Does anyone hate Virgin Media?

[BUFF]

Originally Posted by cauldcoats

Never ever use Virgin Media! You will be locked into services and be completely unable to get out of them. I subscribed to a broadband package and after many many months after cancellation they are still sucking my bank account dry.

just tell the bank to cancel your DD ...

Yes, they have a somewhat circular cs system but you can usually get there in the end especially if you can get an UK call centre rather than India.

[luksi]

i work for TalkTalk but sing virgin medias praises.. their broadband rocks ! 20mb throttle

[Jay]

you do all know that NTL / Telewest have just rented the VM name? They are the same company behind the name.

[chunut]

^ Where did you here that from, Jay? I'd always assuumed that NTL/Telewest were no longer... that it was all Virgin now. (At least that's what the Virgin execs are telling us!)

[SuicidaL]

Originally Posted by chunut

^ Where did you here that from, Jay? I'd always assuumed that NTL/Telewest were no longer... that it was all Virgin now. (At least that's what the Virgin execs are telling us!)

if i remember rightly, after the merger nthell/tw brought out/in virgin mobile. thus the name change to be more customer friendly as the virgin name is as nthell was mud.....................................

.......................hasn't really worked that well has it chaps

[BUFF]

NTL/Virgin bought Virgin Mobile & as part of the deal Branson got a big chunk of shares in VM & VM got the rights to use the Virgin name.

[acrobat]

I have Virgin Broadband, and SKY+ TV.

Virgin:
I really like them. My speeds are top notch. I am getting OVER what I should be getting. Not by a huge amount.. but my enough for me to want to hug them all. Everyone I know fusses over super high speed this and that. I just went with the 2mb connection and its blinding. It has never once cut out (unlike my last ISP - BulldogDSL), and its always running at maximum speed - which like i said, is a bit over what it should be.

I have only had a bit of dealings with them on the phone, and they where very good to me. I ordered it once, and then I cancelled my order (I wont explain why - but it was nothing to do with Virgin). I got my money back pronto. Then I ordered it again, and it was all signed up and installed and sorted great.

I get all this for a flat rate of 10 quid a month.... not 10 quid plus VAT and stupid made up charges and things carried over from a past life.. but a proper 10 quid flat. For that I'm really grateful. Good 2mb broadband for 10 quid, and hassles. Thought I would explain that because a lot of people have a lot of trouble with them, so I thought I would explain that I don't.

SKY+:
Not very good. The actual control you have over the programs and stuff, is all very bog standard. You can record stuff, and delete stuff, and thats about the limit of its capability. You can't queue up stuff to watch, or move the items around in the planner to put all your recorded Simpsons episodes together or anything like that. And you can't cut out the adverts from your recorded movies etc.. Worst of all, you can't get anything off the bloody thing, which annoys me no end. It comes with a USB connection on it, but it just doesn't let you access it. I bought a DVD-RW for my TV so I can get stuff off the Sky+ box, although some of the stuff is copy protected. (Channel 5 seem to copy protect pretty much everything, so do a few other channels).

I've had it a while now, and its starting to go on the blink. Pausing live TV only works half of the time. And playing back stuff that I've recorded often freezes, so I have to unplug the entire box and let it boot itself back up again. I'm outside my warrenty too, so I would have to buy another box. I don't think I will continue my subscription. Most of the stuff I wanted it for, isn't very good anyway.


p.s. I think broadband speed has a lot to do with other people in your area on the same service. I think I might have just got lucky because not many people round here have internet at all.

[clown]

I hate Virgin media. Had to pay £1600 for cable TV ducting even though I didn't want it when my house was built. Wife and kids want cable now but VM wont give me a cable service because my postcode isn't in the system.

[MarcLister]

£1600?!

[clown]

Originally Posted by MarcLister

£1600?!

Yeah I was told building a new house in this area you had to have the cable TV company install their ducting so I got another manhole cover in my drive and garden! I've got water, BT, soakaway x 3, sewerage, cable TV...........

To be honest £1600 was not a showstopper in building the new home and not as overpriced as some of the other stuff. Just everyone else has delivered with just Virgin Media leaving a bad taste in the mouth.

[whisperer]

Both homes in Bristol and Essex (uni and family home) had NTL and got moved to Virgin, no idea on internet speeds, but in Essex, the only problem found is that the TV keeps blacking out for a couple of seconds and then coming back. It is uneblievably annoying when you're trying to watch a program and over the course of an hour it happens at least 10 times.

In Bristol, we had the modem stolen a couple of months ago. So we rang Virgin, who need you to enter the home phone number (being a student house we opted not to have a phone as everyone has mobiles - problem to start), then we explained to them it had be stolen and could we have a new modem, it would take 2-3 weeks to come through (but we still had to pay for interenet). So, slight annoyance that they couldn't get a new modem out sooner than half a month away but on saying we would like to cancel and get a new contract as the modem would come sooner they informed us we'd have to pay for the rest of the contract for the year. so we went internetless for 2+ weeks while paying for it.

Overall, its nothing major, but both situations have made me a little wary of what we are paying for, especially because in both places On demand doesn't seem to work, ever! Having said that, I have no idea what any other provider is like, other than NTL...

[Kramer11]

This new V1 channel that apparently will be available on freeview is interesting me very much. Anyone know when it'll be available?

[Tarffie]

Monday.

[stroberaver]

My experience with Virgin Media is absolutely electrifying these days.

Quite literally.

My old clunky Pace STB died last week, engineer came round this morning to replace it with what turned out to be a newer Scientific Atlanta box. It all seemed fine, worked ok and the engineer left. Shortly after I decided to hook up the DVD player to the pass-through scart socket on the back of the STB to see if it would work (my DVD player wouldn't pass through properly on the old Pace box).

Touching the bare end of a scart cable that has the other end plugged into the vcr scart socket on the STB gives me an electric shock! Touching the connector on the metal casing of my dvd player (when it is plugged in and earthed, naturally!) causes sparking and even a bit of arcing. The STB is obviously passing power down the SCART cables!! And here's me thinking a SCART cable was for signals, not power.

Needless to say I rang back this evening and my report will be put through as a complaint, the department for which will call me back as soon as I get back from a business trip next week.

Good thing I haven't got a pacemaker.

[DrATty]

My 2Mbit connection has become slower and slower over the last couple of months. The deterioration has been so slow as to go unnoticed for a while but the tests I've saved show that I rarely get 1Mbit and sometimes dial-up would be as good.
The TV channels I want are on FreeView so I'm off. TeleWest had the right idea. Virgin wrecked the service.
By the way, if you want to leave Virgin, contact BT for a transfer of phone service. Virgin phone you that way. They made an offer that I'm considering too.

[regaleagle]

Ive been arguing with them for 3 months about not receiving bills and they have finaly figured out that they had inputted incorrect details for me and credited my account by £95 as an apology. Took a long time to get resolved but if anyone is having trouble with virgin just keep giving them hell and send them a written complaint and viola 28 days later you should be sorted.