorted all of that out through the VM 50mb forum and the tech guys on there were spot on.

Once I got that sorted my speeds were pretty good, and my newsgroups were consistent at between 5-6mbps. However, now that traffic shaping has been introducted my newsgroup speeds are very unstable, but do still reach up to 4mbps. during the shaping periods.

On the browsing side of things, I've only ever been able to download a file from a website at nearly 5mbps, and that was at 1am in the morning. My downloading from website speeds are normally around 3-3.5mbps, dipping as low as 500kbps occassionaly.

As for online gaming, I have my PS3 connected to the router wirelessly, not real problems with online gaming and downloads from PSN clock about 2.5mbps.