My take on virgin media

This is a warning to all those who are thinking of joining virgin media, virgin media employ absolute morons, neanderthal's is a better described term in fact.

I joined virgin on the 19th of December 2015, thinking that they were gonna be better than bt who we were previously on (reason for leaving was they're cons). We had it setup all nice and easy, speed test showed full speed which was 200/12, spot on. The latency however wasn't up to my standard, not in the 100s, but jumped a lot.

Bt provided us with a full 80/20 for some time, until it dropped to 70Mbps with a realistic speed of 65Mbps. Latency on bt however was absolutely outstanding, around 10-12ms at all time to uk servers and only around 20ms to German servers.

Virgin media routing however made me have 35ms to some uk servers... turns out they were routing the traffic outside of the uk and back in... well played, good logic there.

As I continued on through the year impressed by vms speed, i had an outage for 3 days... which i was peed about, when the engineer came i asked him about 300Mbps, he said "its out now, ring up" so that's what i did, big mistake. The dreaded hub 3 was sent to me from hell, this thing is something i wouldn't wipe my [censored] with,let alone give to customers, my latency got worse, the router had a sluggish web ui so i had to get a separate router, which i did and its the nighthawk r7000, fantastic piece of kit. Still didnt help with the latency but wireless range much better.

Anyway as time went on with the 300/20 i was enjoying it. then came mid December of 2016, from there it has only gotten worse, now during the evening i am losing over 150MBps... sometimes im only getting 80Mbps during the evening, when im paying for 300/20. I've spoken to several customer service members and some of which have lied to me. theyve all told me there is nothing wrong in my area and the worst of all was one fellow who told me it was area upgrades because i threatened to leave.

the members of the forum team confirmed my suspicion, it is over utilisation, but heres the catch. Even though im losing over half of my speed every night, depsite complaining so much, i am told "its reaching 80% usage in the area, but its not hitting our threshold". Come again? so theyre telling me they will do nothing at all to help, so i have cancelled and i warn you, do not go with vm, poor latency, disgusting customer service, costly prices and peak time slow downs, thanks for reading

ps- im waiting to be connected with another isp, im not dealing with this rubbish for another year.

Edited by arronlowley (Sat 28-Jan-17 12:56:07)

Unfortunately you're not paying for 300mbps it's up to 300mbps.

"Why do you say 'up to' about speeds?

We use the phrase 'up to' because download speeds are affected by things beyond our control. For example, the website you're on, the number of people online, or your computer's specifications. With Virgin Media, you'll get much closer to the broadband speed you pay for.
"

Even 80 mbps is far faster than most people on fibre get.
Latency has always been worse on VM compared to a BT line.

Yeah Up to is their way of crapping out the commitment, so if you get 3mbps it's still all good to them.

i know its up to.. but if you read what i put, i lose over half during the night, thats not acceptable by any standard, they have to guarantee a min speed, which they do not, every other isp does.

Do they? They have never done that for me. And I used to get 3mbps from 4PM until 1AM 7 and most of the weekend. I know what you mean and how bad it can be. You, like me are doing the right thing and leaving

yeah, an isp by law has to give a minimum speed, virgin dont, therefore if you feel like youre losing too much speed, you can leave without termination fees, as long as you have the proof to back it up.

my next isp has told me, the min speed i should get is 55, if its any less i can leave.

Edited by arronlowley (Sat 28-Jan-17 18:45:37)

Virgin are regulated in the same way everyone else is. The speed you connect at and the actual performance of the connection can be pretty different things. The rules govern the speed you connect to the cabinet / exchange at, not the end to end performance as far as I'm aware.

Sorry to see your performance loss. Going down from 300Mb to 150Mb at peak times isn't great but isn't awful, dropping below 3 figures is a bit much.

What law is it that defines this minimum speed? Asking as I have not heard of it, and somewhat embarrassing if I don't know about a law that guarantees people a minimum speed

The Ofcom Broadband Speed Code of Practice is what your new ISP is using, and the best it will ever do is left you walk from a contract.

But then again Virgin either connects at the speed you want or it does not.. So that's probably why they can get around it..

i dont know the exact law but im sure there is one. when i was with sky and bt, they told me the min line speed i can expect and told me if it drops below it, i can leave without penalty.

the reason for my speed loss is over utilisation, and virgin are telling me its not over the threshold which imho is, you dont lose over half your speed if its not a problem.

edit- i suppose its not a law but something ofcom regulates as you say, why it doesnt apply to virgin i dont know, it should.

virgin was good for me, until a year later, im not sticking by them, id rather less speed and a more reliable connection. also ignition some night i do see double figures, the other night i had 86Mbps.

im probably one of the only people in the area who has 300/20 and i suffer the most and it really isnt fair at all, i should be prioritised, but nope, virgin simply care only about money.

Edited by arronlowley (Sat 28-Jan-17 21:30:47)