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.