Exactly. You shouldn't. OK, if some muppet phones them up to ask how to format a Word document they should be able to charge for it, but anyone phoning up about a service issue which would almost without exception be caused by Virgin in the first place shouldn't pay for it.Originally Posted by Steve
I can see a fantastic way to make a few thousand pound!
Cut the service or produce faults in the service, don't post that the fault is a known fault and watch all your users call in a 25p per minute.
Why not just give them a money printing machine instead? That is a conflict of interest if I ever saw one.
□ΞVΞ□
0iD, for info, next time you have to ring the premium rate number, you can ask them to reimburse you for the cost of the call (something they should have done for you anyway) since the fault is not one you caused. If you push enough you should also be able to get them to give you a few months free service. Always worth a go. Use the "I'm not happy with the service, I'm paying for this and not getting it".
Good luck ;-)
0iD (19-10-2007)
If they are not providing the service you signed up for - I.E. if they did not have it in the terms and conditions when you signed your contract, then you are entitled to leave without penalty - as VM will have broken the contract. One of my friends got out of his contract as he was having the same problems with slow speed in the evening and after about 4 or 5 phone calls they agreed they could do nothing about it. So allowed him to leave without penalty. I believe the reason this happens is to do with bandwidth throttling at peak times, which I think has been part of VM T&Cs for a few months now.
This unfortunatley gives them the right to traffic manage, although : http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html...t/traffic.html
I have to say that up until virgin started to throttle my bandwidth they provided an almost perfect service for me. However I do know a couple of people who are on faster connections that don't get the speed advertised. For me, I'm now just so peeved about the cut in speed when I go over 300 odd meg after 4pm.
Virgin Media (NTL) - 0800 183 1986 - Broadband faults up until 2200hrs
Virgin Media - 0800 052 2000 - Wait for the recorded message to end to get put through to Customer Services & Faults
www.saynoto0870.com
http://www.virginmedia.com/contact/contact3.php
OiD The 3 digit numbers, on the link above, are for virgin landline customers - have you tried the (free) 151 number?
0iD (20-10-2007)
Response from Virgin :
So, I ask the question, "If 50 users are continually usuing the 8mb/s line I could potentially only ever experiance 160kb/s on my BB connection?"(Which unfortunately seems to be the case)Dear Ian,
Thanks for your email.
The slow speed is caused during the evening hour/peak hours since the number of browsers increases; this is linked to “Contention Ratio”
To provide a cost effective service - our ADSL services are 'contended' (shared) at the following ratios:
50:1 ADSL 500, 1000 & 2000 Solo
20:1 ADSL 500, 1000 & 2000 Business
This contention is applied within the BT network - both locally with other users on your telephone exchange and within the BT network as it connects into our network.
What this means in the 'worst case' is that you could be sharing a 500 Kbit/s connection with up to 49 other users. So if they were all using it at the same time 'theoretically' you would only get 10 Kbit/s (not very fast at all - in fact quite a bit slower than a normal modem).
However, 'in reality' this scenario is very unlikely to happen and you should usually find it to be far faster than a modem connection.
ADSL relies on individual users not making unreasonable traffic demands on the network to provide fast access speeds for all - please see here for further details.
Remember if you are not getting the speed you expect it can be due to the contention ratio but also too many other factors including the capacity of the remote site you are accessing.
If you have any further queries you can chat online with one of our agents, to chat online please click on the link below, and enter your Virgin Media email address and password to access our online chat agents.
The answer was of course a hesitant "Yes"
Then I ask, "In what way, shape, or form could you possibly call this Broadband? The name does tend to imply a certain experience."
To date I have had no answer.
Last edited by 0iD; 20-10-2007 at 09:36 PM.
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Your email from virgin is a very good explination, it's nice that they actually give you full technical details to explain the problem, unlike some other customer service I've come across before where they just make up rubbish.
It is possible that your exchange is very 'internet busy' and lots of people using P2P. If that's the case, many ISPs have their own network from your local exchange that is seperate to the BT line, so changing to one of them could be well worth it. It's also possible that if you are one of the people that uses far more than the average user, and virgin are putting a cap on your usage during peak hours - These days all ISPs have a fair-usage policy that allows them to do that.
I understand perfectly the explanation, and I've read their small print in the minutest detail, fair use policy et-al. (no, i dont use p2p, bit torrent etc) & I spend half my time working in Germany anyway.
What I don't understand, is how they can call the service they provide Broadband.
Virgin media seem to always have problems with high utilisation when all the students arrive back. All the other times when they are not around there broadband seems to be fine. This is what I have experienced for the last 2-3 years now with them in Liverpool, each year when the students leave they will always say the problem has been resolved.
Always good to know that "people using the network" is a symptom of the problem.
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it is, but more of the thing being the freeloaders/leeches or whatever you want to call them that are using hacked sacm's thus put added pressure on the network, only these f*u*wits don't pay a bloody penny.
what's worse is if they have your mac code, then the fun would start. if they were d/l illegal material and the mac was traced, it would come back to you as you are the registered user of that mac code(identical macs can't work on the same ubr). vm are/must be aware of the problem of hacked modems and that they can be brought cheaply on places like ebay (even heard of one where the bloke put an ad in the local rag advertising sacm's and not just one or two), just they don't seem to be either a) arsed or b) have their head it the sand.
now there is another issue that we may have to contend with. apparently there are ongoing trails of upload capping. now no firm figures for what the limits maybe but going on what ppl are saying Here they aren't happy. this could well be the icing on the cake for some, as it's another ass-shafting from a company that are supposed to be a customer friendly company.
at the moment i have the top package with them and phone and tv is fine, but bb is another matter. the 20mb started crap, then after 4-5 weeks got better now crap during the day untill sort of 1am. i'm not staying up till then just so i can d/l something and my gaming has been cut back as pings can be real bad (even to uk servers). now, we'll be moving soon and been looking for roads that are cabled first. but now this extra capping along with the d/l shaping and their persistent cocking up of bills etc and bangalapore tech like This with it's your fault and it's spyware or virus and your pc has a problem etc etc. now Be is becoming a serious contender for my next provider (and before you shout it's adsl with distance, the property i'm looking at is only 450 metres from the exchange).
end of rant for now.
I saw a VM van today, and on the back the slogan read: "forward, back, back a bit more. Stop!"
Doesn't that translate to "one step forward and two steps back"?!
Made me laugh anyway!
*** update ***
Obviously someone else found this funny too!
http://anmblog.typepad.com/this_is_m...w_virgin_.html
Last edited by finnrogers; 22-10-2007 at 01:19 AM. Reason: Added link
nah, what it describes is.............................................. the state of the network and tech support.
Re: Virgin Media BB rant
Hi this is my first post I was with Telewest before the Virgin takeover.I had no problems before but on Friday 30th Nov and Sunday 2nd Dec after 6-0pm the internet connections were so slow it was nearly inert and I pay £25 per month for a system that is unuseable at certain times of the day.I am in the Preston Lancs area has anybody else had these problems at these times in this area.I see from other posts it seems to be a problem in many areas.
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