Virgin Media

[Andeh13]

I have always hated them, but upon the news that the best I could get at my new house through a BT line would be 1mb ''maybe 1.5mb if your lucky'' I may end up having to seriously consider them & their fibre optics. First things first does anyone know if there is somewhere I could get a second opinion, that's what BT said - or is what they say the truth?

I don't need any faster then around 10mb, but I am very concerned about their traffic management & throttling of users. I do download a fair amount, up to around 1gb a day but I don't go much higher then that. That being said, when it comes to the likes of steam i can hammer my connection quite hard for a day or two when new games come out, i format a computer etc. I do quite a bit of gaming, quite a bit of Iplayer/4OD etc, but I have no idea how the traffic management might effect me.

I have a deep mistrust of the trolls they use for their tech support/customer service as well, but if its the difference between 1mb and 10mb I will put up with it.

I like the idea of digital TV/the additional channels, but mainly the discovery set (as many of them as I can get), aside from that there arn't many other channels that jump out at me (the popular sky one etc aside). I did prefer the idea of sky over virgin (esp as i have 4 months worth of BT line ental still to pay for) but fi all i can get is 1mb I'd have to go with Virgin.

Any advice or suggestions guys?
Many thanks


Does anyone use them

[Jay]

PM me your phone number and I'll run it through our system see what it says

[Michael]

I've never used anything over than virgin. Rarely any problems, always top speed... why on earth have you decided their fibre is something to dislike? Clearly a much more stable and faster solution than BT's phone lines. But anyway. Yes, reccomended. Don't worry.

As for usage caps and so on, well, just make sure the package you go for will suit your needs!

HTH

[j1979]

i get the 20mb virgin line for £1.50, but i work for them! i hope not for much longer.

The speed is good for download but has poor upload. I will go ADSL when i leave my job (if i can lose the £125 install fee), not because the speed is bad at virgin, you just cant trust them... members of staff will put you on new 12 month contracts without your say so. it happens all the time, day in day out. And managers turn a blind eye..

here is the download threshold for the traffic management policy.

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html...t/traffic.html

[Lee H]

I've got all the virgin stuff...

3 x TV in different room's - 2 of them HD installs as well
1 x phone
1 x uber-fast super-dooper 50 Mb which keeps testing and benchmarking at 70 Mb and speeds on downloads are always around the 6-8 Mb speed depending on what I am doing

Had 1 issue which was fixed in lightening speed by an engineer visit who came at a time to suit me ( 8:00am Saturday - I was up with the little one) and there are no caps on the 50 Mb until they launch their 100 Mb.

I love their on demand features and my missus is always watching some series on demand or battering the on demand music which is free if you get the XL package on the TV

All in all - I love it and guess what... it doesn't break up when it's raining which is a bonus in sunny Manchester

[Disturbedguy]

...caps...

This is the issue, Virgin cap the other connections and its something horrid as well. I can understand why they do it, but its unfair to punish all imo tbh.

j1979 fancy giving me a free upgrade to 50Mb?

[j1979]

j1979 fancy giving me a free upgrade to 50Mb?

lol, if i could i would!

[Rainmaker]

On 50 megs here and no complaints at all. I get 6.32 MB/sec (50.7 Mbps) 24/7/365 from newsgroups. Roll on the 100Mbps down, 10Mbps up rollout at the end of the year, I say.

As for putting people on new contracts without their say-so, I'd love to see them try that with me. LOL With no signed agreement as per the Consumer Credit Act, nor so much as a recorded call demonstrating explicit agreement, they're screwed.

So far so good though, I'm like a kid with a new toy and I've had it ages now.

[Lowe]

They've tried it with me. Moved house, sent another contract through. Went straight in the bin!

[Andeh13]

Half & half it seems, i don't like the sound of them at all. Especially when i never had problems with sky the last time i was with them. the fact their 'unlimited' plan really is unlimited also warrants my money i feel, just for the principle of it. Damn, I think i need to try and get a few more opinions on the line speed i can expect.

[ra5512zo]

On 50 megs here and no complaints at all. I get 6.32 MB/sec (50.7 Mbps) 24/7/365 from newsgroups. Roll on the 100Mbps down, 10Mbps up rollout at the end of the year, I say.

As for putting people on new contracts without their say-so, I'd love to see them try that with me. LOL With no signed agreement as per the Consumer Credit Act, nor so much as a recorded call demonstrating explicit agreement, they're screwed.

So far so good though, I'm like a kid with a new toy and I've had it ages now.

we was signed up for a 12 month contract even though we had not called them in 6 months. The contract arrived through the door, it got ignored. THEN.... when we wanted to leave;

Agent - "Sorry Mr x your in a 12 month contact"
Me - "i have not signed anything"
Agent - "you don't need you sign, it's a verbal contract"
Me - "i have not spoke to anyone, do you have a recording ?????"
Agent - "Calls are only recorded for training purposes. and notes in the account state that you agreed"

i complained - got the same response via letter - i had to pay over £100 to get out of the contract. it's theft.

[Rainmaker]

You should have sent a letter by recorded delivery disputing the fact there was any contract. I'd have asked them for a copy of the call where you entered into a verbal contract. If there was no such call then I'd simply point out that no such contract exists pursuant to the Consumer Credit Act, and if they wanted to pursue it any further to furnish me with (1) a signed contract or (2) a dated recording with such an agreement.

£100 my ****.

[g8ina]

another no complaints here. It was A*L who were shafting us with their free laptop deal (taken up by my GF before I moved in). They conveniently made that contract 24 months instead of 18, and she had lost her paperwork, so we put up with it.

When that contract did expire, we moved to Virgins 20MB plus phone and HD TV on XL packages.

I love the true unlimited aspect, servicing is done promptly - we had our HD box die and it was fixed in 48 hours - and the overall monthly fee is just above 50 quid.
Just one single gripe - webspace - they wont use nameservers so I cant use either of my already registered domain names (unless anyone knows better ??). Ive already found out what their nameservers are, but neither of my redirects works given that data.

[Rainmaker]

g8ina, just get some cheap shared hosting and use your domains on there? I use Vault Hosting; they're cheap but run by proper geeks. My webspace with them costs £4 a month (for 12GB) and maxes out my 50 meg line up and down no problems. I use it as an FTP backup server (for my documents, photos etc), web server and email server. They've never let me down.

EDIT: £4/month is their second most expensive package. You can get one for £2 a year, then the monthly packages start at 75p a month.

[ChrisN]

Also on VM 50mbit here, no complaints either. I've been with them since 2001 (ex-blueyonder) and I've had to phone them maybe three or four times since I started subscribing - I very rarely get service outages. Which is a good job too, because I can't reliably get ADSL where I live (my neighbour can get a maximum downstream speed of 1.5mbps from the exchange, and it's not like we're out in the countryside!).

[Barrichello]

Virgin is great, so much better than the bad old days with BT and sky (shivers) Looking forward to upgrading to Virgins 50mb service.