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Thread: Virgin Media terrible service

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    Angry Virgin Media terrible service

    My experience with Virgin Media was very good until Virgin decided to upgrade to the super fast broadband. It was at this time that my connection got dropped from their system and they could not get me back on.
    In January 2009, Virgin Media pushed through this big marketing campaign for their new super fast Broadband which would benefit all their customers. However, many customers including myself, who had been with Virgin for over 4 years, were somehow lost from the Virgin system.

    The first time my Broadband stop working I called the Virgin customer services line (paying a horrendous amount of money for the call). The customer services agent went through all the procedures with me over the phone but could not get my broadband to work. He then told me that someone more senior was going to call me back in the next few days. A few days passed but no one from Virgin bothered calling me back. I called them back again; there was nothing on the system showing that I was expecting their call. Over the following 3 weeks I made numerous calls to Virgin where I had to explain the whole problem over and over again to each new customer services agent I spoke to, none of them able to help me or resolve the problem. Each time I phoned I was promised that someone at Virgin would phone me back but they never did.

    Having made approximately twenty calls to Virgin customer services, but to no avail, I had run out of patience with Virgin. I work from home on one day per week and I could no longer survive without broadband connection at home. I explained this to every person I spoke to at Virgin but it seemed to make no difference. I decided that I should end my contract with Virgin and asked one of the customer services agents at Virgin for my MAC code to be sent to another broadband provider. Concerned about losing my custom, the agent then convinced me to stay with Virgin as he said I would experience the same problems with any other provider. He argued that the problem was not with Virgin but was a fault at the BT exchange. He then went on to say as I needed my internet for work emails, I could use dial-up while I was waiting for my broadband problem to be fixed. I was not totally happy about this, knowing how slow dial up is but I thought that they were at last trying to resolve my problem, so I accepted the offer.

    The agent then went through the process of installing the dial-up service on my computer over the phone with me, and I specifically checked that I would not be charged for these calls made on dial-up. The agent said as an act of good will he would add £30 to my account straight away and that I should let them know when I needed more credit. I was very careful how much I used my internet, as I knew it was running up a bill and that the connection was extremely slow, so I only used for work emails. I found the dial up service quite unsatisfactory for work purposes as it was so slow and quickly became frustrated by it. Over the next few weeks I kept calling the Virgin customer services, but they could not seem to find out what the problem with my broadband connection could be. A customer services agent did once call me to say that they were trying to resolve my problem, but nothing got done. I eventually and reluctantly decided to terminate my contract with Virgin and asked them for my MAC code. The agent I spoke to was very understanding and ensured me that my dial-up services were going to be taken care of, as my broadband had not been working. Within a week I had a new O2 broadband up and running in my house, with no problems at the exchange.

    About a week later I received a bill from Virgin for £93, charging me for all the dial-up I had been using. I phoned the Virgin customer services a few times to try to get them to cancel these dial-up charges. They then told me that I had been given £30 dial up credit at the beginning and they could not cancel the bill. I argued that the dial up had been given as a temporary solution to compensate for my lack of broad brand and that I had been told that I would not be charged for it. I was told that I would have to write to the Virgin head office and explain what had happened. I wrote a letter that same day but have still not heard from their head office. I decided to cancel my direct debit from my bank account until they Virgin made contact me with me to resolve the problem. Virgin did phone me, someone from their collections department in Nottingham called to tell me that I still owed them the money. I explained that I was waiting for their head office to call me so he advised me to wait for a month for their head office to contact me. It has now been almost two months and I still have not heard from them.

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    I have had 2 formal letters sent to their HO complaining about billing issues, both signed for.

    Never had a reply to either.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    Is this the virgin ADSL service because it's well know that the Virgin ADSL service is constantly Pants . I'd try moving to another provider like sky or o2/be
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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    I was supposed to recieve a free router for signing up to their XL broadband package. The installation 'engineer' (and I hate to use that word since anyone could have done his job with a days training) told me that the router would arrive a few days after the installation had been completed and would be delivered by dhl.

    This never happened, I waited 2 weeks and then called virgin, I was told to wait longer. 1 month later still nothing so I called asking for someone to send me one. I wanted to avoid paying for a new router since I had not got the one I was entitled to, I made this very clear on the phone and the lady at the other end assured me I would not be charged and apologised for the problem. All good I thought and indeed a router arrived via dhl in the next couple of days.

    Got my next bill shortly after this. £40 charged for the router. I was furious. Took me 5 calls over a period of 3 months and the threat of the small claims court to get the money back. I very much look forward to cancelling my contract when the minimum 12 month duration ends.

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    The other problem with VM is the upload speed is pants. Any P2P program would just kill the connection and stops you from hosting any home services. No one would ever get me onto VM. Personally I would often use a server that could make a difference of there 50Mb.

    Just to clarify it is still delivered to the door over copper just most of it is Fibre.

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr JB View Post
    The other problem with VM is the upload speed is pants.
    That was the single biggest reason for me leaving. I had hoped with 50Mb, the upload would improve, but last I heard it was 1.5Mb for that package.. That barely covers the overheads when downloading at 50Mb from what I understand!!! 512k on 10Mb was equally pathetic, but I guess their target customers happily buy into the headline download speeds. Said it many times before, surely as its cable, they arent limited by the same factors as ADSL on upload and could give some insane uploads, pirates and gamers would soon follow and be happy to pay them a decent price for it, allowing them to whack some investment back into the network and stop this silly zillion-mega-thingies for ebay browsing rubbish.

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    That really sucks. They're scumbags. I want to move to 02 but it means getting rid of the digital TV and the phone and getting BT back in. I cant stomach paying so much for such an awful service tho. I'm downloading at 50k/s and my bro can't connect ot the PS3 network in the next room with a 10Mb connection. There should be some kind of boycott/petition to Ofcom.

    The £1 a minute charge for phoning customer services is a disgrace too. We're paying for something we don't get and then paying to complain about it.

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    Quote Originally Posted by HermansArmpit View Post
    The £1 a minute charge for phoning customer services is a disgrace too. We're paying for something we don't get and then paying to complain about it.
    calls to CS are free (even when they weren't they were refundable if the problem was theirs & not user error).

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    Ah right, ok. Well still, awful service. I'm gonna punch my phone line right on the connection box. Eat it!
    revol68: "...unfortunately I live in Northern Ireland, a dangerous third world backwater where couriers are routinely kidnapped and ransomed by spud munching tribes..."

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    Well, I emailed them and complained about my really crap connection last week and just got my email response which I find a bit cheeky actually. So here's what I said:

    "My download speed is almost constantly managed. It is not peak time as I write this and I am currently being managed down by 75%. It is now over five hours since I had any opportunity to exceed the fair usage limits and so by your policy my connection should be returning to normal. Basically, I am paying for a service that I am not allowed to use. If I only wanted to browse the web I would not need or notice much of a difference between a 10Mb connection and a 2mb connection. The whole purpose of subscribing to a more costly connection is for the ability to download larger amounts of data more quickly. In any case, if my service does not improve I will be changing to another internet provider within the next month. "

    And here's the reply:

    "The Traffic Management times are only approximate times, I've checked and on 21 March, we didn't start to traffic manage your account until 9.05pm and this lasted approx 5 hours, taking you to after 2.05am on 22 March.


    You are allowed to use your service within the terms and conditons of your contract and the fair usage policy. Customers who are traffic managed only account for 5% of our entire broadband customer base and so the policy is there to protect the majority of our customers who are unable to access their service at all,due to the minority of customers who over use the broadband service to the detriment of all other customers who are also paying for a service they can't use.


    It is entirely your choice to cancel if you decide that our broadband is not meeting your download needs, but as a valued customer, we would be sorry to see you go, but we have no plans to change this policy at present.


    Regards "



    I didn't know someone could 'overuse' something that they paid for. Nor did I know people couldn't connect to the internet because of me. Surely the real problem is that Virgin Media are advertising and selling a service they can't provide. On the positive side tho at least they admit that all their customers are paying for a service they can't use.
    revol68: "...unfortunately I live in Northern Ireland, a dangerous third world backwater where couriers are routinely kidnapped and ransomed by spud munching tribes..."

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    Quote Originally Posted by HermansArmpit View Post
    I didn't know someone could 'overuse' something that they paid for. Nor did I know people couldn't connect to the internet because of me. Surely the real problem is that Virgin Media are advertising and selling a service they can't provide. On the positive side tho at least they admit that all their customers are paying for a service they can't use.
    It's old news, you shoulda jumped ship like I did when they first said they were bringing it in

    Quote Originally Posted by BUFF View Post
    calls to CS are free (even when they weren't they were refundable if the problem was theirs & not user error).
    It's only free if you have the phone line with them and you call 150

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    The best thing about them pointing out that you are being excessive because you are in the top 5% of users is that it by default always punishes 5% of their paying customers regardless of the actual usuage. Imagine if a train company sold monthly tickets and then refused to let 5% of those ticket holders onto various trains throughout the month because they had used their montlhy tickets more than 95% of the other users.
    "The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being." Karl Marx

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    Quote Originally Posted by revol68 View Post
    The best thing about them pointing out that you are being excessive because you are in the top 5% of users is that it by default always punishes 5% of their paying customers regardless of the actual usuage. Imagine if a train company sold monthly tickets and then refused to let 5% of those ticket holders onto various trains throughout the month because they had used their montlhy tickets more than 95% of the other users.
    Unless they have changed things, this isn't the case.

    There are 'trigger' limits that are set. Once you hit these you're throttled.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    Unless they have changed things, this isn't the case.

    There are 'trigger' limits that are set. Once you hit these you're throttled.
    No they claim they only throttle the top 5% of users.

    The trigger limits are a joke as well, atleast if you have a montly cap of 40 gig you can download 5 gigs in one day without getting throttled.

    People pay for 10 and 20mb lines cause they will download alot, to limit them to 1.2 gig or whatever is a joke, cos one game on Steam can be 6 gig, should people download it across 5 days, during which time they could have had it arrive from Amazon? Kind of makes an arse of the whole point of hi speed broadband.

    Maybe Virgin should upgrade their capacity or simply refuse to take on any new customers and their direct debits until they can deliver uncapped high speed broadband as they advertise, of course that isn't going to happen.

    As for their Samuel L "I used to be cool in the 90's before I started whoring myself out to everything" Jackson fibre optic 50mb campaigns, are they going to put caps on it, that'll be a laugh, you can now have your connection throttled in a third of the time.
    "The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being." Karl Marx

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    Quote Originally Posted by revol68 View Post
    Maybe Virgin should upgrade their capacity or simply refuse to take on any new customers and their direct debits until they can deliver uncapped high speed broadband as they advertise, of course that isn't going to happen.
    Or change it from unlimited -> limited fiber optic broadband, because that's what it is
    But they won't do that either.

    Currently trying to get my friend off Virgin and we've managed to switch him onto a BT line. Was free as well since it wasn't a disconnection but when trying to cancel off Virgin they wouldn't let him because he's currently transferring the phone line to BT (He was on the cable broadband anyway). He got the 10mb 1 month trial after they coaxed him into it when I told him to quit and now when he wants to switch back to the 2mb speed (not 10mb default in his area yet) apparently his bill has to go up by £8 a month...

    They've got so many different discounts and packages for everyone you really never know what you'll end up paying.

    Agent are you still on VM?

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    Re: Virgin Media terrible service

    Weird..im on VM cable not ADSL, and i absolutley r@pe my connection, never had a problem, never had to reset the router either ?

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