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O2 and BT less than impressed with Virgin Media's bid to play consumer champion.
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O2 and BT less than impressed with Virgin Media's bid to play consumer champion.
Maybe BT and O2 should start a www.stopthebroadbandcapping.com campaign?
thats what made me leave virgin (along with they're stupidly high prices!) - The only 'con-ing' going on ere is them with their super sky high prices for 20MB+
The other ISP's are capable of providing high speeds - just a shame the cabling / exchange issues hold them back.....
That is laughable. Virgin trying to be the crusader for the consumer! What an utter joke! All O2 need to say is, ''what's our customer satisfaction compared to yours Virgin Media?'' ...nothing else, that would stop VM in their tracks!
That and those two words... traffic management!
This is all crap. Only stupid people will fall for it. Normal people will see through this crap for what it is.
In my experiance with Virgin we have always got the broadband speed that I have been paying for. I don't know a single person that gets the advertised up-to speed on ADSL.Quote:
Originally Posted by usxhe190
Also, I think you have too much faith in the general public.
Number measures quality ==> bigger number, better. Buy the biggest number.
We have seen a similar formula for digital cameras, and to a slightly lesser extent, power supplies.
TBH I know that the headline speed is not the only thing I would need to look at if I was buying ADSL. Equally well, knowing an average speed for an ISP would be pretty pointless as well. So I don't care about this campaign. And have been quite frustrated by the irresponsible coverage that this campaign has recieved by some TV shows. (The Gadget show, I'm looking at you).
I wish i could say the same thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by pipTheGeek
My friend on Virgin atm has had nothing but bad experiences, ranging from broadband only being useable during certain times of the day (usually before 10am and after 12am) and currently, constant packet loss and very poor speeds.
This is all despite promises that they were "looking into the issue" and that it would be "fixed" multiple times on different dates over the course of a month, all of which have improved the service slightly, but nowhere near what was expected.
He's had discounts for the previous month or two, but money back isn't really a substitute for appalling service. Not to mention when he told them that he was considering leaving them for a new provider they told him that he was out of the contract cancellation period (although i'm pretty sure that since their promise of providing broadband never held up, i would have said he'd have a case... but meh).
I used to have Virgin BB and had the nearly quoted speed, but with all the traffic shaping it didn't last long before being chopped down by 3/4... not much about that from them, i'd rather have the upto speed i have now with no shaping or limits than paying loads more for a fraction of the use.
I had to take Virgin because that's all I had installed already and didn't want to pay fees for installation... It's not so bad tbh, I game during the day, my pings seem okay... could be better I guess but I have never in my life had an internet that was amazing, they're all the same, O2/Virgin, always had similar performance results... At least this downloads fast at all times...
Their 100mb package should be interesting to see
This seems a very common story, whenever VM is discussed. People either have no end of trouble with them and never get the speed you should, or you have no problems and get (nearly) the full speed.
People mention their traffic shaping, but I can't say I have ever been very bothered by it. And I'm even less bothered by it now I'm on 50mb.
A friend of mine moved house, from a cabled area to non-cabled and has swapped 20mb (actual 20mb, all the time) for Syk broadband managing about 3mb. He is not impressed with Sky and wishes he could still be a VM customer.
Really? I didn't know that Virgin did a 48 Meg package! :pQuote:
Originally Posted by pipTheGeek
As for speed, I would rather have a 10meg circuit with low latency than a 20meg with high latency. I moved my parents from Virgin after a six week long fault impacted Derby. Even when it was fixed it still was very poor. The response times where appalling, and most modern website such as Google Maps that grab data in the background were simply unusable.
Despite being offer a refund on the weeks affected and given a code to quote to the accounts department, my parents still never got the refund.
Virgin Media network is a whoa of badly connected and manage pipes, with poor proxy servers, bad traffic shaping, bandwidth throttling, and bloody poor customer management. To even talk about there problem and network management is a contradiction in terms, as during the aforementioned six week problem you would call customer service to get an update on the incident only to be told that no incident existed and there was no issue with the connection in Derby. Strange when one of the two pipes that connect Derby to the Virgin network was working, and the other had issues as well.
Parents, are well please with their "faster" line on BE, despite getting only 10 of the 24, it runs and responds so much "faster" than the 20 of Virgin Failure.
Couldn't agree more - heck, the comments on this article bear this out. Of which speaking, I'm going to nail my colours to the mast - I'm a long-time VM subscriber (had them when they were BlueYonder - miles better) and I telework, so I use my VM BB line at least 5 days per week for 8 hours or more. In all the time I've had them I've had only two days of outage. Although I was having terrible trouble with the speed about two years ago - sometimes it'd be full speed and then five minutes later you'd be down to 56k speeds. However, this stopped and I've no complaints - heck I run server connections back to the office and it's pretty acceptable - and I'm on the 10Mb service. Just downloaded three DVD ISO's overnight and it took just over three hours.Quote:
Originally Posted by pipTheGeek
On the other hand I have had arguments with both BT and Sky - "oh yes, sir we can sell you 20Mb service for slightly less than Vermin", you then point out that according to BT's broadband checker I'm blessed with "up to" 3Mb and so their deal isn't that good. Maybe Vermin have got a slight point - vendors need to be a bit more up front about the fact that it's up to whatever bluesky figure they quote.
To be even handed though - BT also have a point - they serve a lot more of the country than VM do, so it's obvious that their country wide average is going to be lower. So, stop quoting this very misleading value!
Interesting to see that VM seem to have problems delivering service to city centres - overcommited networks and lack of investment?
Same here, i think Virgin have a point, and BT "hitting back" is laughable. My parents have one of these "upto 20mb" adsl services as they can not get cable, and their adsl speeds are terrible and nowhere near the advertised. At least with Virgin i get bang on/close to the speeds that are actually advertised, could never go back to adsl personally.Quote:
Originally Posted by pipTheGeek
my case.. ADSL - "up to" 20meg - reality: 3.5mbit connected, actual: ~2.5mbit profile, however, I knew what I'd be getting beforehand..
Harsh traffic management smacks of lack of capacity planning/poor investment.
Indeed, based on surveys and adverts that have been on TV where people whine about their speed, most people dont actually understand what "up to" means, nor do they understand why its "up to" and not a guaranteed speed thats the same for everyone.Quote:
Originally Posted by crossy
What ISPs should do really is have a rate for their top speed, and give a discount/refund for every 1Mbps that your line is under that.
ie, they charge you £20 for 8Mbps, £10 for 4Mbps, £5 for 2Mbps and £2.50 for 1Mbps or less.
Sometimes, yes, when youre getting much less than the line is running at.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stoo
Sometimes its just poor wiring, interference from something else or just pure distance from the exchange.
I live in a rural area, but Virgin have just put a cable down the road that i live on. I asked them whether we could get their service but as I live on a farm up a track about 1/2 mile from the road (as do 90% of the houses serviced by the road) they refused to even provide me with a line.
They sent me flyers etc saying I could get connected to their service and then when I actually enquire they tell me they can't. I personally think Virgins selective roll out of service and then bleating on about BT smacks of misleading advertising!
And although a fair few people who I know have moaned about both BT ADSL and Virgin services, once I've sat down and explained how ADSL works they understand the problem, can't really explain their problem on virgin as they shouldn't have any, it's superfast fibre optic afterall!
What do you expect from a company named "Virgin" and run by a playboy narcissist?Quote:
Originally Posted by [GSV]Myocardial
:lol: