Virgin Media Broadband

[Macman]

Who is currently getting their services provided by Virgin Media?

I recently took out the XL package and was told everything I would recieve in the package, and when they came to do the installation. As part of the package, the box in the bedroom was free. And I was advised it was a sleek black box...

I was given what looked like the first cable boxes, a big grey/creamy Samsung Cable box which looks hideous.

Whats your experience with Virgin Media? Anything I need to be aware of?

Any info/advice would be much appreciated.

[Betty_Swallocks]

I've been with them for years and have had no complaints.
I started on the top (at the time) 10Mb package and have gradually been upgraded (for free) to 30Mb.

I couldn't imagine going back to ADSL no matter how good the service. I can download at the full 30Mb speed of my connection. If I download more than about 6 or 7 Gb in normal hours I might get my connection limited to about 9Mb which is still twice the speed I could hope for on ADSL given the distance from my exchange.

Really they have no competition. They're the only ones who can supply me with the connection speed I want so there's no choice. Their helpdesk is pretty good I've found too. When I've (rarely) had to call them about connection problems they've been efficient and helpful.

[Dareos]

Was pretty sure all the current boxes were black, not my department tho, so can't be 100% certain.

If you think you have the wrong thing mate, you have your RTC period and if you explain why you want to cancel they will probably do something about it.

and Betty, its really nice to hear someone say that. I only deal with faults, so its hard to remember sometimes that for the vast majority, there are no issues

[mcmiller]

My experience was ok till 3-4 months ago and now from 5-11pm the service is utter crap, I phoned up numerous times only to be told that its MY pc or MY router. Eventually I had enough and posted on the virgin media forums and was nicely told that its because the router is over subscribed and if it got any worse they would do something about it, after a few message exchanges they explained that they would get the router upgraded in JULY!

I'm going to write a letter of complaint and ask that they refund some of the money I'm paying as over the 6 month period its been unusable at peak times...

[Sputnik]

My experience was ok till 3-4 months ago and now from 5-11pm the service is utter crap, I phoned up numerous times only to be told that its MY pc or MY router. Eventually I had enough and posted on the virgin media forums and was nicely told that its because the router is over subscribed and if it got any worse they would do something about it, after a few message exchanges they explained that they would get the router upgraded in JULY!

I'm going to write a letter of complaint and ask that they refund some of the money I'm paying as over the 6 month period its been unusable at peak times...

Pretty much what happened to me, Not to mention the amount of time the network failed.

It's pretty much a postcode lottery with them..... Like all broadband at the moment.

[Marenghi]

generally very good, speaking with their support staff over issues can be a nightmare as they're just script readers and don't really understand what the problem is although i have spoken with a few 'locals' recently who were really up on their knowledge. had a problem recently where i kept losing connection to the net, once the engineer came out, he replaced connector heads and gave me a brand new super hub whilst being refunded for the past month for having dodgy internet (aswell as a cancelled enginer callout which i never received any notification about.)

and as Betty says, at the moment they don't really have any competition unless you're living in an area where BT are trialing their fibreoptic package

[santa claus]

I've been with VM for as long as I can remember. If you live in a cabled area, my advice would be to get cable every time. In 10 years or so, I have had an engineer call once and spoken to support maybe twice.

On all occasions the support was great and I have no complaints. I too have been slowly upgraded for free, get a loyalty discount and consistently get the service speed I'm supposed to be getting.

Believe me, I am hard to please but I'm pleased with VM. If you're not happy about something, just tell them and I'm sure something will be sorted for you.

Also, you can get great advice from a very knowledgeable community, which includes some VM tech's who do so on their own time, at cableforum.co.uk. I'd recommend you post there

[Smudger]

Another thumbs up from me. On the 10mb service for a couple of years now, keep thinking I need to upgrade but in reality, I don't download much at all, and when I do, I get pretty close to 10mbps, which again is quicker than I could expect on adsl.
I have a 2nd box which is the silver samsung one. It does the job and sits behind the telly anyway, so you can't really see it. I think the black ones you're talking about might the the VHD boxes - they released them a year or so ago and give you HD without the PVR capabilities of V+...

[Zadock]

I've been with VM now for about 6 months on the 10Mb package and have had no problems, get a pretty constant 1.2mb/s rate from good servers. I've had no problems gaming, I have noticed the throttling if I download a lot in one go and it equates to my speed going down to 3Mbps or there abouts but it doesn't happen often because by and large I am not online when the traffic management applies.

@Betty_Swallocks: How long were you with them before they gave you the free upgrade?

[Sputnik]

@Betty_Swallocks: How long were you with them before they gave you the free upgrade?

He was probably like me and started off with the best they could provide and so got upgrades inline with what he paid.

I started off with 512kbps (in the days of Telewest) when that was the most they offered and then as they rolled out upgrades the 'upto speed' increased to the highest they offered at any time but, The problem was the 'actual speed' was terrible in the end as they had exceeded the contention ratio many many times and were still trying to sell my share of the bandwidth to new customers. The problem here is, There is no Fibre optic within 2 miles of where I live so that doesn't help and it often failed completely for days at a time. To add insult to injury, They never listened to you when you reported the problems to them.
I remember talking to one of their idiots and telling him they had an outage in the area because nobody had internet access and his answer to it was "the problem is spyware or viruses on your computer" and this is why I just gave up with it in the end.

In a nutshell it regularly didn't work at all because of network outage problems and when it did it was only marginally fast than Dial-up alot of the time.

[mikemikemi]

Switched from O2 a couple of months ago and just got the basic 10mb, been happy so far and haven't noticed any slow moments.

[Macman]

In the end, I phoned up VM to complain about the additional box I was given. As the sales advisor informed me as part of the package I would be given a HD Box which he shown me from his sales catalogue which was the HD Box.

Overall I am satisfied with the service I recieved when I called Customer Services, as I was refusing to pay the activation fee for £49.99. The missus was ready to fly off the handle which I took over with the call, which ended up going through to the Supervisor and he stated he would waiver the £49.99 fee and have an engineer sent out in the next few days.

So far, in the short time I've been with VM they are already outperforming Sky, as to the amount of problems I had with them.

[Betty_Swallocks]

He was probably like me and started off with the best they could provide and so got upgrades inline with what he paid.

That's exactly what happened. First to 20Mb then a couple of months ago to 30. I passed on the upgrade to 50Mb as it was quite a bit more expensive.