High latency and packet loss - VM contract

I'm have pretty awful service on my VM 100Mbit service for many months now - see BQM below. Causes problems with on-line meetings and presenting webinars, to point where i'm tethering to iPhone 4G do that stuff during working hours. Trying to report fault with VM so far goes nowhere because their automated tests report I have service and just suggest rebooting modem. Can't get through to them on the phone.

I'm wondering, in the experience of those here, is this level of service enough to allow me out of contract, i've about a year to go. I figure my area is just oversubscribed and i'll have to wait for them to do an upgrade, with no idea of when that might be.

Thanks!

My Broadband Ping

Your BQM shows a typical over-utilisation footprint.

I had Virgin a few months ago and was suffering the effects of oversubscription. My BQM graphs would go crazy high from 8 am to 10 pm and return to normal from 2 am to 8 am.
This was a sign my area was not handling well the number of subscribers during working hours.

Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do. Virgin might give you an expected fix date, but in my experience, they will just set up a new date when the original deadline expires.
From what I have read on Virgin's customer forums, there is not much incentive for Virgin to fix oversubscription problems at the moment, as it is costly to do so and they are probably waiting for the lockdown to be over and usage levels returning to normal.

I've decided to change providers and moved to a "slower" Openreach FTTC connection. Although I am now getting 69 down / 14 up (compared to the 200/20 from Virgin), my pings are steady low all day and no signs of packet loss.

Below I copy Andruser helpful post in Virgin Community Forums about the options for leaving VM:

If you're not in a fixed term contract that's easy enough, otherwise you will need to raise a formal complaint (online form in My Virgin Media), asking for release from contract without penalty under the Ofcom Fairness Commitments (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2019/broadband-and-phone-firms-put-fairness-first), of which Paragraph 4 is the most relevant. If you go down that route, make sure you ask for release from contract without penalty, and state that if the company will not agree to that the immediate issue of a deadlock letter. You would then escalate the matter to CISAS (https://www.cedr.com/consumer/cisas/), the industry arbitration scheme (and in that case add on a request for compensation for the poor service and the delay in release from contract.

Those Ofcom Commitments have Virgin Media's acceptance, so in theory this should all be simple. In practice I have little confidence that they are routinely applied, so you may find that any complaint is not well handled, and despite the commitments, VM refuse to release you. But CISAS will very probably get stuck in and hold the company to account.

Edited by srkain (Mon 01-Mar-21 18:41:41)

In reply to a post by Davfox:

Trying to report fault with VM so far goes nowhere because their automated tests report I have service and just suggest rebooting modem. Can't get through to them on the phone.

Forget the phone, use the forum. Post on the forum, and eventually a moderator will get to you. They can organise an engineer to come out and see if this is specific to your connection, or if its an area problem.
https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Broadband/ct-p/...

Edited by jchamier (Mon 01-Mar-21 18:39:24)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Davfox:

Trying to report fault with VM so far goes nowhere because their automated tests report I have service and just suggest rebooting modem. Can't get through to them on the phone.

Forget the phone, use the forum. Post on the forum, and eventually a moderator will get to you. They can organise an engineer to come out and see if this is specific to your connection, or if its an area problem.
https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Broadband/ct-p/...

I don't think this is good advice.

It's easy to get through on the phone, you just wait if it's in the daytime or try calling near closing time for a faster answer time.

In the time I've had no moderator response on the forum, I've had three separate phone calls and two engineer visits.

In reply to a post by mikehiow:

In the time I've had no moderator response on the forum, I've had three separate phone calls and two engineer visits.

I've had exactly the opposite experience last summer, the forum arranged an engineer about 12 hours after posting, whilst I was still trying to get through on the phone.

I guess try both !

I've spent well over 90 minutes on the phone recently trying to get anywhere with VM and its been painful.

I've exactly the same issue, I have to reboot the modem daily (have it in modem mode), they sent me a new one which I swapped last week which I was supposed to be able to just swap but they hadn't done their bit in the background (another 90 minutes on hold).

I had to reboot 3 times in 24 hours yesterday to get anywhere, I cannot move to a BT offering as its ADSL with a max of about 4mb available to me, I could stay on 4G but when I'm connected for work it eats through data.

On another site my power levels have been checked so has to be a local issue on the network.

To be honest the say I can leave VM for something connected on the BT network regardless weather its a 80mb connection it will be more stable.

In reply to a post by MattL:

On another site my power levels have been checked so has to be a local issue on the network.

Check the logs as well as the power levels. They may provide a clue.

My power levels were fine, but I had a high number of T3 and lot of T4 events which they traced down to the tap in the local cabinet. (T4 are bad). When the sun hit the cabinet the metal expanded, and I was constantly disconnected. Often for hours at a time.

There was no problem with my Hub 3 and no problem with the cable from my home to the cabinet, just the cabinet itself is 30 years old, and the elements had got to it.

The forum team raised the ticket, the first engineer moved me to a new tap, but the second time I reported the issue, the senior engineer came out and told me the above, and he had to put me on a much stronger tap, but use attenuators at both ends.

He was in the cabinet a good 40 minutes before he came back to my end to check signals.

I have plenty of T3 time outs, when I can get on the forum (wont register) I will raise this.

You would of thought this would of been picked up the several times I've spoken to them and a modem swap out. Clearly just reading from a script.

Thanks for spotting that got something to go to them with now.