Make yourself heard?

Hi all, for what its worth Virgin Media are sending out an online survey to customers - not sure if all customers have been contacted or not but I thought it'd be worth posting the heads up here in case people want to put a few (common) complaints across..

** With almost NO visibility on how your area might be congested, quality of Service on Virgin Media is a "postcode lottery".. Aren't they embarrased that nearly ALL the posts on their community forums (several hundred pages each!) are of people complaining about speeds, QoS etc?

** Stop trying for headline speeds, invest more in the blimmin' infrastructure instead. Most of the speeds they offer are plenty fast enough - and people can only download so much (even the naughty ones!).. I'm sure however, that all customers would prefer to at least have a consistent service. Traffic management gets you only so far.. an infrastructure that's had decent investment in it is the way to go

** Sort out that Superhub or get a decent replacement in (see Community Forums for just how hacked off their "customers" are)..

I'm sure there are plenty of other complaints that people have.. but the survey (if you're invited) is at least an opportunity to *try* and get heard

The STM thing is a pain, agreed.. however I'd much rather make a comment to them about something that many people have said for a long time.. and that's decent investment in capacity over headline speeds.. If VM did that, then the need for STM would be much less - I doubt there's a sustainable business model that gives customers what they want without the need for some kind of traffic management.. but VM's money grabbing lack of investment in their infrastructure vs customer over subscription is well known and something has to be done to break the cycle otherwise broadband in this country will never improve!

I remember when the double speed announcement was made.. VM paid lip service to the fact that they weren't *just* doubling the speeds but improving their network capacity... a LOT of people posting on their forums cited that as the most important thing and hoped VMs talk of siphoning some of the proposed investment into that upgrade was true...

..now, that talk is virtually non existent and all we hear about are traffic management changes (probably what they had in mind when they talked about improvements beyond just doubling speeds.. but we can but hope they were telling the truth)

Speeds are high enough, now lets widen the pipes!!

Edited by deleted (Tue 17-Apr-12 18:56:11)

In reply to a post by jms_uk:

Speeds are high enough, now lets widen the pipes!!

Speeds are irrelevant other than for willy waving with the local pipes VM use. A single 100Mbps user can take over half of the local capacity that is supposed to serve a couple of hundred and then you simply won't get those headline speeds.

Increasing the maximum possible speed is cheap compared to fattening the pipes. I doubt that VM will invest enough to remain in the broadband business and in 10 years time there will be no VM broadband. There may still be cable of course for those who can't afford FTTP or just want it for TV but I imagine VM will have gone bust and somebody who isn't saddled with £6Bn of legacy debt will have bought the network.

today I got extra downstream channels finally, for the first time in a while I can actually get full download speed in the day, how long will this last for and will I still get full speed this afternoon? hmm.

yes the forums are an embarrassement to VM I am surprised marketing hasnt ordered them shut down yet.

95% posts are congestion related and with a horrid 7 day staff reply turnaround.

Its also bad that VM will only handle limited issues on the forum, things like compensation people told to ring up for.

I had a look at the survey and didnt really see anything relevant to reporting VMs lack of capacity inestment unless I missed something.

There isn't anything specific but if you give a low mark in the 1-10 rating sections, the survey page that follows has a free text section where you can write why you gave that rating...

..so I did

In reply to a post by jms_uk:

There isn't anything specific but if you give a low mark in the 1-10 rating sections, the survey page that follows has a free text section where you can write why you gave that rating...

..so I did

ok ill do same then