Author: gixer711
Topic Replies: 0

Well i have been with virgin for just over 6 months. But last month i moved and last Monday they came and connected me up at 10:00 but by 16:00 the broadband stoped working and only get half the tv channels

Well i have tried emailing them each day but have not had any responce tried to phone several times but kept waiting so what to do

well later today going to call SKY to come and set me up and i am sure one day virgin will come around to look at my problem and they can find all there equipment in a nice box on the door step waiting for them :}

anyone else have problems trying to get hold of the support??

Author: dj06
Topic Replies: 0

hi all,
got vm about a week ago. seems fine...apart from when i'm dling a lot. as soon as the speed goes over 1 mbit / sec the router (netgear one) dies, and I have to reboot it and my computer to get a connection again. NOTE - this only applies to using the wifi. using a wired connection i can easily go over this speed. setting the dl limit to 1000 kbit/sec in utorrent means i can hold it for as long as i want, but as soon as it goes over it dies. really annoying me as i know the dloads can go so much faster! anyone got an idea why it would do this? thanks.

Author: Dudge
Topic Replies: 2

I totally Agree!

When I first signed up to the service, it was run by Telewest. I paid for a 2Mb connection, and that is exactly what I got. While Telewest was still alive, I have to say that their broadband package was the best, fastest & most reliable on the market and I recommended it to every friend I have. Okay, the customer service has always sucked, but the service was working 99.99% of the time, there were no problems, no caps, you could quite happily just pay the bill once a month and forget about it while enjoying an excellent connection.

Now, Virgin Media have taken over, and in comes the "fair usage" policy. What a load of cobblers! When I signed up, the fact that other ISP providers couldn't guarantee your connection speed was part of their sales pitch, and also the fact that most others restricted the amount you could actually download. As they said at the time, "If you pay for a 2Mb connection, that's what you get, no limits, no caps!"

That's all changed now.

Let's set out the facts.

I signed up for a 2Mb connection back when Telewest was running things, and as I've already stated, it used to come with no download limits and no speed caps.

To the best of my knowledge, there are still no download limits. Ok, great!

But! VM are now saying that if I actually use my 2Mb connection to it's full potential, that's a bit naughty of me and so they are going to slow my connection down by 50% to allow "other" users fair access to the web.

As others have stated, they are basically selling as many broadband packages as they can, and then adjusting the speed they allow us all to use to accommodate those extra customers. If they can't provide the service, they shouldn't sell it, and no amount of small print in the contract (which is forever changing without our knowledge) can change the fact that they are basically ripping us off.

If you went to a restaurant and ordered steak and chips, what would you say if the waiter told you that everyone else has also ordered steak and chips, so we're all going to get half a steak? Normally, British as I am, I wouldn't mind (I'd order extra chips) but we'd also expect to pay half the cost. We wouldn't allow them to say that we all still have to pay the full price, which is what VM are doing!

I actually rang them up and threatened to disconnect, and I literally gave them the above example. The amazing thing was that they agreed with me on every point, and they have almost halved my internet bill. I was paying 18 quid a month, and they have now put a recurring £8 credit on my monthly bill. It only costs me an extra 2 quid a month for a phone line thanks to their 2 for 20 quid deal, but in all honesty, the only time I use the home fone is to ring them up to tell them the internet is running crap again!

I was quite happy with my discount. After I'd sorted that out with customer services, there wasn't a problem. That is, until I started regularly checking my broadband speed after it started taking 5 minutes to load the BBC News homepage. That was worse than a dial-up connection, so I did some further experiments. I didn't use my internet connection for 2 days, at all. I turned my PC on at 10pm on a Monday night and found I was only getting 400K a second. There was no way it should have been capped, and so I rang them up, spoke to their "1st line" of support (India, Hello, my name is Chuck) who told me that there was a line issue in the area.

Unfortunately for "Chuck" I'm an all round PC nerd myself and in all honesty the guy was out of his depth. It's obvious that all they can do is check a few simple things, and if the simple solution of restarting you cable modem doesn't fix it, they'll promise you a call back that never comes, because hey, what's the chance of phoning tech support again and getting the same "Chuck?"

To keep things unbiased, I will say that a lot of people don't realise how much bandwidth they actually use. If, like most heavy internet users, you download software or media using p2p packages such as Bitcomet or Azureus Vuze, you might only download a program that's 1Gb in size, but connecting to the other peers, and all other communications that maintain and run your download can take up a whole lot more. It's possible for that 1Gb file to take up 2Gb of bandwidth. That being said.......

6 months later, and so far, although I have been on the phone countless times (I'm making the most of my 2 quid!) I cannot get past Chuck in India who always promises me the same thing. It will be sorted out within 2 days, and I'll be getting a call from customer services. 6 Months, same problems, not one call back.

There's only one thing to say. Virgin Media sucks. Telewest were the canine testicles, but VM have taken a good thing and dragged it through a hedge backwards.

How do we deal with this? We change provider of course. Not so simple in some cases though. In my case, at the moment I'm paying around 15 quid total every month which includes my home phone line. Yes, I know, that's cheap for phone, internet & calls. That's because I'm good at complaining and I obviously dropped lucky with the sales rep who gave me the discount that day. I have looked into changing provider, and unless I go the way of a USB Mobile connection (unreliable & expensive) the only other option is to get a BT phone line. The bad news? Firstly, your connection speed depends how far away you are from the local exchange, so you could get anything between 8Mb & 512k, then there's a 125 quid connection charge, then 12 quid a month for a BT line, and then whatever the cost of the ISP. Hhhhmmmm..... Nope.

All in all, even though the service is less than half what it used to be, VM is still the cheapest option available. If we want a quality connection, we have to pay for it. That doesn't change the fact that what was once Telewest has been buried and forgotten, and now we have to put up with a company that hasn't got any focus at all on customer satisfaction.

If it worked for Telewest, why can't it work for VM?

Enuff said.

_________________
Wise Men Watch & Learn,
Brave Men Do & Exceed,
I Guess They Ain't Got A Category For Me Yet

Author: lowrider
Topic Replies: 0

I run an Microsoft Exchange Server using a dynamically assigned IP address provided by VM. My original IP address which VM allocated me stayed with me for about a year, this IP address enabled me to send email through my Exchange server to pretty much all email providers (eg 1and1, gmail etc) recently my IP address changed and I am now unable to send email to pretty much anyone whos using IP filters (these generally block any mail sent from dynamically assigned IP addresses) My question is as VM do not offer home users the option of a static IP is there anyway around this problem as I am not really that bothered about having a static IP address as I would have to then get a BT line and change provider, [/b]

Author: kiwikate
Topic Replies: 4

Am so glad it worked - was a real triumph for me as i am NOT a computer whizz of any sort... just an obsessive who would not accept the solution put forward by virgin. I have emailed virgin too and asked them to pass the info on... and suggested i get compensated for their failure to identify the problem, the hours i spent trying to get help and the cost of using dial-up every time i wanted to send an email...

let's hope everyone else with this problem can access the info on the web now.

Kiwikate

Author: Alison Wormleighton
Topic Replies: 4

Thank you so much, Kiwikate! It has worked! I did follow up the TCP Optimiser, but, as you say, it's just for Windows. However, your explanation plus the info on that website were enough for my computer consultant to work out what I needed to do. (For any other Mac readers, you go to System Prefs and then Network. Make sure that 'Build in Ethernet' is selected. Click the Advanced button and in the new window that opens, click the Ethernet tab. Then from 'Configure' choose 'Manually', which allows you to change the MTU from the standard 1500 to 'Custom', and then set it at 1430. Click OK, then Apply - and that's it!) I can now once more send replies, long emails, attachments, forwards. I am so grateful to you for tracking down this solution. Absolutely no one else knew the answer. (I'm also going to tell Virgin, who should have advised its customers in the first place, and who were clueless when we phoned them about it. And I'm going to put it on the Apple Discussions forum, as there were several other people with the same problem.)

Author: kiwikate
Topic Replies: 4

Author: kiwikate
Topic Replies: 4

Author: Alison Wormleighton
Topic Replies: 4

I have a Mac and have been unable to send emails of more than about 300 words, or any replies or attachments, since May 30, the day Virgin “improved” their email services. Receiving emails and using webmail are not affected. Virgin’s helpline does not accept that it has anything to do with them or that some other Mac users are affected in the same way. The fault team insists it’s a problem with my computer, even though other people have reported exactly the same problem on the discussions.apple.com website (with no solutions). I have O.S. 10.5.3 Leopard, having just upgraded, but the problem occurred when I was still on O.S. 10.4. Tiger. My email program is Microsoft Entourage (which Virgin’s helpline doesn't support). When the problem first occurred, I wasn’t able to send any emails, but by changing the Accounts advanced settings to what Virgin recommended when I phoned them, I could at least send short emails. I've given up on the helpline - can anybody else help? I'm getting desperate.

Author: MikeJ112
Topic Replies: 0

Hi, I am moving abroad at the end of august, so I'm wondering if I have any right to disconnect early, as they will be unable to provide a service for me?

Thanks

Author: italiastar
Topic Replies: 2

I've been experiencing an almost non-existant Broadband service for the past 5 weeks - it stops from late afternoon until the early hours of the morning - clearly a capacity issue. Virgin claimed after 4 weeks that it was an RF noise problem - how could it I asked, "when you use fibre-optic cables" at this point they confessed that not all the cables are fibre-optic - something that I'd already guessed. As has already been said, the helpdesk is next to useless - one even told me that it was a problem with my computer and that I should contact the manufacturer. You get the odd good person, but they are powerless to do anything.

I've decided to go, but my limited contact with BT makes Virgin look good - does anyone have any ideas?

Author: italiastar
Topic Replies: 0

Is anyone else missled by their advertising and claims by sales personel who insist the fibre-optic runs into people's houses ??

One of their people told me that they have a fibre-optic backbone which could terminate a couple of miles from your house - surely this is miss-leading.

Any thoughts?

Author: sweep
Topic Replies: 0

I am very fed up my tv wont work. The message on the box is AP52 does anyone know what this is? Every time I ring up I get transferred to a foreign call centre and then I have communication problems with them due to language difficulties.

Author: VM.Techie
Topic Replies: 6

ATTN

To anyone having this problem try checking the return power level on your modem is correct.

Unfortunately you can only check this you cannot change it without having a Virgin Media Technician come and fix it.

The Power levels vary for different broadband speeds so I cannot tell you whether yours is correct but if you find it out you could quote it to Broadband support over the phone and ask them if it's right.

The easiest way to find it out is to check it on Page 3 of Technical Stuff within the Settings section of your set-top box. Tech Support should be able to confirm whether this is right or not.

If you do not have a Set-top box you can instead quote the Upstream transmit Power Level by typing 192.168.100.1 in your browser to enter the Modem's interface. Login; username and password should both be root. The Upstream transmit Power Level can be founf in the Upstream section. Again Tech Support should be able to confirm whether this is right or not.

This problem is increasingly likely if you have recently had changes to your broadband made (eg. change in broadband speed or new equipment installed).

Hope this helps!

_________________
NB: I am by no means an expert and any information I provide could very well be utter twaddle so please let me know if you think something I've said is wrong!

Author: admin
Topic Replies: 0

Story from BBC Technology News

A complaint lodged by BT about the speeds of Virgin Media's broadband service has been upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority.

The challenge centred around its advertisement "Hate to Wait?", which ran in the national media and featured download times for songs and TV shows.

BT argued that Virgin's usage caps meant that downloads during peak times would be slower than advertised.

The ASA has agreed and ordered Virgin to make it clear that speeds will vary.

Confusing megabits

In its adjudication it said that the advert did not make it clear that customers on Virgin Media's lower speed packages would only be able to download TV shows at the speeds advertised during off-peak hours.

It ruled that Virgin Media needed to clarify that download times would be restricted during peak hours.

Virgin Media argued that, for users of its M 2Mbps (megabits per second) package, a TV show downloaded during peak hours would only take a few minutes longer to download.

But it did admit that users would be subject to its so-called traffic management system, which caps data usage during peak hours.

It said that the issue would only affect users of the 2Mbps service.

Customers on its L 4Mbps package could download 60 songs and or two TV shows before reaching caps while those on the XL 20Mbps package could download 614 songs or nine TV shows before their speeds would be subject to caps, Virgin said.

"We believe our Hate to Wait campaign provided a simple and transparent comparison between broadband speeds for consumers looking to choose between Virgin Media's M, L and XL broadband packages," Virgin Media said in a statement.

On a secondary issue, Virgin admitted that it wrongly used the term "megabits" when referring to the size of the files being downloaded and agreed to change it to the correct "megabytes" term.

It also agreed to amend the ad to reflect the fact that it would take some customers longer to download a TV show than stated.

Very competitive

The issue of so-called traffic throttling, where internet service providers place limits on the amount of data users can download, has become more pertinent with the growth of video-sharing sites and TV catch-up services such as the iPlayer.

In the US some providers are banning access to file-sharing sites such as BitTorrent and in the UK the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is in talks with providers, including Virgin Media, about banning heavy users of file-sharing sites.

"ISPs are responding to the growth of online video services and capping is also a way of migrating customers onto faster and more expensive tariffs," said James Garlick, analyst with Screen Digest.

Virgin Media believes traffic-throttling is vital to ensure a good service.

"Our traffic management policy helps ensure the majority of customers receive the quality of service they expect from our fibre-optic broadband product by managing demand from the heaviest users at certain times of the day," said a spokesman for Virgin Media.

The broadband arena in the UK has become hugely competitive and the ASA has received a steady stream of complaints, sometimes from consumers but often from rival providers, about the speeds of both fixed and mobile broadband.

"There are lots of factors which affect speed. Consumers are concerned about it but often it is competitors keeping an eye on each other," said a spokesman from the ASA



Related Links:

BT
Virgin Media
BBC Technology News

Author: oisin
Topic Replies: 1

Oh no!
Don't tell me this is what I've got to look forward to. I've only been waiting 4 days to get my phone fixed. Biggest mistake of my life switching from BT to Virgin just this month.

Author: oisin
Topic Replies: 1

belisarius,
This seems the norm. I have been connected only since 12th May and my phone's been off since last Friday (4 days!). It cost over £10 being sent round in circles on my mobile to be told it would be fixed today. It's now 13.41 and I'm still waiting.
I've contacted BT re. getting reconnected to them. They sent me an email saying they've been trying to contact me but can't get through on the phone!

Author: WillBill
Topic Replies: 2

hey, trhis used to happen to me a lot. i just waited and went on other websites and eventually it would let me on the ones i couldn't go on to