Virgin Media Sucks

[jimmy]

Just thought I'd share my Virgin Media Sucks thread to warn anyone off this dodgy company.

We've been with NTL cable for years, only the cable internet (we have no tv or phone) and it's always been more or less good. NTL always prevented torrent useage (leave it on without any HTML movement and it would disconnect - leave it on and use the internet at the same time and it's OK..)

Virgin Media took over a while ago and rang many-many times trying to get us to sign up to a new altered package, one with faster connection and limits etc.. but we refused, said we were happy with what we agreed with NTL and it's been fine. Who on earth needs faster than a 4mb connection??? I have no use for faster.

Recently though I noticed we'd been throttled back, so despite paying 25 quid a month for a 4meg connection, after about 300meg of traffic it drops to a 1 meg connection. for 25 quid a month!

Downloading the forum database WAS 300 meg, it's about 100 now after I removed attachments but still - it all adds up and means I hit the imposed limit every single night and can't work on my website properly.

At the top end of the scale, I think Virgin are offering 20meg connections or something ludicrous - what the heck are you going to do with that?
To me its clear Virgin have oversold in a big way and admitted to us that they don't have the capacity - claiming our broadband would speed up soon when they upgraded some 'stuff'.

Just thought I'd share my experiences anyway - Virgin have imposed new terms and conditions on us without notifying us and the service is frankly crap. We're leaving at the end of the month though - thank goodness.

[OldTimer]

Just moved to O2 broadband cannot fault it for £12.50 a month half what i was paying and no bandwidth limits, handy for getting the odd episode of Lost or BSG lol.

And with it being ADSL 2+ its quicker than the ADSL max i was on.

[dave g]

i agree in some ways jimmy.

back in the old days when it was blueyonder/telewest it was spot on,pings to europe were under 10ms and usa around 35-40...now its triple that on a good day!..been with them since broadband first came on the scene which was around 2000 i think?

im only on the £30 a month package which is 2mb BB(fast enough for what i want),phone and tele package and whilst most days its fine i do suffer from alot of timeouts some days etc,altho not had any speed restrictions imposed and i sometimes hammer the torrents for a few days amonth flat out at 240kbs,not been dropped from those yet..he says.

who you switching to?

and why not try the 4 for £40 jimmy...2mb,phone with free weekend calls,tele package and mobile phone sim with so many minutes a month free on it.

dave

[ashleyb4]

We have got BT 26 pound a month we get a free wireless router free bt vision and up to 8mb and no download limit cant argue with that and so far it hasnt gone down. I foudnt he course of my problems to be my wireless stick.

A

[jimmy]

We don't want phones or TV (I'll tell you why when I see you Dave) just broadband - and we used to get 480k a second. I have absolutely no need for anything faster than that for what I do. But now, I mean right now, I am getting 115k and that's the maximum, the limit. It'll drop to 60k or so if I start browsing the web or something.

I really can't use this service any longer - it's terrible.
Not sure what we'll move to tbh, we don't have a phone line for adsl but looks like we'll have to get one.

[showtime]

just ran a speed test on my connection & got a 21ms ping & 6924kbps

i'm with BT, seems quite good but it does seem to keep stopping for 10 seconds or so every now & then when i'm downloading & browsing at the same time

i'll see what speed i get out of the unsecure connection from the B&B over the road

[RogerM]

I have a similar experience with Virgin.

When it was Blueyonder I never had a problem, now I am dogged with problems ... thanks Virgin!!!

The problem is that I am trapped into the Virgin service, there is litterally no other option

I live in a "conservation area" which means we have to maintain a certain look to our house, such as not being able to loose the 70m or so of 6 to 8 foot high hedge (takes some trimming I tell you!!!) and definately no satalite dishes. As the better half loves her yank nonsense on the tele we have no choice, 5 channels of terestrial don't cut it and digital terestrial signal is almost non-existent in my area.

I am on the 20meg connetion and to be honest it's really useful if you have two people trying to watch streaming video on different PCs at the same time (even with the 140 channels of TV there is often nothing on I want to watch so watch stuff on line a lot).

The trick to Virgin is to ring up and complainat every little thing, sometimes I am on the phone to the lack of "customer service" line several times a week and regularly get £10 - £20 a month rebate on my bill ..... at least that makes it bearable!

[DCM]

I must admit, I don't hammer my internet any more (can only download so many movies and keep getting porn instead... honest occifer) but I do get a good service, £45, V+, XXL TV, free evening and weekend calls and 4Mb (soon to be 10).

Do they not do a leased line or similar, might be worth ringing them and INSISTING you speak to Customer Retentions, don't demand, and go from there, might get a better service for the same price, or a reduction in cost.

re:BT.... or BT related ISP, they are just as bad as Virgin, and sometimes worse, especialy if you are swapping from one to another company.

[rocketrob]

seems as if finding a Virgin that Sucks would be a good thing






LOL......sorry, couldn't resist it

[dave g]

im on the WebSTAR EPC2100R2 modem if that helps,i was on the old modem until 6 months ago and that suffered from a lot of timeouts altho it was about 6 yrs old!

i did some downloading about 11 ocklock last night,8+gig of ufc and the average speed was bang on the 2mb speed,however what i have noticed is that if i upload at my max while downloading,my dl speed drops right down to about half.

i too use peer guardian..the isp's block some of the known peer address's i think so this helps,altho not much use in jimmys case except maybe download your stuff at night as said earler until you can find another solution..

dave