Virgin Media Sucks

After an entire weekend with a speed of less than 3 Mbs, on a service that is supposed to be 100 Mbs, I'm absolutely fed up with Virgin's network and poor connection speeds. The usual excuse when I call the is it either the device or the wireless coverage, So its a 6 month old Macbook Air and I test the speed connected to the super hun via ethernet.

I think the best speed I have ver achieved is 17, but most of the time its closer to 7. The other problem is that several or more times a week the service just drops completely.

To add insult to injury juts received notice that the price of service will increase in the new year.

Anyone have any idea as to how to resolve this? I can't think of another product or service you could not cancel if it only delivered a small fraction of what you were paying for.

Jim

You mean Virgin sucks in your area.

I've never got below 157Mb on a speedtest and seen any rise in latency whatever time of the day, been a customer the past 2 years.

I'm based in Belfast thouigh.

The price increase means you can cancel without penalty if you want to, the letter/email you got should set this out clearly.

What's odd is them blaming the device/wireless if you're connecting via a wired connection and getting poor speeds. On the few occassions I've had issues they've always asked me to use a wired connection to test before doing further trouble shooting/arranging an engineer visit.

In reply to a post by jimb58:

Anyone have any idea as to how to resolve this? I can't think of another product or service you could not cancel if it only delivered a small fraction of what you were paying for.

You can leave, no ones forcing you to stay with Virgin.

I used to have NTL/Virgin in my old house, never had any problems. These days am with BT as no cable here. Speed is not wonderful but its consistent.

So its a 6 month old Macbook Air

Try installing WiFriedX. Mac networking basically doesn't work.

In reply to a post by keith969:

In reply to a post by jimb58:

Anyone have any idea as to how to resolve this? I can't think of another product or service you could not cancel if it only delivered a small fraction of what you were paying for.

You can leave, no ones forcing you to stay with Virgin.

I used to have NTL/Virgin in my old house, never had any problems. These days am with BT as no cable here. Speed is not wonderful but its consistent.

Have the same issues here in Derby, 200 Mbps product and 4 Mbps in the evenings if you are lucky. No alternative available either, so its put up or become an off grid spoon whittler. Been like this since install in March 15 and each month they just say 'Yes we know there is a problem and it will be reviewed next month and here is £12.50 off your bill'

Not the best way to run an business. Come back Openreach - all is forgiven!

In reply to a post by Sark:

So its a 6 month old Macbook Air

Try installing WiFriedX. Mac networking basically doesn't work.

Mac networking works fine for me - 2 Macbook Pros running Yosemite, 1 IPad, 1 IPhone. all running off a HH5, no need for some third party software.

That's great.

Sorry to hear your problem. My Virginmedia is rock solid all day every day at 156Mbs. I guess it must be to how popular the service is elsewhere.

Its because of threads like this and past experience with congestion that i will keep my 80Mb Plusnet line

Still rock solid:

[IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/4933750122.png[/IMG]

[IMG]http://www.pingtest.net/result/136408913.png[/IMG]

In reply to a post by J_Walsh:

Its because of threads like this and past experience with congestion that i will keep my 80Mb Plusnet line

Still rock solid:

[IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/4933750122.png[/IMG]

[IMG]http://www.pingtest.net/result/136408913.png[/IMG]

Might be due to the fact that I'm sure the area in which your tests indicate is a Virgin Media test network. Don't they have that test estate in Ashford?!

Edited by Bryer (Mon 21-Dec-15 16:39:25)

Not too sure on that. To be fair the Internet is not perfect but for downloading and the odd bit of gaming is fine.
Line does suffer on the BQM from jitter and pings are no where near the plusnet line:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/4b7b64a1a7f...

Virgin:

C:\Users\Jon>tracert google.co.uk

Tracing route to google.co.uk [216.58.208.67]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 26 ms 12 ms 16 ms cpc3-tonb3-2-0-gw.croy.cable.virginm.net [92.238.63.1]
3 18 ms 11 ms 17 ms croy-core-2a-xe-803-0.network.virginmedia.net [81.96.228.117]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 29 ms 15 ms 11 ms brnt-bb-1a-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.254.42.98]
6 14 ms 16 ms 14 ms tclo-ic-2-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.250.14.202]
7 21 ms 12 ms 20 ms 72.14.198.97
8 18 ms 18 ms 24 ms 209.85.255.76
9 13 ms 16 ms 9 ms 216.239.51.233
10 17 ms 18 ms 27 ms lhr14s27-in-f3.1e100.net [216.58.208.67]

Trace complete.

Plusnet:

C:\Users\Jon>tracert google.co.uk

Tracing route to google.co.uk [212.56.71.170]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms lo0.10.Central10.ptn-bng02.plus.net [195.166.130.190]
3 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms irb.10.PTW-CR01.plus.net [84.93.249.1]
4 7 ms 7 ms 6 ms ae2.ptw-cr02.plus.net [195.166.129.5]
5 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms ae1.pcl-cr02.plus.net [195.166.129.3]
6 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms ggc02.plus.net [212.56.71.170]

Trace complete.

I have peaktime slowdowns on virginmedia. Not as bad as you, I'm going to 5Mbps to 15Mbps and generally it's usable.

Have you spoke to them? They flagged my areas as "high utilisation which is service affecting" and offered to bring down my bill to £10 monthly until it gets fixed. I just have to call monthly.

I also went through to retentions who agreed they would let me go free of charge. I can't be bothered with the hassle and not home enough for a BT engineer so sticking it out for now, but they literally let me know without blinking an eyelid. Can't fault their customer service it has been brilliant.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Mon 21-Dec-15 23:04:19)

In reply to a post by jimb58:

After an entire weekend with a speed of less than 3 Mbs, on a service that is supposed to be 100 Mbs, I'm absolutely fed up with Virgin's network and poor connection speeds. The usual excuse when I call the is it either the device or the wireless coverage, So its a 6 month old Macbook Air and I test the speed connected to the super hun via ethernet.

I think the best speed I have ver achieved is 17, but most of the time its closer to 7. The other problem is that several or more times a week the service just drops completely.

To add insult to injury juts received notice that the price of service will increase in the new year.

Anyone have any idea as to how to resolve this? I can't think of another product or service you could not cancel if it only delivered a small fraction of what you were paying for.

Jim

I've been having peak time slowdowns recently in Portsmouth; not much I can do about it though as the landlord covers our internet service.

Then again what do you expect from a stupid company who hardly invests in their infrastructure, increases end-user speeds without network investment and has horrible stingy upstream policies?

If I could get over 70Mbps on FTTC down here, I'd get it in a flash.

Can you get FTTC? If the prices are increasing then you can cancel your connection without penalty as far as I'm aware.

If you can get a good FTTC connection as far as your line is concerned, you will enjoy it far more than a DOCSIS connection due to the way the network works as far as latency and throughput stability are concerned.

Edited by chris6273 (Tue 22-Dec-15 03:15:45)

In reply to a post by chris6273:

Then again what do you expect from a stupid company who hardly invests in their infrastructure, increases end-user speeds without network investment and has horrible stingy upstream policies?

To be fair upstream speeds have always been a bit of an issue for DOCSIS. The shared cable means it has to rely on TDM which is a bit of a pain. It's been getting better with each DOCSIS release but it remains a problem. It's one rare advantage that DSL has in that it's pretty much just a matter of deciding how much bandwidth to assign to each direction. I think I read somewhere that G.FAST might actually allow the ratio to vary on the fly so you get your bandwidth and it gets used for whatever combination of upstream/downstream ratio you need. Now whether BTor/ BTw will offer that facility is a whole other question. It sounds altogether too 'clever' and complicated for them to take it to market. But..LLUOs might do it.

In reply to a post by DrPepper:

Not the best way to run an business. Come back Openreach - all is forgiven!

Oh now, don't get carried away

On G.fast the ratio has to be the same for all the people on a particular node, otherwise it would cause RF chaos.

Reality therefore is that it won't vary from node to node, but just be set-up based on a national set of products.

In reply to a post by DrPepper:

Have the same issues here in Derby, 200 Mbps product and 4 Mbps in the evenings if you are lucky. No alternative available either, so its put up or become an off grid spoon whittler. Been like this since install in March 15 and each month they just say 'Yes we know there is a problem and it will be reviewed next month and here is £12.50 off your bill'

Not the best way to run an business. Come back Openreach - all is forgiven!

So are you saying there is no BT line to you, only Virgin? Seems odd.

In reply to a post by J_Walsh:

Not too sure on that. To be fair the Internet is not perfect but for downloading and the odd bit of gaming is fine.
Line does suffer on the BQM from jitter and pings are no where near the plusnet line:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/4b7b64a1a7f...

Virgin:

C:\Users\Jon>tracert google.co.uk

Tracing route to google.co.uk [216.58.208.67]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 26 ms 12 ms 16 ms cpc3-tonb3-2-0-gw.croy.cable.virginm.net [92.238.63.1]
3 18 ms 11 ms 17 ms croy-core-2a-xe-803-0.network.virginmedia.net [81.96.228.117]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 29 ms 15 ms 11 ms brnt-bb-1a-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.254.42.98]
6 14 ms 16 ms 14 ms tclo-ic-2-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.250.14.202]
7 21 ms 12 ms 20 ms 72.14.198.97
8 18 ms 18 ms 24 ms 209.85.255.76
9 13 ms 16 ms 9 ms 216.239.51.233
10 17 ms 18 ms 27 ms lhr14s27-in-f3.1e100.net [216.58.208.67]

Trace complete.

Plusnet:

C:\Users\Jon>tracert google.co.uk

Tracing route to google.co.uk [212.56.71.170]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms lo0.10.Central10.ptn-bng02.plus.net [195.166.130.190]
3 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms irb.10.PTW-CR01.plus.net [84.93.249.1]
4 7 ms 7 ms 6 ms ae2.ptw-cr02.plus.net [195.166.129.5]
5 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms ae1.pcl-cr02.plus.net [195.166.129.3]
6 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms ggc02.plus.net [212.56.71.170]

Trace complete.

Croydon is one of the best nodes in the South of England, along with Bromley (where it all started). Basildon that covers East Anglia is falling over in the evenings at the moment due to some issues in the Norwich area.

In reply to a post by J_Walsh:

Not too sure on that. To be fair the Internet is not perfect but for downloading and the odd bit of gaming is fine.
Line does suffer on the BQM from jitter and pings are no where near the plusnet line:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/4b7b64a1a7f...

Virgin:

C:\Users\Jon>tracert google.co.uk

Tracing route to google.co.uk [216.58.208.67]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 26 ms 12 ms 16 ms cpc3-tonb3-2-0-gw.croy.cable.virginm.net [92.238.63.1]
3 18 ms 11 ms 17 ms croy-core-2a-xe-803-0.network.virginmedia.net [81.96.228.117]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 29 ms 15 ms 11 ms brnt-bb-1a-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.254.42.98]
6 14 ms 16 ms 14 ms tclo-ic-2-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.250.14.202]
7 21 ms 12 ms 20 ms 72.14.198.97
8 18 ms 18 ms 24 ms 209.85.255.76
9 13 ms 16 ms 9 ms 216.239.51.233
10 17 ms 18 ms 27 ms lhr14s27-in-f3.1e100.net [216.58.208.67]

Trace complete.

Plusnet:

C:\Users\Jon>tracert google.co.uk

Tracing route to google.co.uk [212.56.71.170]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms lo0.10.Central10.ptn-bng02.plus.net [195.166.130.190]
3 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms irb.10.PTW-CR01.plus.net [84.93.249.1]
4 7 ms 7 ms 6 ms ae2.ptw-cr02.plus.net [195.166.129.5]
5 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms ae1.pcl-cr02.plus.net [195.166.129.3]
6 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms ggc02.plus.net [212.56.71.170]

Trace complete.

i came from bt infinity to virgin media, i did so because i wanted better speed and better latency, well i got one but not the other. On bt we were connected at 80/20 until bt cut us off and then when they reconnected us we had lost 14Mbps and they wouldnt sort it...

ping on virgin isnt that clever tbh, its not as good as my uncles who lives 2 miles away, he gets an average of 10ms, this is what mine look like, virgin just isnt consistent

https://gyazo.com/d325f33490f3733f8f3ea77569611380

https://gyazo.com/133a2b4fd29ca213e4cef53a5fb6b6fc

Edited by arronlowley (Tue 22-Dec-15 13:11:53)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by DrPepper:

Not the best way to run an business. Come back Openreach - all is forgiven!

Oh now, don't get carried away

If and when Openreach Fibre the cab I am leaving VM, would rather have a steady 80 Mbps or less connection. See other post to more info!

In reply to a post by DrPepper:

If and when Openreach Fibre the cab I am leaving VM, would rather have a steady 80 Mbps or less connection. See other post to more info!

To be honest I probably would as well. I have no need of the high speeds that VM offers (nor I suspect do most people) but I do want a consistent service and aside from a couple of wobbles earlier this year that's what I've always got from xDSL based ISPs.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 22-Dec-15 13:53:47)

In reply to a post by keith969:

In reply to a post by DrPepper:

Have the same issues here in Derby, 200 Mbps product and 4 Mbps in the evenings if you are lucky. No alternative available either, so its put up or become an off grid spoon whittler. Been like this since install in March 15 and each month they just say 'Yes we know there is a problem and it will be reviewed next month and here is £12.50 off your bill'

Not the best way to run an business. Come back Openreach - all is forgiven!

So are you saying there is no BT line to you, only Virgin? Seems odd.

Yes there is now however when I moved in at the being of the year it was either VM with a 14 day install time or BT at sub 2 Mbps and an estimated 5 month install time. Even if I waited for Openreach to cable, sub 2 Mbps is a joke when the other Openreach cabs across the main road from this development have fibre

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, if Openreach do install Fibre, I am leaving VM as the customer service quoting this thread 'sucks'. As I am typing this I have just ran a speed test and my 200 Mbps service is currently running at 97.81 Mbps down and 11.36 Mbps up. If it was a normal week, when everyone is at work etc. it does reach full speed during the day. Once 16:00 comes, it peaks out at around 4 Mbps and an average 800 ms latency!

Best part is that I am not talking about some out in the middle of no-where exchange, this is Peartree in Derby City. I hate the fact that I have no choice and have to either put up with substandard VM service or very slow ADSL compared to todays standards and forget streaming etc.

I have currently got the Christmas 200 GB EE SIM to 'bypass' the issue as a work round with the £12.50 saved this month that VM have refunded.

Indeed, same here. I don't really see any gain going from ADSL at 15Mb/s to FTTC at 43 Mb/s as I don't stream video etc.

In reply to a post by DrPepper:

Yes there is now however when I moved in at the being of the year it was either VM with a 14 day install time or BT at sub 2 Mbps and an estimated 5 month install time. Even if I waited for Openreach to cable, sub 2 Mbps is a joke when the other Openreach cabs across the main road from this development have fibre

BT with a 5 month install time? again seems odd. Even in a rural village it took 4 weeks for phone and bb here.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by chris6273:

Then again what do you expect from a stupid company who hardly invests in their infrastructure, increases end-user speeds without network investment and has horrible stingy upstream policies?

To be fair upstream speeds have always been a bit of an issue for DOCSIS. The shared cable means it has to rely on TDM which is a bit of a pain. It's been getting better with each DOCSIS release but it remains a problem. It's one rare advantage that DSL has in that it's pretty much just a matter of deciding how much bandwidth to assign to each direction.

It's not just the upstream bandwidth that I'm referring to, it's the policies which are also placed on the bandwidth. Virgin are still using policies whereby you get throttled if you upload over a certain amount in a day depending on what package you are on; this is a thing of the past with most DSL ISPs.

Then again if you can't get the speeds in the first place, there is no way you are going to exceed the nightly threshold .

Will definitely be interesting to see how G.FAST plays out!

In reply to a post by keith969:

BT with a 5 month install time? again seems odd. Even in a rural village it took 4 weeks for phone and bb here.

Yes, builders had told Openreach the duct was not in and they estimated 6 months. The worse part it turned out my part of the development did have duct in and if someone had come out and looked in the joint boxes they would have found they could provide service.

I would trade your infinity 2 connection any day for my s**** VM connect.

Edited to correct my lousy spelling.

Edited by DrPepper (Tue 22-Dec-15 19:40:15)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

I think I read somewhere that G.FAST might actually allow the ratio to vary on the fly so you get your bandwidth and it gets used for whatever combination of upstream/downstream ratio you need. Now whether BTor/ BTw will offer that facility is a whole other question. It sounds altogether too 'clever' and complicated for them to take it to market. But..LLUOs might do it.

Openreach will be running the G.fast hardware. LLUOs would need to deploy their own DSLAMs to have that level of control.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Openreach will be running the G.fast hardware. LLUOs would need to deploy their own DSLAMs to have that level of control.

What, you mean go back to actually unbundling the local loop?

Jim,

I understand this so well ! I was a virgin customer for 2 years. I regret extending my contract after the first year. the connection was not reliable for a long time. End December I called them and discovered that my contract would expire on 7th of jan. they told me I need to call back after that time. So I called them on the 7th and asked them if I can still have my internet going until the 13th. They said it was possible and they also said that I only will pay until the 13th, but I have to call back at that date. So I did, but on the 13th , I had this awfull woman on the line who kept on moaning about that she could not understand why I left and kept on asking the same question why I was going to another provider. after telling her the same reason 4 times I was fed up and irritated. I told her that I just want to cancel the whole thing and whatever she was going to say had no influence on my decisision. Then the strange part came, she told me that I had to pay until the end of the month !! I told her that her college said something else, but she did not care about that at all ! They are just lying in your face !!! ridiculous and would not recommend virgin to anyone !!!

Repeated post!

I was dissatisfied with the upto 78MB service from Plusnet, having discovered that as I was at the end of the copper (and aluminium) cable from the fibre cabinet, my max dl speed was about 35-40MB.

So, bit the bullet, and joined the wonder that it Virgin Media.

Advertised dl speed: 100MB

Actual speed at 9am: 111MB (Great!)

Actual speed at 9pm: 2MB (Virgin SUCKS!)

Complianed, given £10 credit for this month, and told things should improve after 3 Feb. I will not be holding my breath.

Seems to be a common problem in Virgin Area 20 (Greater Manchester).caused by oversubscription. So good of them to point that out before taking my money!

I am in Area 20 and I get my contracted speeds 24/7. I think you will find congestion is confined to a smaller number of customers.

If you do want to leave, virginmedia let me leave due to congestion. I just spoke with retentions, took at most 10 minutes before they said I was free to go elsewhere.

Once you are diagnosed as a high utilisation area, which is service affecting - and a discount is applied to your account, they can see there is an issue and retentions are UK based.

Without hardly any quibble they let me go, I am now on TalkTalk which touch wood has been max throughput 24/7 & surprisingly the fault I did have was raised at 11PM and fixed at 11AM next day so can't complain too badly about the CS.

The best decision I ever made was to leave VM, it would go too slow to do almost anything and the pings could hit the 100s.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 28-Jan-16 00:47:16)

In reply to a post by fadesbane:

Complianed, given £10 credit for this month, and told things should improve after 3 Feb. I will not be holding my breath.

Good luck with that, as I've mentioned there is no real choice here, either very slow ADSL (~2Meg) or VM. Took VM as it was the only 'logical' choice at the time as BT were quoting months before they could install a line.

Noticed problem with utilisation straight away, reported it in March 15, told May, then June, then July and I'm sure you get the picture. Last date was yesterday (27th Jan 16) and still nothing done. Its actually getting worse now as even web pages won't load in the evening.

I am thinking of knocking on doors of homes who have VM (most people on this estate with it being new) and asking them if they are having problems in the evening and have they reported it. Let them know VM is very willing to give refunds and also let them know I've been talking to Hyperoptic who are interested in cabling if there is enough support.

Well I'm in area 06, and the utilisation got to the point where it couldn't be used of an evening. However recently some serious backend work in my local area has resolved the problems.

When I spoke to retentions they had advised me that the majority of known utilisation problems would be irradicated when the VIVID upgrades happen in your area. So might be worth logging onto the My Virgin Media area of the website to see if you have a near or far activation date.

Area Code is no use so far as congestion is concerned it is almost synonymous with a county. Congestion affects more like a postcode's area (first part of postcode that is). Though that isn't to say that two people in the same postcode are definitely going to be connected the same part of the VM network and hence have the same experience.

Shared nature of the DOCSIS side and if people have a few others creating an Internet archive at home and sharing it too then things can be messy

Some also see the unlimited label as a wasteful if they are not pulling maximum speed 24/7

In reply to a post by Daemon66:

Area Code is no use so far as congestion is concerned it is almost synonymous with a county. Congestion affects more like a postcode's area (first part of postcode that is). Though that isn't to say that two people in the same postcode are definitely going to be connected the same part of the VM network and hence have the same experience.

The point I was making is that VM are stating that Vivid upgrades should resolve utilisation issues as they are bringing on more capacity at the same time.

Edited by Bryer (Thu 28-Jan-16 10:44:55)

I get that, however you wouldn't want to drive a Ferrari flat out all the time... could get expensive.

Virgin Media speeds when you look at the trend over time appear to have a cycle at the national level (https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/ and click the orange cable button)

A rise for a couple of quarters then a dip and then a recovery suggesting the speed upgrades and improvements do have an effect, but the cycle is regular.

If you look at a smaller area like e.g. Crawley https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/index.php?area... the effect is more pronounced.

I have had Virgin media for several years, and have always been pleased with the speed and service, it is never less than 100 Mbps. I live in Leeds.