Virgin Media 100Mb Nightmare


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Hello Guys,

 

I have been with Virgin media since the days of Eurobell in the Crawley Area in West Sussex. More than 20 years I would say. Named changed from Eurobell to Telewest and to Virgin Media and Now the company has been taken over by some USA based company but the name remains as Virgin media.

 

Their so called Fiber network has some serious Network cards and UBRs high utilisation problems during the evening time. Problems occurred and got solved on their networks over the years but now days more and more slow speeds issues are happening in my area. The last slow speed issued happened last year and it took them 9 months to sort the issue out and correct the slow speeds. Now the issue of slow speed has come back since three weeks and for past two days the service was completely lost.

 

For days in the past I spent hours to their technical department on the phone and ran tests together and than they go and talk to second line at the end and say sorry "its a high utilisation problem in your area and ETA to solve this it's three months down the line or something like that" and it goes on and on on.........

 

To make the matter worse the Indian technical support centre in PUNE is one of the worse I came across on various occasions during my time with them. They are very shallow in all aspects of solving problems and customer service ethics are non existent.

 

Currently I get 3mb on my 100mb connection and on average the speed during peak time is around 5mb. Sometimes the upload is faster than download.

 

In the old days of Eurobell and Telwest people use to listen and use to try and sort out the problems but in this TIME customer service is no existent with Virgin Media. Through my dealings with them I found very few people who would actually try and HELP, otherwise majority of customer service in India and Philippines are not even well trained to even help.

 

After days of persistent I have been given a customer complaint address to write to in Swansea, whom I have dealt with them in the past and found their agents very aggressive to defend the company and not even hearing what the customer is saying and coming to a suitable resolution.

 

I am seriously Fed up now and wondering how to get out of the contract as they said I am tied in until Jan 2016. The solution they offered me is to pay  for the rest of the contract and than leave:( even I told than regarding the slow speeds.

 

Have you guys had any similar experiences with this company for Broadband.

Thoughts are welcomed.

 

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It seems to be area dependent, I'm on their 152mb package in Kent and my service has performed brilliantly since the day I had it installed, though I'd definitely agree that their customer service blows. Because they advertise it as being "up to" getting out of the contract won't be easy.

 

You can start a dispute but I'm not sure how far you're going to get. http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-2556572/Your-rights-How-mobile-broadband-contracts.html

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We were with Virgin when I was in the UK, and we almost always had to phone them about speed issues. We kept getting the same answers, distance from the exchange, number of users using the connection in the evening, etc. However back then they seemed happier to throw freebies and upgrades at you to keep you as a customer. From the sounds of your experience they've taken quite a dive in their customer service. :/

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You can do it so long as you get in touch with the right people at Virgin Media. I did so a few years ago and got out of a terrible Virgin Media contracts (50% packet loss, 1-2 Mbit rather than 100, et cetera).

 

Many people recommend emailing the CEO. I didn't, however I got in touch with that department, and they handled my request quite elegantly I must say. I wish I had saved some of those documents so I could give you the e-mail and postal address, but unfortunately I haven't. If it helps, I got the contact details from a senior technician over phone support, perhaps you can get past the (no offence intended) Indian answering machines by asking to speak to their supervisor and then ask him for contact details for management ... or something.

 

If you want to try the CEO, which I can recommend as well based on reading many success stories, you can find the contact details here http://www.ceoemail.com/s.php?id=9632 and more general contact details here http://ceoemail.com/?q=virgin .

 

Edit: And yes, their service depends entirely on where you live. In central Croydon I got above mentioned AWFUL service. Moving down to South Croydon, Virgin was our only option for "fibre" (which it really isn't) and here it works perfectly. It's because there are only old people here so the exchange is barely used. ;)

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Technician is not needed the power levels and everything is fine, it's a high utilisation problem on their network and UBR. That's what I been told.

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Currently I get 3mb on my 100mb

If this will make you happy, I can't get stable 10mb on copper since 2 years now; router can lost connection at any time. ISP doesn't see any problem, a consumer organization and state regulatory department couldn't help either. Everything was fine for 10 years till half of September 2012.

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thanks for the info guy so far....


If this will make you happy, I can't get stable 10mb on copper since 2 years now; router can lost connection at any time. ISP doesn't see any problem, a consumer organization and state regulatory department couldn't help either. Everything was fine for 10 years till half of September 2012.

 which ISP was that?

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http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/complain/phone-and-broadband-complaints/service-problems/ contact details for ombudsman

 

Ofcom works to ensure everyone gets the very best from their communications.

Our role is to look at how issues affect UK consumers as a whole.

We cannot handle individual complaints.

However, we fully understand how frustrating it can be when things go wrong.

That's why we have improved the way phone and broadband providers deal with your complaints.

To get help with your individual problems, follow these steps:

Problems including:

total loss of coverage

poor coverage

repairs

restricted service

mobile too slow

installation delayed or incorrect

refusal to provide service

  • Contact your provider's customer services department and explain your problem.
  • If this doesn't resolve the issue, make a formal complaint to the company. You should find details of how to do this on the back of your bill, on their website or ask their customer services.
  • If your provider is unable to resolve your complaint, ask for a deadlock letter. This enables you to take your complaint to an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) scheme.
ADRs act as an independent middleman and will examine the case from both sides and reach a decision they think fair.

If eight weeks have passed since you first formally complained you can contact the ADR directly.

There are two ADR schemes

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Hello Guys,

 

I have been with Virgin media since the days of Eurobell in the Crawley Area in West Sussex. More than 20 years I would say. Named changed from Eurobell to Telewest and to Virgin Media and Now the company has been taken over by some USA based company but the name remains as Virgin media.

 

Their so called Fiber network has some serious Network cards and UBRs high utilisation problems during the evening time. Problems occurred and got solved on their networks over the years but now days more and more slow speeds issues are happening in my area. The last slow speed issued happened last year and it took them 9 months to sort the issue out and correct the slow speeds. Now the issue of slow speed has come back since three weeks and for past two days the service was completely lost.

 

For days in the past I spent hours to their technical department on the phone and ran tests together and than they go and talk to second line at the end and say sorry "its a high utilisation problem in your area and ETA to solve this it's three months down the line or something like that" and it goes on and on on.........

 

To make the matter worse the Indian technical support centre in PUNE is one of the worse I came across on various occasions during my time with them. They are very shallow in all aspects of solving problems and customer service ethics are non existent.

 

Currently I get 3mb on my 100mb connection and on average the speed during peak time is around 5mb. Sometimes the upload is faster than download.

 

In the old days of Eurobell and Telwest people use to listen and use to try and sort out the problems but in this TIME customer service is no existent with Virgin Media. Through my dealings with them I found very few people who would actually try and HELP, otherwise majority of customer service in India and Philippines are not even well trained to even help.

 

After days of persistent I have been given a customer complaint address to write to in Swansea, whom I have dealt with them in the past and found their agents very aggressive to defend the company and not even hearing what the customer is saying and coming to a suitable resolution.

 

I am seriously Fed up now and wondering how to get out of the contract as they said I am tied in until Jan 2016. The solution they offered me is to pay  for the rest of the contract and than leave:( even I told than regarding the slow speeds.

 

Have you guys had any similar experiences with this company for Broadband.

Thoughts are welcomed.

 

 

Email the CEO department, they will get the ball rolling.

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I'm on their 50mb service and have been getting in the region of 4-5 for the last 3 months or so.  Again put down to high utilisation.  I contacted them and got a small reduction on my bill - although wasn't worth ringing again as it was so little.  It is supposed to be getting sorted this month in my area, but so far it hasn't changed.  I will be ringing again if it isn't sorted by the end of the month.

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 which ISP was that?

Orange Poland which emerged after privatization from state-controlled telecom and operates on its infrastructure

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metallithrax,

See They are failing horribly in what they said they will provide according to the contract and the drop down ratio is way to high in your case of 50mb and in my case 100mb. Through my experience of dealing with them I found out THAT TO UPGRADE ONE UBR which can handle more users requests is in the region of 10-15 thousand pounds cost.

 

So they try and delay this as much as possible and when it's absolutely necessary to upgrade I mean right to the end than they probably buy second had product from Far east and upgrade their network. This is how this big companies make money and the CEOs get FAT packet wage.

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If you have a blog i'd recommend you keep a diary with dates / times of when you have called Virgin, who you spoke to and what happened. If nothing has been done by the date / time they have promised to action it by call back and keep logs of what has been said. I even went as far to include photos of my phone showing I had been on hold to Virgin Media for over an hour, where possible keep any reference numbers you are given as it will allow someone with authority to trace back what has been said to you.

 

After been messed about for a few weeks this blog post was going on 2000 words long, I tweeted it  to Virgin Media's customer support and pasted the link in to some survey I got via email asking how I felt Virgin performed when an engineer came out to try resolve the issues I was having.

 

A couple of days later I got a call from someone at Virgin's Business Chief Executives Office saying he appreciated how detailed my blog was, and that I explained exactly where Virgin were going wrong and didn't just call them every name under the sun. Apparently it had been passed high up the ranks at Virgin and read by a lot of people with influence. (Google analytics showed a lot of traffic to it anyway on that day).

 

End result was I got about

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If you have a fault reference -- which you should for high utilisation -- you can call back to Customer Services and get a rebate off your monthly bill corresponding to the speed reduction until such time that a problem is solved.

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Vanx,

 

I all ready done that they gave me 

?little? credit on the account. But the point is the time wasted to deal with this, effort, energy and
?frustration ?

is worth more than just Little credit

? as a freebie?.The matter is the slow speed drop from 100mb to 3mb-5mb is not acceptable at any cost.
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Have you tried actually raising a complaint, or just dealt with support time and time again?

 

Try that, or email the CEO and make sure the word Complaint is in the subject or email body.

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Vanx,

 

I all ready done that they gave me 

?little? credit on the account. But the point is the time wasted to deal with this, effort, energy and
?frustration ?

is worth more than just Little credit

? as a freebie?.The matter is the slow speed drop from 100mb to 3mb-5mb is not acceptable at any cost.

 

 

I understand, but at least it's something while you wait for your contract to expire. If it is that bad, see if you can start a contract with another ISP in the meantime so at least what you have left to pay for the remaining months won't be that much.

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The ping time looks OK for that kind of connection.Is the connection relatively stable?

 

What kind of modem do you have on it? I wonder if you say you were with them for ages you still have one of the old Silver ones?  

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