Virgin Broadband...

PVO_Dave

PVO_Dave

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Dave
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Many users of them on here?

I'm finally ditching the dreadful Tiscali, cant take any more of the terrible customer service, the last straw was an attempted package upgrade, I.e. me paying them more money, and they didn't bother to call me back, or when I called to chase today log it on there system :LOL:

Just wonder what Virgin are like for throttling the speed and do they send letters out if they think you've been downloading things you shouldn't (not that I'd condone this at all...:D)

The price is slightly better than Tiscali's revised prices, and they service cant be any worse, can it?

Dave.
 
Virgin very quick to send letters out, sent my sister a letter after she downloaded some legitimate torrent files...
Service however is on a par with Tiscali's as is most of the bigger suppliers - however, they seem pretty good on the initial service to get you to part with the cash strangely....

If the neighborhood has a low uptake of Virgin subscribers, then the service will be good, however, there tends to be serious issues if the contention ratio is ver high, with throttling taking place regularly. I would visit www.samknows.com for an overview of what's available in you area...
 
I've been with them for about 2 years and have never had any problems. They recently upgraded me from 2mb to 10mb for free as well.(y)

Haven't had any letters yet either;)
 
I've been with them for about 5 or 6 years, only had one or two issues with connection problems when their systems seemed to go down (back up and running within a couple of hours though). They did cut me off twice too due to them not taking the money by direct debit, quick phone call sorted that out though. On the whole though they have been very good and I'd recommend them.
 
I've got the VIP service for £85 a month.
For that you get every TV channel, including all sports and movies, and HD V+ box plus an additional normal box for another room, 20Mb broadband (that's regularly pulling 21.5mb from newsgroups) and free UK landline phone calls.

HD stuff is great, quite a few channels now and the free uk phonecalls is saving me a fortune.

Telephone calls to support are free, but they do have an indian call centre for first line support. Sometimes it's better to get through to the south wales next line support who are excellant.

I'd recommend them.
 
I have the 'Large' broadband. Supposed to be 10Mb download speed limit (I think) but I regularly get just over 30Mb so I'm not complaining. They do traffic shape you if you download too much at the wrong time. They also provide a premium news server with long retention. I don't do P2P and never have so not likely to get any letters.
They do seem to let whole areas go down if they feel like doing a bit of maintenance so service can be 100% for weeks or months then you get a couple of weeks where there is no service for a few hours every day or so or even for most of a day. I put up with it for the other 99% of the time when they are unbeatable.
 
Bandwidth is always good with Virgin, reliability is now very good and costs are OK. But service is poo. Remember they formed from a forced marriage with NTHell. Virgin/Telewest and NTL regularly vied for bottom place on customer satisfaction surveys.

You're moving away from Tiscali due to customer service issues so research well :) The Utility Warehouse regularly come top or near top of customer surveys and they have more than one 'Best Buy' from Which for their broadband packages. Most subscribers (not those out in the sticks) get line rental and broadband + other benefits for less than 20 quid per month.
 
I use Virgin Broadband, and am pretty pleased with them. The only gripe I have with them is the customer service can be a little rubbish sometimes. But I am impressed with the speeds, I've got 20mb, at even at peak times, when I test it, I probably get in the region of 18mb.

If you take the biscuit with downloading they will throttle you, as will most providors I guess

Anyway, the link below is from Virgin, this tells you how much you can download at certain times.

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
 
I have the 50Mb service, and have had no issues with it at all. I regularly and consistently hit 6.5MB/s download which is over 50Mb/s

50Mb service has no caps or limits btw.

I've been with Virgin for years, had broadband from them since it was first available and rarely have a problem with it. I've probably lost a couple of hours service due to outages in the past 5 years, and I work online day in day out.
 
Thanks for all the responses, I'm slightly limited in choice etc.. as I do live a bit out in the sticks (well kinda, but we seem to get left behind, we don't even have gas in the village! lol)

I can't get cable or anything so it's bog standard adsl for me, the max I'll be able to get until 2011 (when according that SamKnows site is when the exchange gets updated) is 8mb

I dont download that much these days so the 40gb a month limit shouldn't be a problem :)

Tiscali support is in India, and it's frankly awful :(. Saying that though there UK customer service desk has been rubbish too! lol. Shall be getting my MAC code tomorrow when the cancellation line is open
 
Took me a year to get them to cancel my broadband after moving house, and despite it not being used at all refused to refund me the years worth of money they owed me.

I'd not recommend them to anyone, a complete bunch of cowboys.

depending on how much you want to spend I can recommend AQUISS. they have been great. costs me £25 a month, unlimited off peak and 30gb on peak downloads and monthly contract.
 
I'm on Virgin Broadband (ADSL not Cable) and get 20MB, the broadband is mostly great, odd time it has had a problem but not excessively so. The customer service is an absolute joke though. I think they should rename it to customer wind-up.
 
On the 10Mb package with them, and good so far since I got upgraded on that a few months ago. Been with them for what seems like ever! Service was intially atrocious when they took over from NTL...but things got sorted and now I would recommend them :)
 
I've just changed to them myself because Sky was terrible!
I've/anyone i know on virgin have never received letters ;)

There so much faster and there prices are worth it. Customer service was a little better than Sky but not by much. The engineer my mother had was a complete **** to her when she got hers installed. Didnt cut her any slack, treated her as if she knew everything and nothing all at once.

Cant expect my mum to know how to install a wifi hub along with a router (mean its not hard, but for a lot of people its just scary). so yeah basicly i had to sort out that when Virgins engineer couldn't be bothered.

Like everyone how ever... there's always that one person that works in a company that really boils your kettle, just gotta talk to someone who isnt a doosh
 
I'm on Virgin cable and the service is OK but I have to say it was better when it was still Telewest. Telewest never went down but Virgin has had quite a few multi-day outages in our area.

But again this is cable and you're going for ADSL so it may not matter for you.
 
Been with Telewest all my internet life, maybe 6-7 years, in all that time I can't really remember any cuts in service, maybe they happened during the day when I was at work I dunno.
Fact is, if there are no problems you don't need to use their crappy customer service.
My modem conked earlier this year, well it was 6-7 years old, I rung them up, they did a few tests and then sent me a new one, that's the only contact I've had..:shrug:...its always fast and never breaks, but you can buy cheaper.
 
I have to echo the comments made by Harvey Nikon, I will never use Virgin again for anything after spending 9 months trying to get them to close my account which had been fully paid up.
The balance was £0 but due to non-payment of this £0 they added a £5 late payment fee!
Then the next month the balance was -£5 so another late payment fee was added.
This went on and on and trying to find the correct person to write to in accounts was difficult.
I eventually got it sorted by one chap then it ocurred again so I wrote to him and said "nice try but could you please ensure that the account is closed out properly"
Sheesh this kind of customer service we could all do without.
 
2blue4u said:
Bandwidth is always good with Virgin, reliability is now very good and costs are OK. But service is poo. Remember they formed from a forced marriage with NTHell. Virgin/Telewest and NTL regularly vied for bottom place on customer satisfaction surveys.
Click to expand...

There's still a lack of consistancy between systems also.

We are ex NTL, my daughter has moved to Uni at Bristol which was Telewest. her house has virgin cable broadband, but it refuses to let her access the smtp server, so she can't send mail from outlook and has to use the webmail.
 
I download a massive amount each month, have never had a letter though. I recently downgraded from 20mb to 10mb as I was getting VERY inconsistent results. The engineer told me they're getting oversubscribed with 20mb customers and that they won't do anything about it until they absolutely have to, he advised me to go down and now I get 10mb every time, which is strangely more than I was getting with 20mb.

Never had too many problems with them to be fair, other than wait times if you need to call them.
 
Harvey_nikon said:
Took me a year to get them to cancel my broadband after moving house, and despite it not being used at all refused to refund me the years worth of money they owed me.

I'd not recommend them to anyone, a complete bunch of cowboys.
Click to expand...

Why did you carry on paying them if you'd moved? :shrug:
 
Well a slight update, the move to any other provider is on hold, as like with most companies nothing gets done until you tell them you are going to cancel...

Called today, she has sorted (so she tells me) the issue as to why I couldn't upgrade, sending me a new router, knocked £5 off the monthly charge, upgraded the call package I was on, given me a month free and given me a 30 day cooling off period!

Wasn't going to accept any offers, but with 30 days to check it out and with the month free I can't really lose!

Thanks for the help though, if it doesn't work out in the next 30 or so days the advice will come in useful :)

Dave.
 
We got Virgin Cable Broadband, TV and Phone.

They are good as long as you are a new customer or want to upgrade, other than that their customer service is fairly below par, but then so are most other companies (BT are the worst).

They dont throttle as such, they use an STM system as below:

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

Once your up and running, the services are good
 
Dman said:
Why did you carry on paying them if you'd moved? :shrug:
Click to expand...

Cancelled the direct debit, then they billed an the credit card I set it up with. I couldn't get the credit card company to cancel the payments so im no longer with them.

It was the mother in laws house, was only there for about 12 months, no amount of phone calls etc could help.

Virgin were that bad that a woman I know contacted them, took at a policy and then cancelled it the very next day because she found a better deal. The tried taking her to court for not paying despite them never actually connecting her.

Customer service is a joke.
 
I've been with Virgin for a few years now (Previously on NTL) and never really had any problems with the service. Late last year i was upgraded to the 50mb service as a trial before it went nation wide, i did have problems upgrading but this was mainly down to the call centre staff not being brief regarding the 50mb trials. They basically kept telling me that 50mb was unavailable and couldn't understand how i had the new modem.

As for the call centres pray you get a UK call centre if you you ever need to ring them. When i first signed up with them my bill was wrong every month for the first 12 months, i had to ring them every month to get it sorted out.
 
2blue4u said:
I'd hate to be you when you do have problems.
Click to expand...

Maybe didn't explain too well. Their TV, Phone and Broadband service provided have been fine, internet is very rarely down and i use it all day everyday.

Customer services on the other hand are not too hot. The problems i've found are down to the non UK call centres. Speak to someone in the UK and they'll sort it out right away.
 
I know what you mean. But isn't that usually the case with Customer Satisfaction issues? The technology works well these days, well, usually. But the problems centre upon billing errors and call centres.

My supplier has guaranteed to always have a UK call centre and they answer over 90% of incoming within 15 seconds which is astonishing for any company, let alone a utility company.
 
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