For me packet loss was so bad I ended up having to leave VM and find a FTTC supplier.
Some evenings it was over 95% packet loss, you could barely get 100kbits/sec.

Yes I'd agree that only people with a problem are likely to go to the VM forum (or here) to complain about it, but instead of looking at the number of posts as a reflection of their overall service, look at how well you think each problem was resolved by a member of the VM support team.
If you get a fantastic connection, you'll never need to contact them, but if you don't then this might indicate the level of support you can expect and if you would be happy with it.

I'd always find the forum support team to be quite reasonable in following all the threads and trying to investigate where possible, but a lot of the issues for me (and my area) are utilisation based and the stock answer is usually "I have checked your local network segment and I can see that your local UBR was suffering from very high load. If this continues, we will raise this over to our network team for further investigation."

I had VM for just over a year, the first three months were perfect, months 4-6 were terrible with high load, high packet loss. This was then fixed for months 7-9 and then went back to bad again.
In the good periods I could get the full 50mb down / 5mb up on speed tests, which probably makes it feel more disappointing when it doesn't work as you've seen it work so well.

I personally wouldn't use VM again as I need a bit more reliability, but I used to recommend them to everyone (in the NTL branded days - circa 2003/4) and I felt like the only one singing their praises when everyone else said they were awful, so I've been on both sides of the fence.

Don't they still have a trial period where you can cancel if you're not happy in the first month?

Hmmmm

In reply to a post by drws:

I had VM for just over a year, the first three months were perfect, months 4-6 were terrible with high load, high packet loss. This was then fixed for months 7-9 and then went back to bad again.

In reply to a post by drws:

Don't they still have a trial period where you can cancel if you're not happy in the first month?

I think I've spotted a slight flaw in your logic there...

I know, right PITA it was to have it break after the trial period.
Hopefully the OP will have more luck if they go with VM, as some people seem to get a very good connection.

The problem with cable is that it is very very area specific. The local pipes are tiny 200Mbps down in most areas with a maximum of 400Mbps Upstream is just 18Mbps. Those pipes service 200+ users so if you get a torrent freak on the old unlimited 100/10 package using a VPN or otherwise evading the shaping it can be very bad news for all thier neighbours. I'm sure this is why things can go downhill so quickly.

I was going to give VM the elbow but got messed around by Openreach - 3 weeks wait on install which was a no-show and then given a date 3 weeks later so I risked an upgrade to VM XL60 - it was only £2.50 more than 10Mbps and is working OK right now. 12 month contract though so could have been a bad move.

My concern with Openreach was that I left BT for cable because they failed to fix a line fault. Given 3 week lead times on install work where would I stand on faults which I fear could be quite likely.

Thanks for all your responses. What I have garnered is that it's very variable and area
specific; and virigin customer support leaves a lot to be desired. So the critical question is what will the overall level of quality and speed be like down my particular street. I will try to find out but those neighbours I know are not very broadband savvy- to say the least

Just get their IP address and set up a TBB BQM on it.

Also to note, there have been numerous national monitoring programmes based on dedicated hardware that have shown VM to have higher packet loss on average, across the country. This of course, is having taken any personal opinion or "forum complainers" bias out of the equation.

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Also to note, there have been numerous national monitoring programmes based on dedicated hardware that have shown VM to have higher packet loss on average, across the country. This of course, is having taken any personal opinion or "forum complainers" bias out of the equation.

Yes, this is hard data. Samknows is one monitoring programme that has Ofcom involved; there are others.