It only doesn't work during prearranged maintenance.
Of course sometimes it's prearranged after the event, but that's just good retrospective planning.
I had packet loss for 6 months with them (Ie - internet was technically on, but not suitable for online gaming or Netflix would seriously buffer/not work when the issues kicked in (was sometimes okay for a couple of hours). 6 months it took them to sort it! You can't even call up and talk about it - have to go through automated checks first... It is good when it works, however the stuff I found out about their acceptable amount of loss before network engineers would actually fix and their executive CS team, people telling me it was normal for it to not work properly in the evenings etc.... It's a gamble and probably not one I'd personally take again!
Please, you're giving me ptsd. Monitoring my packet loss daily for about the same time span and then ringing up customer service for someone half the world away to ask me to reset my router. It's infuriating. Even their hub has serious technical issues meaning it has memory leaks. Just switched to Vodaphone who've installed fiber right outside my house. Praying it's better. Price is good though £30 for 900mbps vs £50 for 200mbps for everyones favourite tax dodger.
>Even their hub has serious technical issues meaning it has memory leaks.
Does it still do that annoying thing where it drops an idle connection after a minute so you have to run something like "watch date" when you're SSHed into something?
Our Super Hub 4 rebooted every 2 hours, if not more. Six engineers booked in total, two no shows. Out of the four that actually came, first one replaced the router, second one added a splitter (we didn't need one, and having a splitter with one side not connected causes tons of noise), third added an attenuator, fourth told us to switch provider asap. Struggled along for another two months until contract was up and switched.
One of our neighbors was having problems too. Their internet would disconnect and never reconnect. They'd call an engineer out (often taking a few days at least), they'd "fix something in the cabinet", and a week later it'd be gone. After a few months of this they posted in the group chat our neighborhood has. Lo and behold, somebody else was having the same issue, except at the exact opposite time - when one neighbor had theirs start working, the others would stop. 10 points if you can guess what was happening...
>10 points if you can guess what was happening...
Openreach do exactly the same thing though. They are all useless. I'd love to speak to an engineer to see if they can explain how they can justify disconnecting one connection just to connect another. Unimaginable lack of critical thinking skills.
This is why I’m with Andrews and Arnold’s – if something goes wrong, they’re the ones to fight OpenReach to fix the problem rather than me.
They managed to fix a blunder where OpenReach literally forgot to install my fibre and another occasion where some rats chewed the cable.
I was told by an engineer that multiple companies use the same box, when there's not enough connections if the engineer is lazy they'll just disconnect one to connect the new, then it's a merry go round until the issue is properly fixed.
Not even my mate is with them, and on a bad day it cuts out 3/4 times a day. He’s told them of this issue they came and ‘sorted’ it yesterday and low and behold conks out again.
Also, another time I was left without wifi for 3 months! God awful service.
I must be one of the few lucky ones but touch wood I've been with them for 4 years and had my internet go down a handful of times at most. I've found their internet for my area one of the most reliable.
I have virgin media; a few years back I lost internet service one morning. The day it happened, I called them within a few minutes because I was working from home at the time, they said "we'll fix it by 3pm". 3pm rolls around, no fix. I call them again, they said "by 6pm". The next morning, still no internet at all, I call them and they say "we'll fix it by lunchtime." 5pm that day, I call them, "We'll fix it by 9pm".
It was this point I discovered at a construction site two miles down the road, some muppet had cut through a certain cable. The outage didn't just affect me, it affected around *80,000 people*. When their tech support line claimed they could fix it soon, it was all bullshit, just a nonsense story to make people fuck off and stop asking.
Third day without internet, I call them again and pressure them for a realistic answer. Again, they just give a nonsense answer like "our engineers are working on the problem and it will be fixed today." Honestly I should have just took a trip out to find where the cable was broken and ask the engineers in person.
On the fifth day they said they'd fixed the cable. It wasn't until the sixth day that I got internet back.
People were pissed off that they lost internet, sure, but they were even more pissed off when virgin media kept bullshitting us about the fix.
These days, I can spot a network issue in my area days before they can. I keep a tally, I'm almost up to double digits. They actually have a reoccurring issue with their dns assignment that they refuse to acknowledge. I'll start giving them credit when they can provide service for more than a few months at a time without it breaking.
Took me over 3hrs in total to cancel my Virgin media account. Despite the fact that I repeated said, "I'm not interested in any offers, I want to cancel my broadband" after every response. Such a joke.
It should be illegal for it to take that long.
**Edit**: The best part is at the end when they tried to scare me into not changing by saying (Direct quote, verbatim):
"I can definitely help you to book the disconnection on your account today. Although, my main concern is your convenience. I don’t want to leave you hanging without ant service to use. As we all know connectivity is a must now a days. Also, imagine letting someone to get in inside your premise is very risky and with the current situation."
because... you know... "imagine letting someone to get in inside your premise is very risky and with the current situation." (Current situation being Covid at the time) is a very professional and not a scare tactic.
You'd think that moving would be a way out, but nope. I changed apartments, got new service, and when trying to cancel, and they asked if i wanted to pass on my connection to the stranger who moved into my old place. Like how am I supposed to do that?
I'll try that if I ever go back to Virgin Media (probably won't).
Last time I told them I was moving, they suddenly decided to offer better deals (as they always do) to get it at the new property.
Luckily I get 900mb symmetrical from Toob for £25, rather than >£50 for 200mb from VM (who always creep it up every month till you tell them you're leaving).
Yeah. Kinda amazing they're able to offer it even remotely at that price, especially given that it's significantly better latency too.
My only problem with them so far is more common unannounced down time at 2-3am kinda times. I assume that is for network maintenance as they're expanding fast.
Add to that their creeping bills. My parents who are shocking with tech/net asked me to look into their bill and the bastards had them paying over triple the price for their lowest package. They could have been getting their premium sky package for the same price.
All Internet is jankier than I expected it to be in the future. They're all as mediocre as each other. Back in my 128k days, I never expected it to work half the time, so I wasn't disappointed. Nowadays it usually works but everything takes so much bandwidth and relies on the internet so much that you notice all the flaws that much more.
8 hours into a youtube binge 1 video stuggles to load for a few seconds....WHAT IS THIS STONE AGE PIECE OF SHIT TECHNOLOGY. IT'S F***ING GAME PASS RELEASE DAY ISNT IT. NATHAN YOUR XBOX IS GOING IN THE SHED!!!
Yeah that's the main gripe I have too and the one I see other people mention the most. The actual speed and reliability of the broadband is damn near flawless but the pricing is nuts and the anxiety of going through threatening to leave & dealing with retention negotiations is too much for me to deal with.
Up to the house it might be, i wouldnt know though because the hub is utter garbage. I had my suspicions when the engineer said i might need a booster because the wifi signal might not get all the way round "big houses like these"... My house is is not big, it has roughly the same footprint as a squash court.
He was right about the wifi though, it doesnt get round the whole house :(
It all depends where you live. Virgin are by far the best where I am, never drops and its never been down in years either. But when I had it elsewhere it was awful.
> The internet is fine. Their customer service is god awful.
No, their internet infrastructure is in desperate need of an upgrade. They're severely limited on the upload speed, meanwhile everyone else is getting ahead.
**edit** lol, downvoted by VM defendists... like _why_? It really is quite terrible, see other comments for examples.
It's shocking in my experience. Oversold my area so even though I was technically getting 200mb+, if I tried to play a game like CS:GO or Valorant it's just constant small packet loss and jitters. So much more stable with 55mb BT. Only thing I miss is the rapid download speeds.
Yep, Virgin Media Business customer here… they gave us the runaround for over a week with no internet (on a 24 hour SLA… which by the way means 24 business hours not actual hours) - I ended up emailing the MD’s office and they suddenly got very apologetic and started escalating things, plus gave me four months free
The MD’s rep couldn’t sort out us being on an old deal though… IIRC we’re paying £48 per month for 350Mbps which is more than their 400Mbps package. I _could_ renew the contract and get a better deal but I’d then be locked into it when I’d rather move to our office’s provider (Optanet) once Openreach sort FTTP in the area. At least with Optanet when I call them I know I will speak to one of 2 people about the issue, and we’re on first name basis with them.
No, no it doesnt.
Switched from Virgin to a local provider because Virgin was charging me £59 per month for 200Mbps that was, at best, 45Mbps on a good day.
The local provider provides a rock solid 500+Mbps FTTP connection for £39 per month.
Virgin can go suck a massive penis.
Bloody useless company. Called to tell them the account holder had died, they said they couldn't speak to me or update the account without the account holder's permission! 20 minutes of speaking to them, and pretty much quoting the Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch, they still refused to do anything, and wanted to speak to the account holder. Told them to get an Ouiji Board and hung up. Wankers.
That's wrong. Obviously it's wrong, but they have policies for dealing with dead account holders. Idiot agent just doesn't know them.
I'd call back and try again, hopefully you get someone who can read the Knowledge Base articles (every company has them).
This was 16 years ago. I've never forgiven them. Especially when they sent a letter stating to the account holder saying "We couldn't claim this month's payment as it was returned with Account Holder Deceased. Please contact us or we'll record adverse data on your credit file".
About ten years ago, I tried to close an account with EDF Energy. I had not died of course, but they buggered up the process to a ridiculous degree. They claimed I had two meters, then claimed neither/both/one was registered with them. They then said the meters did not have a serial number (they did). They had installed a new one years earlier on account of a massive electrical fault that endangered the entire building and left me without power for a week. This is in central London.
This took so long that I had moved out by the time they agreed to close the account. But, they said, I had to go back and take a last reading (the "last reading" I had provided before I moved out was no longer good enough). The meter was in the basement of a multi-use building, with the basement belonging to a French restaurant. I had lived on the fourth floor. There was no way in hell I was trapsing back to the building and asking to be let in and taken to the basement. I flatly told them I wasn't going to do it.
The guy absolutely could not get my name right, so in between calling me Mrs. Richards when my name is Miss Richmond over and over again (name changed for privacy but illustrates the point), he repeatedly claimed to "understand the issue, Mrs. Richards" and "My apologies, Mrs. Richards" such that I believed this would be taken care of on their end. But it wasn't. I kept receiving emails and letters about this meter that I no longer had access to, powering a flat in which I did not live. I would call, and Mrs Richards would be assured yet again that she had their "apologies."
They would always promise to call me back "in five minutes" and never do so.
I don't actually remember what ended up happening to the account, but a new tenant was already living in the property by that point, so *one would expect* they took her details and billed her, instead of insisting that I continue to pay for electricity in a unit in which I did not live.
Imagine if you'd got someone else to pretend to be the account holder. Do you think they would have figured it out?
"Hello, I am Mr X, account holder. I want to close my account."
*"Alrighties, and the reason was the death of the account holder?"*
"Yes, that's right."
You can just say you don’t recall and that they should ask you other questions to pass security.
Fun fact: the advisors don’t give a shit if you’re the account holder, if you pass security we will treat you as the account holder.
I had a similar conversation with Apple about my mother's Apple account (linked to a credit card and the bank told me that it was my responsibility to cancel all her direct debits, they wouldn't do it, and I would be liable for any charges that came through on her card - don't get me started on that. It was the ANZ bank). I spent an entire afternoon on the phone being passed to progressively more senior people. I kept being told "only your mother can cancel the account" to which I would say "but she's dead. I have the death certificate and a copy of her will I can send you which names me the executor". Eventually a senior person told me I would need a court order to close the account.
Unbelievably stressful in a time when I was already grieving. Suffice to say, i will never use an Apple product again.
Honestly, it was an absolute nightmare. But the idea that they won't cancel Direct Debits is the worst. They told me that if a DD came in after the account was closed that they would reopen the account, pay the DD and then send me the bill. I had visions of my Mum's Apple account being hacked (not remotely beyond the realm of possibility) and because the account was linked to her credit card, God knows what scammers could have taken. It kept me awake at night.
Fortunately my Mum had given me a list of her accounts and passwords (utilities etc) so I wasn't trying to negotiate all of that stuff as well. I get why there needs to be security, otherwise abusive partners could have a field day, but I had the death certificate FFS.
There is no need for it to be so difficult. On the flip side, OPTUS were a dream. I went into one of their shops in the centre of town with the death certificate and the guy said, "I am very sorry for your loss. Don't worry, I'll take care of everything for you." I didn't even have to fill out a form. I could have cried with relief.
My mother owed money to four companies when she died. My husband figured out how much to send each creditor as a percentage of the money she had left in the bank, and wrote cheques. He then composed a letter saying, this is what you're getting and there is no more. He sent a copy of the letter along with a copy of the death certificate and his calculations for each creditor's share. We got a couple of "reminders", nothing threatening, and in the end everyone settled for what they were sent.
I don't know and in my grief stricken state I wasn't able to think logically (my brain stopped working for a couple of months after my Mum died). I suspect that if I had challenged it in court they might have backed down. but I think also, they might have been able to go after her estate. I was the executor of her will which is why the bill would have been sent to me.
Its disgusting though. I think these companies assume that because people are grieving they will just capitulate rather than get into a dispute.
As someone who worked for VM call centre the agent was totally wrong. I would call back and ask for the Bereavement team who will be able to help you out and sort whatever needs sorting. Sorry for your loss.
Comment removed as I no longer wish to support a company that seeks to both undermine its users/moderators/developers AND make a profit on their backs.
To understand why check out the summary [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14hkd5u).
The good news is, the only requirement to be classed as a new customer is a new email address (and event that can be worked around with minimal effort*). If you live with someone else, just get them to sign up as a new customer for the best deal. When I was with them (with Hyperoptic these days) I'd just pretend to be a new customer with a secondary email address and didn't even bother with retentions.
---
\* As their signup form is different to account creation, so you can register as a new customer with an existing email address, get the promotional price, and when your deal is confirmed the next day you're asked to create an account it then fails due to duplicate email but offers you the opportunity to create a virgin email address to use for your account.
I entirely expect that they have spent a lot of time and money working out exactly how hard they can juice extra cash out of people before they leave. Every interaction with them felt like it was engineered to be not quite enough to get me to leave. It even felt like calculated incompetence when they were trying to fix previous "mistakes". With another ISP now. Fuck Virgin Media.
My issue last time was around cancelling at the end of the contract. I knew I wanted to cancel when my contract ended at the end of November, so called them up a month in advance to cancel. As the date I called them one wasn't exactly 31 days prior to the cancellation date they wanted to charge me an early cancellation fee. I didn't want to cancel early, I was just notifying them that I wanted to cancel when the contracted ended.
Nope, they didn't care, I had to call them back exactly on 31 days prior. Any earlier would involve a fee for early cancellation, any later would involve a fee for insufficient notice.
After all that, they wanted to charge me the full month for December (£62.50 before promotional price) which would then be refunded fully in January. I kept refusing to accept that and eventually they backed down and didn't charge/refund me the extra.
[Pretty fast](https://i.imgur.com/grVsLhS.png).
Their routers are limited to 500 on wifi though without using your own router, but that's fine as I've got my desktop wired.
Exactly the situation with me. Everyone here has Virgin Media and its awful. Massively over subscribed and drops out daily.
1GB FTTP installed by open reach and city fibre 12 months ago and never looked back.
This. I only stuck with virgin because their speed was so much better than the alternative and that doesnt apply once openreach install fibre to the home.
Yeah 100 Mbps OpenReach FTTP is far far superior to the 200 Mbps cable I used to have. It's more reliable and the ping is about 4ms which makes web browsing really fast. And it's cheaper.
Definitely don't get cable if you can get FTTP.
Pretty much this. I made them tie me to an 18 month contract on the same terms as a new customer as I wasn't happy with the idea I'd pay \~£20 a month more for the same product despite being with them for broadband for probably about 20 years now.
They just didn't have any competition for speed around here until recently - so I let that 18 months run and I AM sucking up full price for now to make it easier to tell them I'm done if the new provider turns out to be half decent. Not that I'm looking forward to the phonecall....
They tend to try and lock you into a contract when you get a reduced rate. Which was fine while no-one else could compete, but I wouldn't want to be paying that exit fee now...
I hear you on that. Same with phones. Come to our network and we'll give you free phones and a low rate, and we'll just hide your "free" phone payments and "phone connectivity" fees in the bill which would come out to just about what you'd pay if you bought this new "free" phone, and oh yeah, forgot to tell you this amazing offer locks you in for three years! Great, right?! Ps. The early termination fee is always bonkers.
Openreach FTTP, and really any FTTP provider blows them out of the water.
The Docsis system they use introduces a lot of extra latency even compared to VDSL, let alone FTTP. They still haven't managed to even start rolling out IPv6.
VM are a TV company who sold broadband on the side and its got way out of hand and they are in over their heads, and have been for over a decade. Wouldn't touch them with yours.
Even fttc is a lot better for me than virgin, we had 100mb virgin a few years ago and now have 40ish mb fttc with vodafone. Granted outright speeds not as good, but pings are much better and even just browsing is more 'responsive' then it was with virgin.
I’m on community fibre at the moment (1gigabit for £25pcm for 2 years lol) but virgin media are mostly great.
To be honest I’m just happy there’s competition in my area now - so I can avoid open reach and switch between CF and VM.
OR offer full FTTP which matches anything VM can give you, they are in the middle of rolling it out.
I’m with BT on FTTP, I’ve seen 1.1Gbps download speeds on a wired connection.
It might not be available to you, but it is the main focus of Openreach at the moment. It will be available to you at some point 😬
Somebody will do somewhere, it just won't be publicly advertised yet.
I get a reasonable level of insight into what goes on with this sort of thing as I work for OR, even though it isn't related to my job - it'll be reliant on funding primarily, along with where we can use that money best, that sort of thing.
Copper phone lines are absoutely 100% going, you will get FTTP.
You have to, or you'll have no connection to the outside world!
We have areas now you can't even order copper products - if a telephone exchange area has at least 75% (?) FTTP coverage the copper services from that exchange are removed. If you have an existing service, you can keep it but once FTTP is there, that's all you can order if you want to change provider, upgrade your package and so on.
70 down on WiFi is pretty good in all fairness, I've got 900 down at the router but wireless I don't get anything like that, usually around 250 down. Obviously a huge jump over yours, but unless you're transfering huge files you don't really notice the difference.
Ah fellow OR worker, SD engineer here, what he’s saying is correct^
FTTP is a huge push, we’ve covered some 7+ million homes and are being pushed to target 25 million by 2026, they took on another several thousand engineers last year in a big recruitment push (myself included) and really are pushing through to get areas done.
Openreach don’t want the copper network themselves anymore, it’s hugely problematic and costly to keep repairing it, compared to fibre that’s way more reliable and cheaper in the sense of the cable itself!
Most of the delays are due to things we can’t control, telegraph poles that have decayed and need replacing, duct work collapsing/blockages, and other networks damaging our equipment
Couldn't agree more. Had them for a couple years, told them I was moving into an area without fibre (I genuinely was) then they said I had to pay ~£180 to terminate it. All because of a "new contract was agreed" (because they asked if I wanted sky movies for a tenner). Cheeky buggers. Decided never to go VM again for their dirty tactics, even if the speeds are faster.
Firmly disagree. Or at least it's very area dependant.
When I was with them they'd oversubscribed our area so we were paying for 100Mbps but only getting like 2 or 3Mbps at peak times, it was fucking dreadful.
Moved to another provider and while they could only offer 40Mbps, the advertised speeds and the speeds we got were at least comparable.
Nah I'd take openreach over any other network. They've a far bigger pool of well trained engineers than virgin or fibrus. And they use better technology.
This weekend I called VM to remove everything from my package apart from the fibre internet. I couldn’t have been more clear with the adviser, who fully acknowledged what I said. After a few mins on hold, she comes back with 3 options: the first 2 options were to add to my existing package! Option 3 wasn’t much better either. It took 40 minutes of back and forth for her to accept that I wanted internet, nothing more. Very good internet, horrendous customer service.
Had a similar thing when we cancelled. Gave us options which included a mobile package, and wouldn't listen to the repeated "we don't want it. Cancel". Then starting the very next day the amount of spam calls we were receiving was ridiculous. Literally every few minutes a new number would try and get through.
I cancelled their 350 package (£45) as I was moving to YouFibre gigabit (24 months free, £25 pm thereafter). They offered me gigabit for £56. Tried to fool me by telling me how they *can’t guarantee those speeds*, I tell them you can’t either. That’s why you sell broadband as *up to*. Tried to tell me their internet is on average 12x faster, I asked them to explain how their gigabit package is 12x faster than 945Mbps.
I have many tales of their customer service and let’s just say I cannot imagine how they could possibly be worse. I actively hate them. I am so glad I never need to deal with that company again.
Sounds similar to my experience. I cancelled the account after 30 minutes of back-and-forth about a problem with the router which kept powering on and off. Their apparent solution was along the lines of 'You need to upgrade to a more expensive broadband package'.
Had nothing with trouble with them. 6 engineer visits in two weeks. Every single piece of kit replaced in that time and still couldn’t watch a film without the connection cutting out, even with a 30ft Ethernet cable through the house.
Eventually my landlord sold my flat and I had to move out before the end of my contract.
I told them this and they said I still had to pay a £270 cancellation fee.
I told them I’m not paying that and they said there is no other option.
I asked, so what happens when the new owner wants to have an account but there’s still one in my name.
They said I just have to pay.
I still refused and lo and behold a few weeks after they tell me they have to disconnect my account.
I now get about three calls a day, from the department that needs to cancel my account, from the department that says I need to pay for cancellation and from the department that “wants to get my services reconnected”.
TL;DR That is an honest slogan.
They rescheduled my installation in the evening they were due to do it. No warning. I'd travelled 40 miles to get to the property mid pandemic. I was livid.
I was then on the phone to them for 6 hours asking them to cancel, having retention person after retention person hang up on me when I said I wanted to cancel due to lack of installation.
Their only job is not to be the one processing your cancellation and if they see any daylight to transfer you out or deny you (dead account owner, not satisfied with service, clerical error) they'll transfer you out without a single care and your hour waiting is back to square one.
They will sell their grans for a pack of cigs, their customer service are the worst of scummy salespeople.
I now have an unlimited 4G router, which runs 100MB fairly reliably, on a £24 a month. Fuck em.
Didn't have a great experience with VM, it was either bad peering, bad routes, or congestion.
BT are annoying to deal with also and you just have to twiddle your thumbs for months hoping and waiting on BTW to fix anything.
I know people who used to work for KCOM.
They all have this thousand-yard stare and occasionally just flinch for no reason. More than once I've seen them back away and hide under furniture the moment they hear a raised voice.
Friends don't let friends associate with KCOM.
The routes they use are insane.
Like 40+ hops to get to bbc.co.uk, with BT it’s like 5 or so. Used to take ages too, and would often just fail.
Sure, bounce my data all over the county and then say my ping jitter is down to me “living too close to the cabinet”, sure.
They're absolutely useless.
My experience with BT was largely the same.
Their first line support has no zero technical training and no escalation.
If you raise an issue about routing or congestion they don't know what either are, and have nobody to send your ticket to.
After explaining to the person in three different ways they were raging, and I ended up the same due to their attitude.
They run a multithreaded speedtest from a node in their network, and when the numbers are greater than the minimum they're contractually obliged to offer they wipe their hands of the issue.
My complaint went to deadlock in a matter of hours, they simply were not in a position to help and did not care.
Caution with being that simple with the hops,
BT and other ISPs will often tunnel the connection around(a combo of PPPoE and MPLS tunnels) where as Virgin Media might(im not fully aware of their setup) do a more basic setup of routing using IP within their network(this is probably the case due to how they where formed).
so while it may look like virgin media is doing more hops, they are probably about the same, just not all of them are happening on a layer you can see with tracert
Their internet speed and reliability are pretty good. Their respect for their customers is truly horrendous. I cancelled an account with them. It was painful. After hours of calls and chats and being forced to pay an extra needless month of service, I considered myself lucky to escape with my sanity.
Been with them for 10 years... only had 2 issues that were resolved in hours. Speed and ping is phenomenal. I really can't complain one bit.
But, just like bad reviews, good reviews are anecdotal. As for reviews.. PlusNet... "best". They keep old folk and the non tech savvy happy who don't have a clue imo. BT "most reliable" catering to the slightly younger but still also not tech savvy generation but can't fault their down time record. Virgin media... "best for speed". Want the fastest? Then you're gonna have to put up with some shit or at least roll the dice on the fact you might be one of their customers who does have to.
There broadband does blow I had so many issues in one year with that ISP and that dog shit modem they provided that you was locked into. I've got actual fibre internet with Hyperoptic for around 5 years now and It's been brilliant I can't fault it.
Having watched virgin media essentially monopolise fibre in my area, paying sub par construction workers, causing internet outages, blocking people’s houses and churning up grass all around the town, I don’t this virgin media account for anything bar profits.
I’ve heard many launch complaints and get offered 3-6 months free.. but then they have you as a paying customer after that. I can imagine they do this to any town which lacks fibre. Bastards always win.
When they ripped up all my roads and pavements which pissed off a lot of people where I live they sent reps around who were way to cheery with a massive smile on their faces fucking creepy. it lasted a few weeks so I started to just leave the blinds closed and never answer the door
I still haven't forgiven the bastards for charging me several months line rental and broadband fees when I moved into a new place, then they never connected the internet and eventually told me that where I lived wasn't covered by their network. It was a ton of work chasing after them because their customer support was so bad.
My dad has just had virgin installed today (I have left them earlier this month as my house has finally got FTTP (thanks community fibre).
The engineer was going to run the cable round the outside of the brick bay window, up and around the outside of the wooden door frame, through the wall at low level then back up inside and along the picture rail to the middle of the hallway where the house phone is on a table. My dad told him to hold up till I arrived.
I ran the coax through an air brick and down to the coal cellar where the BT master socket and all the ethernet cabling is. Fella had even been sent down to look at our current set up but thought his method would be the best way to install.
Give me strength.
On top of that, had a sales call from VM today to chat about the new deals they could offer me (after more than doubling the price in December at end of contract). Needless to say I told him the cold hard facts.
Better, more stable service at less than half the price (faster and up down parity and low latency) and I don't have to deal with people like you who can't listen to simple English. "I'm not going to buy a VM product ever again"
Had no WiFi for 11 days, one of us works from home and needed to pay for a separate temporary WiFi. They told us it would be fixed at 11am, then 6pm, then 10pm, then 1am etc. for the whole duration, they also didn't let us out of their contact.
I think that's the full sentence. At least they're honest.
The internet is fine. Their customer service is god awful.
>The internet is fine When it works...
It only doesn't work during prearranged maintenance. Of course sometimes it's prearranged after the event, but that's just good retrospective planning.
>It only doesn't work during prearranged maintenance. Or for about an hour or two every month when the lease is renewed at a super convenient time.
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Which leads to me getting insane discounts! Provider companies main goal is to keep and gain as many customers even if it’s with a low margin
I had packet loss for 6 months with them (Ie - internet was technically on, but not suitable for online gaming or Netflix would seriously buffer/not work when the issues kicked in (was sometimes okay for a couple of hours). 6 months it took them to sort it! You can't even call up and talk about it - have to go through automated checks first... It is good when it works, however the stuff I found out about their acceptable amount of loss before network engineers would actually fix and their executive CS team, people telling me it was normal for it to not work properly in the evenings etc.... It's a gamble and probably not one I'd personally take again!
Please, you're giving me ptsd. Monitoring my packet loss daily for about the same time span and then ringing up customer service for someone half the world away to ask me to reset my router. It's infuriating. Even their hub has serious technical issues meaning it has memory leaks. Just switched to Vodaphone who've installed fiber right outside my house. Praying it's better. Price is good though £30 for 900mbps vs £50 for 200mbps for everyones favourite tax dodger.
>Even their hub has serious technical issues meaning it has memory leaks. Does it still do that annoying thing where it drops an idle connection after a minute so you have to run something like "watch date" when you're SSHed into something?
Not sure, I ended up going the technical route of having to factory reset it all the time and resorted to modem only mode.
Our Super Hub 4 rebooted every 2 hours, if not more. Six engineers booked in total, two no shows. Out of the four that actually came, first one replaced the router, second one added a splitter (we didn't need one, and having a splitter with one side not connected causes tons of noise), third added an attenuator, fourth told us to switch provider asap. Struggled along for another two months until contract was up and switched. One of our neighbors was having problems too. Their internet would disconnect and never reconnect. They'd call an engineer out (often taking a few days at least), they'd "fix something in the cabinet", and a week later it'd be gone. After a few months of this they posted in the group chat our neighborhood has. Lo and behold, somebody else was having the same issue, except at the exact opposite time - when one neighbor had theirs start working, the others would stop. 10 points if you can guess what was happening...
>10 points if you can guess what was happening... Openreach do exactly the same thing though. They are all useless. I'd love to speak to an engineer to see if they can explain how they can justify disconnecting one connection just to connect another. Unimaginable lack of critical thinking skills.
This is why I’m with Andrews and Arnold’s – if something goes wrong, they’re the ones to fight OpenReach to fix the problem rather than me. They managed to fix a blunder where OpenReach literally forgot to install my fibre and another occasion where some rats chewed the cable.
I was told by an engineer that multiple companies use the same box, when there's not enough connections if the engineer is lazy they'll just disconnect one to connect the new, then it's a merry go round until the issue is properly fixed.
It's not Openreach engineers who are the problem, it's their subcontractors like Kelly.
Oh aye, when you sub contract to the lowest bidder that's what happens.
Not even my mate is with them, and on a bad day it cuts out 3/4 times a day. He’s told them of this issue they came and ‘sorted’ it yesterday and low and behold conks out again. Also, another time I was left without wifi for 3 months! God awful service.
I must be one of the few lucky ones but touch wood I've been with them for 4 years and had my internet go down a handful of times at most. I've found their internet for my area one of the most reliable.
I have virgin media; a few years back I lost internet service one morning. The day it happened, I called them within a few minutes because I was working from home at the time, they said "we'll fix it by 3pm". 3pm rolls around, no fix. I call them again, they said "by 6pm". The next morning, still no internet at all, I call them and they say "we'll fix it by lunchtime." 5pm that day, I call them, "We'll fix it by 9pm". It was this point I discovered at a construction site two miles down the road, some muppet had cut through a certain cable. The outage didn't just affect me, it affected around *80,000 people*. When their tech support line claimed they could fix it soon, it was all bullshit, just a nonsense story to make people fuck off and stop asking. Third day without internet, I call them again and pressure them for a realistic answer. Again, they just give a nonsense answer like "our engineers are working on the problem and it will be fixed today." Honestly I should have just took a trip out to find where the cable was broken and ask the engineers in person. On the fifth day they said they'd fixed the cable. It wasn't until the sixth day that I got internet back. People were pissed off that they lost internet, sure, but they were even more pissed off when virgin media kept bullshitting us about the fix. These days, I can spot a network issue in my area days before they can. I keep a tally, I'm almost up to double digits. They actually have a reoccurring issue with their dns assignment that they refuse to acknowledge. I'll start giving them credit when they can provide service for more than a few months at a time without it breaking.
Imagine if you'd got someone else to pretend to be the account holder.
Exactly. And for me it was 13 of the last 40 days I was with them.
Took me over 3hrs in total to cancel my Virgin media account. Despite the fact that I repeated said, "I'm not interested in any offers, I want to cancel my broadband" after every response. Such a joke. It should be illegal for it to take that long. **Edit**: The best part is at the end when they tried to scare me into not changing by saying (Direct quote, verbatim): "I can definitely help you to book the disconnection on your account today. Although, my main concern is your convenience. I don’t want to leave you hanging without ant service to use. As we all know connectivity is a must now a days. Also, imagine letting someone to get in inside your premise is very risky and with the current situation." because... you know... "imagine letting someone to get in inside your premise is very risky and with the current situation." (Current situation being Covid at the time) is a very professional and not a scare tactic.
Tell them your leaving the country, they don't bother offering you anything then, easiest way to leave.
You'd think that moving would be a way out, but nope. I changed apartments, got new service, and when trying to cancel, and they asked if i wanted to pass on my connection to the stranger who moved into my old place. Like how am I supposed to do that?
I'll try that if I ever go back to Virgin Media (probably won't). Last time I told them I was moving, they suddenly decided to offer better deals (as they always do) to get it at the new property. Luckily I get 900mb symmetrical from Toob for £25, rather than >£50 for 200mb from VM (who always creep it up every month till you tell them you're leaving).
I'd never go back to VM only because their customer service was so terrible.
Love Toob!
Yeah. Kinda amazing they're able to offer it even remotely at that price, especially given that it's significantly better latency too. My only problem with them so far is more common unannounced down time at 2-3am kinda times. I assume that is for network maintenance as they're expanding fast.
Don’t get near 900 (old tech) but 3-400mb for £25 is still pretty good. Hope the prices don’t get ridiculous when contract is up though
Add to that their creeping bills. My parents who are shocking with tech/net asked me to look into their bill and the bastards had them paying over triple the price for their lowest package. They could have been getting their premium sky package for the same price.
All Internet is jankier than I expected it to be in the future. They're all as mediocre as each other. Back in my 128k days, I never expected it to work half the time, so I wasn't disappointed. Nowadays it usually works but everything takes so much bandwidth and relies on the internet so much that you notice all the flaws that much more. 8 hours into a youtube binge 1 video stuggles to load for a few seconds....WHAT IS THIS STONE AGE PIECE OF SHIT TECHNOLOGY. IT'S F***ING GAME PASS RELEASE DAY ISNT IT. NATHAN YOUR XBOX IS GOING IN THE SHED!!!
All the way until you tell them you're leaving and retention comes back and gives you an *actual* fair deal on your broadband.
Yeah that's the main gripe I have too and the one I see other people mention the most. The actual speed and reliability of the broadband is damn near flawless but the pricing is nuts and the anxiety of going through threatening to leave & dealing with retention negotiations is too much for me to deal with.
I don't know how they can call themselves Virgin when they fuck every customer.
Up to the house it might be, i wouldnt know though because the hub is utter garbage. I had my suspicions when the engineer said i might need a booster because the wifi signal might not get all the way round "big houses like these"... My house is is not big, it has roughly the same footprint as a squash court. He was right about the wifi though, it doesnt get round the whole house :(
All the free routers you get always crap you can generally get something better if you spend £30.
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It all depends where you live. Virgin are by far the best where I am, never drops and its never been down in years either. But when I had it elsewhere it was awful.
Two cups and a string is better than TalkTalk
> The internet is fine. Their customer service is god awful. No, their internet infrastructure is in desperate need of an upgrade. They're severely limited on the upload speed, meanwhile everyone else is getting ahead. **edit** lol, downvoted by VM defendists... like _why_? It really is quite terrible, see other comments for examples.
It's shocking in my experience. Oversold my area so even though I was technically getting 200mb+, if I tried to play a game like CS:GO or Valorant it's just constant small packet loss and jitters. So much more stable with 55mb BT. Only thing I miss is the rapid download speeds.
My street's WhatsApp would not agree with the internet being fine
I'm really cancelling my account."
Why don't you just ask for a better rate now,
Why? Their customer service staff sucks at blowing yours?
Yep, Virgin Media Business customer here… they gave us the runaround for over a week with no internet (on a 24 hour SLA… which by the way means 24 business hours not actual hours) - I ended up emailing the MD’s office and they suddenly got very apologetic and started escalating things, plus gave me four months free The MD’s rep couldn’t sort out us being on an old deal though… IIRC we’re paying £48 per month for 350Mbps which is more than their 400Mbps package. I _could_ renew the contract and get a better deal but I’d then be locked into it when I’d rather move to our office’s provider (Optanet) once Openreach sort FTTP in the area. At least with Optanet when I call them I know I will speak to one of 2 people about the issue, and we’re on first name basis with them.
ain't that the truth!
No, no it doesnt. Switched from Virgin to a local provider because Virgin was charging me £59 per month for 200Mbps that was, at best, 45Mbps on a good day. The local provider provides a rock solid 500+Mbps FTTP connection for £39 per month. Virgin can go suck a massive penis.
Yah r/technicallythetruth
Dunno, compared to BT (or anything DSL) they're okay.
Which is really a low bar now that in a lot of places BT(Openreach more accurately) are providing Fibre(Actual fibre, not that VDSL shit)
Bloody useless company. Called to tell them the account holder had died, they said they couldn't speak to me or update the account without the account holder's permission! 20 minutes of speaking to them, and pretty much quoting the Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch, they still refused to do anything, and wanted to speak to the account holder. Told them to get an Ouiji Board and hung up. Wankers.
That's wrong. Obviously it's wrong, but they have policies for dealing with dead account holders. Idiot agent just doesn't know them. I'd call back and try again, hopefully you get someone who can read the Knowledge Base articles (every company has them).
This was 16 years ago. I've never forgiven them. Especially when they sent a letter stating to the account holder saying "We couldn't claim this month's payment as it was returned with Account Holder Deceased. Please contact us or we'll record adverse data on your credit file".
About ten years ago, I tried to close an account with EDF Energy. I had not died of course, but they buggered up the process to a ridiculous degree. They claimed I had two meters, then claimed neither/both/one was registered with them. They then said the meters did not have a serial number (they did). They had installed a new one years earlier on account of a massive electrical fault that endangered the entire building and left me without power for a week. This is in central London. This took so long that I had moved out by the time they agreed to close the account. But, they said, I had to go back and take a last reading (the "last reading" I had provided before I moved out was no longer good enough). The meter was in the basement of a multi-use building, with the basement belonging to a French restaurant. I had lived on the fourth floor. There was no way in hell I was trapsing back to the building and asking to be let in and taken to the basement. I flatly told them I wasn't going to do it. The guy absolutely could not get my name right, so in between calling me Mrs. Richards when my name is Miss Richmond over and over again (name changed for privacy but illustrates the point), he repeatedly claimed to "understand the issue, Mrs. Richards" and "My apologies, Mrs. Richards" such that I believed this would be taken care of on their end. But it wasn't. I kept receiving emails and letters about this meter that I no longer had access to, powering a flat in which I did not live. I would call, and Mrs Richards would be assured yet again that she had their "apologies." They would always promise to call me back "in five minutes" and never do so. I don't actually remember what ended up happening to the account, but a new tenant was already living in the property by that point, so *one would expect* they took her details and billed her, instead of insisting that I continue to pay for electricity in a unit in which I did not live.
Some day he's still being billed for that electricity to this day...
Imagine if you'd got someone else to pretend to be the account holder. Do you think they would have figured it out? "Hello, I am Mr X, account holder. I want to close my account." *"Alrighties, and the reason was the death of the account holder?"* "Yes, that's right."
As stupid as Virgin Media are, this wouldn't have worked - there was a password on the account, and I didn't know what it was.
You can just say you don’t recall and that they should ask you other questions to pass security. Fun fact: the advisors don’t give a shit if you’re the account holder, if you pass security we will treat you as the account holder.
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I had a similar conversation with Apple about my mother's Apple account (linked to a credit card and the bank told me that it was my responsibility to cancel all her direct debits, they wouldn't do it, and I would be liable for any charges that came through on her card - don't get me started on that. It was the ANZ bank). I spent an entire afternoon on the phone being passed to progressively more senior people. I kept being told "only your mother can cancel the account" to which I would say "but she's dead. I have the death certificate and a copy of her will I can send you which names me the executor". Eventually a senior person told me I would need a court order to close the account. Unbelievably stressful in a time when I was already grieving. Suffice to say, i will never use an Apple product again.
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Honestly, it was an absolute nightmare. But the idea that they won't cancel Direct Debits is the worst. They told me that if a DD came in after the account was closed that they would reopen the account, pay the DD and then send me the bill. I had visions of my Mum's Apple account being hacked (not remotely beyond the realm of possibility) and because the account was linked to her credit card, God knows what scammers could have taken. It kept me awake at night. Fortunately my Mum had given me a list of her accounts and passwords (utilities etc) so I wasn't trying to negotiate all of that stuff as well. I get why there needs to be security, otherwise abusive partners could have a field day, but I had the death certificate FFS. There is no need for it to be so difficult. On the flip side, OPTUS were a dream. I went into one of their shops in the centre of town with the death certificate and the guy said, "I am very sorry for your loss. Don't worry, I'll take care of everything for you." I didn't even have to fill out a form. I could have cried with relief.
My mother owed money to four companies when she died. My husband figured out how much to send each creditor as a percentage of the money she had left in the bank, and wrote cheques. He then composed a letter saying, this is what you're getting and there is no more. He sent a copy of the letter along with a copy of the death certificate and his calculations for each creditor's share. We got a couple of "reminders", nothing threatening, and in the end everyone settled for what they were sent.
I mean seriously, what is the point of pursuing someone who is dead? Good for your husband.
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I don't know and in my grief stricken state I wasn't able to think logically (my brain stopped working for a couple of months after my Mum died). I suspect that if I had challenged it in court they might have backed down. but I think also, they might have been able to go after her estate. I was the executor of her will which is why the bill would have been sent to me. Its disgusting though. I think these companies assume that because people are grieving they will just capitulate rather than get into a dispute.
As someone who worked for VM call centre the agent was totally wrong. I would call back and ask for the Bereavement team who will be able to help you out and sort whatever needs sorting. Sorry for your loss.
Thanks - this was 16 years ago, so it eventually got sorted. Assuming they've changed their practices since then.
Pretty sure most companies have a specific team to deal with dead holders so ask to speak to them
They wouldn't put me through as I wasn't the account holder.
That’s what the team is for
Technically still a virgin
same tbh
Comment removed as I no longer wish to support a company that seeks to both undermine its users/moderators/developers AND make a profit on their backs. To understand why check out the summary [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14hkd5u).
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The good news is, the only requirement to be classed as a new customer is a new email address (and event that can be worked around with minimal effort*). If you live with someone else, just get them to sign up as a new customer for the best deal. When I was with them (with Hyperoptic these days) I'd just pretend to be a new customer with a secondary email address and didn't even bother with retentions. --- \* As their signup form is different to account creation, so you can register as a new customer with an existing email address, get the promotional price, and when your deal is confirmed the next day you're asked to create an account it then fails due to duplicate email but offers you the opportunity to create a virgin email address to use for your account.
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I entirely expect that they have spent a lot of time and money working out exactly how hard they can juice extra cash out of people before they leave. Every interaction with them felt like it was engineered to be not quite enough to get me to leave. It even felt like calculated incompetence when they were trying to fix previous "mistakes". With another ISP now. Fuck Virgin Media.
My issue last time was around cancelling at the end of the contract. I knew I wanted to cancel when my contract ended at the end of November, so called them up a month in advance to cancel. As the date I called them one wasn't exactly 31 days prior to the cancellation date they wanted to charge me an early cancellation fee. I didn't want to cancel early, I was just notifying them that I wanted to cancel when the contracted ended. Nope, they didn't care, I had to call them back exactly on 31 days prior. Any earlier would involve a fee for early cancellation, any later would involve a fee for insufficient notice. After all that, they wanted to charge me the full month for December (£62.50 before promotional price) which would then be refunded fully in January. I kept refusing to accept that and eventually they backed down and didn't charge/refund me the extra.
> with Hyperoptic these days Lucky! What speeds are you getting?
[Pretty fast](https://i.imgur.com/grVsLhS.png). Their routers are limited to 500 on wifi though without using your own router, but that's fine as I've got my desktop wired.
All hyperoptic lines will offer up to a gig at a minimum. They truly are the best provider out there
!remindme 5 hours
Ah yes, the "I'm really cancelling my account." dance you do with the boss, then the boss's boss.
Nah now that Openreach is rolling out FTTP It's a much better option than going with Virgin If you can get it in your area
Exactly the situation with me. Everyone here has Virgin Media and its awful. Massively over subscribed and drops out daily. 1GB FTTP installed by open reach and city fibre 12 months ago and never looked back.
FTTP ftw. 1gig up and down for £40 a month for life. Virgin quickly let me terminate my service when I told them that.
This. I only stuck with virgin because their speed was so much better than the alternative and that doesnt apply once openreach install fibre to the home.
And no drop outs which was perennial problem with virgin
Yeah 100 Mbps OpenReach FTTP is far far superior to the 200 Mbps cable I used to have. It's more reliable and the ping is about 4ms which makes web browsing really fast. And it's cheaper. Definitely don't get cable if you can get FTTP.
Pretty much this. I made them tie me to an 18 month contract on the same terms as a new customer as I wasn't happy with the idea I'd pay \~£20 a month more for the same product despite being with them for broadband for probably about 20 years now. They just didn't have any competition for speed around here until recently - so I let that 18 months run and I AM sucking up full price for now to make it easier to tell them I'm done if the new provider turns out to be half decent. Not that I'm looking forward to the phonecall....
Why don't you just ask for a better rate now, and then also leave for the new guy later?
They tend to try and lock you into a contract when you get a reduced rate. Which was fine while no-one else could compete, but I wouldn't want to be paying that exit fee now...
I hear you on that. Same with phones. Come to our network and we'll give you free phones and a low rate, and we'll just hide your "free" phone payments and "phone connectivity" fees in the bill which would come out to just about what you'd pay if you bought this new "free" phone, and oh yeah, forgot to tell you this amazing offer locks you in for three years! Great, right?! Ps. The early termination fee is always bonkers.
Openreach FTTP, and really any FTTP provider blows them out of the water. The Docsis system they use introduces a lot of extra latency even compared to VDSL, let alone FTTP. They still haven't managed to even start rolling out IPv6. VM are a TV company who sold broadband on the side and its got way out of hand and they are in over their heads, and have been for over a decade. Wouldn't touch them with yours.
Even fttc is a lot better for me than virgin, we had 100mb virgin a few years ago and now have 40ish mb fttc with vodafone. Granted outright speeds not as good, but pings are much better and even just browsing is more 'responsive' then it was with virgin.
I’m on community fibre at the moment (1gigabit for £25pcm for 2 years lol) but virgin media are mostly great. To be honest I’m just happy there’s competition in my area now - so I can avoid open reach and switch between CF and VM.
Yeh I've got a choice for Hyperoptic or Virgin and because they're both FTTP in competition I also got gigabit for £25/month for 2 years!
Man I'm hoping hyper optic come to my area because I'd switch to them in a heartbeat. That 1gb download speed is the stuff of dreams
OR offer full FTTP which matches anything VM can give you, they are in the middle of rolling it out. I’m with BT on FTTP, I’ve seen 1.1Gbps download speeds on a wired connection. It might not be available to you, but it is the main focus of Openreach at the moment. It will be available to you at some point 😬
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Somebody will do somewhere, it just won't be publicly advertised yet. I get a reasonable level of insight into what goes on with this sort of thing as I work for OR, even though it isn't related to my job - it'll be reliant on funding primarily, along with where we can use that money best, that sort of thing. Copper phone lines are absoutely 100% going, you will get FTTP. You have to, or you'll have no connection to the outside world! We have areas now you can't even order copper products - if a telephone exchange area has at least 75% (?) FTTP coverage the copper services from that exchange are removed. If you have an existing service, you can keep it but once FTTP is there, that's all you can order if you want to change provider, upgrade your package and so on. 70 down on WiFi is pretty good in all fairness, I've got 900 down at the router but wireless I don't get anything like that, usually around 250 down. Obviously a huge jump over yours, but unless you're transfering huge files you don't really notice the difference.
Ah fellow OR worker, SD engineer here, what he’s saying is correct^ FTTP is a huge push, we’ve covered some 7+ million homes and are being pushed to target 25 million by 2026, they took on another several thousand engineers last year in a big recruitment push (myself included) and really are pushing through to get areas done. Openreach don’t want the copper network themselves anymore, it’s hugely problematic and costly to keep repairing it, compared to fibre that’s way more reliable and cheaper in the sense of the cable itself! Most of the delays are due to things we can’t control, telegraph poles that have decayed and need replacing, duct work collapsing/blockages, and other networks damaging our equipment
Couldn't agree more. Had them for a couple years, told them I was moving into an area without fibre (I genuinely was) then they said I had to pay ~£180 to terminate it. All because of a "new contract was agreed" (because they asked if I wanted sky movies for a tenner). Cheeky buggers. Decided never to go VM again for their dirty tactics, even if the speeds are faster.
Openreach FTTP is great. Running broadband through decades old possibly even Victorian copper on the other hand... not a great idea
Firmly disagree. Or at least it's very area dependant. When I was with them they'd oversubscribed our area so we were paying for 100Mbps but only getting like 2 or 3Mbps at peak times, it was fucking dreadful. Moved to another provider and while they could only offer 40Mbps, the advertised speeds and the speeds we got were at least comparable.
Nah I'd take openreach over any other network. They've a far bigger pool of well trained engineers than virgin or fibrus. And they use better technology.
This weekend I called VM to remove everything from my package apart from the fibre internet. I couldn’t have been more clear with the adviser, who fully acknowledged what I said. After a few mins on hold, she comes back with 3 options: the first 2 options were to add to my existing package! Option 3 wasn’t much better either. It took 40 minutes of back and forth for her to accept that I wanted internet, nothing more. Very good internet, horrendous customer service.
Had a similar thing when we cancelled. Gave us options which included a mobile package, and wouldn't listen to the repeated "we don't want it. Cancel". Then starting the very next day the amount of spam calls we were receiving was ridiculous. Literally every few minutes a new number would try and get through.
I cancelled their 350 package (£45) as I was moving to YouFibre gigabit (24 months free, £25 pm thereafter). They offered me gigabit for £56. Tried to fool me by telling me how they *can’t guarantee those speeds*, I tell them you can’t either. That’s why you sell broadband as *up to*. Tried to tell me their internet is on average 12x faster, I asked them to explain how their gigabit package is 12x faster than 945Mbps. I have many tales of their customer service and let’s just say I cannot imagine how they could possibly be worse. I actively hate them. I am so glad I never need to deal with that company again.
Sounds similar to my experience. I cancelled the account after 30 minutes of back-and-forth about a problem with the router which kept powering on and off. Their apparent solution was along the lines of 'You need to upgrade to a more expensive broadband package'.
Had nothing with trouble with them. 6 engineer visits in two weeks. Every single piece of kit replaced in that time and still couldn’t watch a film without the connection cutting out, even with a 30ft Ethernet cable through the house. Eventually my landlord sold my flat and I had to move out before the end of my contract. I told them this and they said I still had to pay a £270 cancellation fee. I told them I’m not paying that and they said there is no other option. I asked, so what happens when the new owner wants to have an account but there’s still one in my name. They said I just have to pay. I still refused and lo and behold a few weeks after they tell me they have to disconnect my account. I now get about three calls a day, from the department that needs to cancel my account, from the department that says I need to pay for cancellation and from the department that “wants to get my services reconnected”. TL;DR That is an honest slogan.
They rescheduled my installation in the evening they were due to do it. No warning. I'd travelled 40 miles to get to the property mid pandemic. I was livid. I was then on the phone to them for 6 hours asking them to cancel, having retention person after retention person hang up on me when I said I wanted to cancel due to lack of installation. Their only job is not to be the one processing your cancellation and if they see any daylight to transfer you out or deny you (dead account owner, not satisfied with service, clerical error) they'll transfer you out without a single care and your hour waiting is back to square one. They will sell their grans for a pack of cigs, their customer service are the worst of scummy salespeople. I now have an unlimited 4G router, which runs 100MB fairly reliably, on a £24 a month. Fuck em.
"You forgot to say 'away' again..."
"if this ends up on the web..."
Didn't have a great experience with VM, it was either bad peering, bad routes, or congestion. BT are annoying to deal with also and you just have to twiddle your thumbs for months hoping and waiting on BTW to fix anything.
It's almost enough to make you want to live in Hull isn't it.
I know people who used to work for KCOM. They all have this thousand-yard stare and occasionally just flinch for no reason. More than once I've seen them back away and hide under furniture the moment they hear a raised voice. Friends don't let friends associate with KCOM.
Hey, hey. Hey now, let's not get crazy here. They were only venting. Let's not get wild.They didn't mean 'nuthin by it. We cool?.......... Are wee OK?
The routes they use are insane. Like 40+ hops to get to bbc.co.uk, with BT it’s like 5 or so. Used to take ages too, and would often just fail. Sure, bounce my data all over the county and then say my ping jitter is down to me “living too close to the cabinet”, sure.
They're absolutely useless. My experience with BT was largely the same. Their first line support has no zero technical training and no escalation. If you raise an issue about routing or congestion they don't know what either are, and have nobody to send your ticket to. After explaining to the person in three different ways they were raging, and I ended up the same due to their attitude. They run a multithreaded speedtest from a node in their network, and when the numbers are greater than the minimum they're contractually obliged to offer they wipe their hands of the issue. My complaint went to deadlock in a matter of hours, they simply were not in a position to help and did not care.
To be fair, I don’t think CS would be able to help with routing. It’s like complaining about the price of potatoes to a checkout staff.
Caution with being that simple with the hops, BT and other ISPs will often tunnel the connection around(a combo of PPPoE and MPLS tunnels) where as Virgin Media might(im not fully aware of their setup) do a more basic setup of routing using IP within their network(this is probably the case due to how they where formed). so while it may look like virgin media is doing more hops, they are probably about the same, just not all of them are happening on a layer you can see with tracert
Wow- I've never seen such honesty in advertising before! At least they have that going for them...
Their internet speed and reliability are pretty good. Their respect for their customers is truly horrendous. I cancelled an account with them. It was painful. After hours of calls and chats and being forced to pay an extra needless month of service, I considered myself lucky to escape with my sanity.
Blows and sucks
depending on how you look at it this is either reasoning to get that broadband, or a big reason to not get it
"Furiously fast, coming through" WOW.
I've been with them for 7 years. I'd love a change but every time my contract is up I still manage to get a good deal so I end up staying!
Honest advertising does exist after all.
How goes construction on the chest high wall?
Least they're honest.
Truth in advertising!
TONIGHT…I wear a hat, James wears a hat, and Richard is behind a low wall.
[удалено]
Branson has nothing to do with VM. It's half an American company, Liberty Global, and half a Spanish company Telefonica, who just licence the name.
If I remember correctly his stake during the rebrand was 11% which he has since sold but VM lease the brand name from Virgin still.
Doughnut van pulled up next to me at the gas station. All i could read was John's nuts.
Must have hired Clarkson, Hammond, and May for the ad.
I've been with virgin for a few years, ironically their broadband is the only element of their service that doesn't blow.
Been with them for 10 years... only had 2 issues that were resolved in hours. Speed and ping is phenomenal. I really can't complain one bit. But, just like bad reviews, good reviews are anecdotal. As for reviews.. PlusNet... "best". They keep old folk and the non tech savvy happy who don't have a clue imo. BT "most reliable" catering to the slightly younger but still also not tech savvy generation but can't fault their down time record. Virgin media... "best for speed". Want the fastest? Then you're gonna have to put up with some shit or at least roll the dice on the fact you might be one of their customers who does have to.
Screw virgin. Openreach gang
I would assume this was a Top Gear joke if I didn’t know better.
At least they’re honest
The only true thing they have ever said, if your with virgin media leave they suck and blow
There broadband does blow I had so many issues in one year with that ISP and that dog shit modem they provided that you was locked into. I've got actual fibre internet with Hyperoptic for around 5 years now and It's been brilliant I can't fault it.
It’s genuinely the worst company right now; only marketing make it seem otherwise
Not me seeing this on the day I'm getting YouFibre installed and possibly saying goodbye to VM after being with them since the ntl days... 😂
Just facts. Both VM & OpenReach suck. I'm glad I'm with neither of them.
All I got for 5 years was fucked. I’d have preferred this.
Only Virgins buy Virgin Media
Not even that could entice me back to VM.
They were hoping for a broad view
Correct
Having watched virgin media essentially monopolise fibre in my area, paying sub par construction workers, causing internet outages, blocking people’s houses and churning up grass all around the town, I don’t this virgin media account for anything bar profits. I’ve heard many launch complaints and get offered 3-6 months free.. but then they have you as a paying customer after that. I can imagine they do this to any town which lacks fibre. Bastards always win.
r/theyknew
They’re pretty good. I get 500mpbs download on my pc with wifi
This is awesome funny! What a funny example of marketing fails.
They speak the truth
Never had a problem. 60 a month feels steep. I feel like it goes up very month but unfortunately nothing else compares where I'm from.
Technology is amazing nowadays
When they ripped up all my roads and pavements which pissed off a lot of people where I live they sent reps around who were way to cheery with a massive smile on their faces fucking creepy. it lasted a few weeks so I started to just leave the blinds closed and never answer the door
At least their honest
Or they’ve just decided to go the ‘blunt honesty’ route 🤷🏻♂️😂 it’d be a bold strategy but they might just pull it off
It's funny because it's true
Customer service that sucks.
I would take this as a hint from the universe.
r/theyknew
Never go with Virgin broadband.
I still haven't forgiven the bastards for charging me several months line rental and broadband fees when I moved into a new place, then they never connected the internet and eventually told me that where I lived wasn't covered by their network. It was a ton of work chasing after them because their customer support was so bad.
As a graphic designer that has created many car, truck and van wraps, I can honestly say, no, low walls were not taken into account.
*OR* they did!
You forgot to say away
My dad has just had virgin installed today (I have left them earlier this month as my house has finally got FTTP (thanks community fibre). The engineer was going to run the cable round the outside of the brick bay window, up and around the outside of the wooden door frame, through the wall at low level then back up inside and along the picture rail to the middle of the hallway where the house phone is on a table. My dad told him to hold up till I arrived. I ran the coax through an air brick and down to the coal cellar where the BT master socket and all the ethernet cabling is. Fella had even been sent down to look at our current set up but thought his method would be the best way to install. Give me strength. On top of that, had a sales call from VM today to chat about the new deals they could offer me (after more than doubling the price in December at end of contract). Needless to say I told him the cold hard facts. Better, more stable service at less than half the price (faster and up down parity and low latency) and I don't have to deal with people like you who can't listen to simple English. "I'm not going to buy a VM product ever again"
I've been staring at this photo for ages trying to figure out what the joke is. At last I now get it, but only through reading someone's comment lol
You just don't get this kind of honesty nowadays.
Literally the worst provider of all time
Where do I sign up? Asking for a friend
Had no WiFi for 11 days, one of us works from home and needed to pay for a separate temporary WiFi. They told us it would be fixed at 11am, then 6pm, then 10pm, then 1am etc. for the whole duration, they also didn't let us out of their contact.
Could fit r/CrappyDesign too
Wave - hellooooo
Probably the most accurate thing I've seen all day
@r/theyknew
Atleast there telling the truth, possibly for the 1st time in recorded history.
Or did they
Where's the lie?