Considering Moving From Plusnet To VM

I have two concerns moving to VM.

The first is: I have read complaints on Trust Pilot about the customer service. I wonder how people have found them, in the 'real world'?

The second concern is the install. I have seen down our road a few installs (which maybe Sky and not VM) with trailing wires directly from the road and green trunking running the length of driveways. I would want to connect via Ethernet. Would the cabling enter my property on the first floor where my PC is?
(I am in a semi, with my bedroom facing the road, so this should be fairly easy)?

Many thanks for any feedback.

Just had my install done today , though the cable from the pavement to the house was done last week.
I'm an electrical engineer by trade and quite anal when it comes to doing the job RIGHT.
And to be honest I'm more than impressed by the install, they ran the fibre/coax down my lawn and to be honest i couldnt tell where thet had dug it up.
The engineer , Andrew was really good and positioned the interior connection point where i wanted it and made up the interior coax to the places i had for the modem and TV box.
He even left me 20M of coax and 10 compression RJ6 fittings if i wanted to extend the run.
Can't say anything more than an excellent install.
I know its early days ,but I'm on the 350 Package and i'm speed testing around 370 to 380 mbs .

All good experiences from me also, they brought mine in through the lawn also and you wouldn't of been able to tell, they also let me choose where they brought it in and to place the hub.

I wouldn't trust VM - they are rubbish! Use to be with them before always problem!

Two relatives were with VM. The service itself was OK but one found the steady price rises too much for him as there was no competition. On leaving he had to pay for a new phone line etc.

The other had to leave Oxford for an area without VM coverage. He would have stayed but VM still hit him for well over £200 in termination fees.

Both complained of taking hours on the phone to make the changes. Details from memory but the moral is that once you're in with VM, you're in for keeps -- or a deal of hassle and expense.

I have been with virgin media for a few years and tbh i have found them to be good, however openreach had FTTP installed for our area for mid 2020 so jumped with them, only really went for the faster upload speeds.

In reply to a post by shalom2005:

I have two concerns moving to VM.

The first is: I have read complaints on Trust Pilot about the customer service. I wonder how people have found them, in the 'real world'?

The second concern is the install. I have seen down our road a few installs (which maybe Sky and not VM) with trailing wires directly from the road and green trunking running the length of driveways. I would want to connect via Ethernet. Would the cabling enter my property on the first floor where my PC is?
(I am in a semi, with my bedroom facing the road, so this should be fairly easy)?

Many thanks for any feedback.

I'd be happy to get some pictures of the install they did at my house if you want.

Thanks
Dan

They will generally install their coax wherever you want. Attached to the coax is the Hub box which is their router with 4 Ethernet ports. If you put it into modem mode then port 1 you link to your own router and set it for DHCP. if you buy TV from VM then that also connects to the coax. If you buy home phone this plugs into the Hub.

Some areas of the country the coax comes from a box on your outside wall and they bring fibre to the wall. Majority of areas the coax runs down the street underground to a green connection box.

All good this end.

Been a few service outages over the past 18 months and any time I have had to speak to them it went well.

Speeds have always been fine also.

I made the jump from PlusNet to VM last October when VM installed their FTTP (RFoG) in our area (as part of Project Lightning).

On 350Mb broadband tier, and finding it at around 290mb over WiFi (don't have a hardwired LAN device) I'm pretty happy.

You just have to be on the ball when your initial deal ends to ensure you don't end up paying almost double the initial monthly price. Call wait times can be long - but that does depend on WHEN you call.

Support isn't always great, depends on who answers the call (suppose thats the same with all ISPs).

From an Install perspective, as ours is RFoG, civils guys ran the fibre under the lawn, they do prefer to run straight lines, so wont wiggle around the garden. I had read horrible stories about them leaving cables above ground instead of channeling out the concrete, however that wasnt a problem to those particular civils guys, they channeled out around a foot of concrete path to keep the install clean. They said they would have done a channel down the entire driveway if it was required...

Go-Live day, a local guy came and did a quick survey, asked where I wanted the TV box, but said I wanted the main Router in my Office, this was a bit of extra work for him, but he was happy to oblige, and ran a spur of Coax externally into the lounge (we're in a bungalow) for the TV box. He also left me plenty of spare cable in the office to move the router around as I asked him to.

I don't use the SuperHub 3, its a bit pants, so I'm running my own Router, using the Hub3 in Modem Mode.

We never get any buffering (unless I'm downloading large files), even when streaming multiple HD streams (Prime, CatchUp Services etc).

I'm in Doncaster, so all I would say is that speeds can be affected by network utilisation, so if your area has had VM for a long time, your experience may differ slightly