To think Virgin Media is the worst fucking company ever? Why is anyone with them?

[lurchersrule]

My account page says my broadband is up to 200mbps. Their app tells me it's actually something like 11mbps. I have rung and the automated thing reset the router which did fuck all. Their own engineer put the router next to the TV which their website says not to do?!!?

Ds can't play on Roblox, which normally wouldn't bother me but it's currently his only form of interaction with his friends. I'm a teacher so we all have live lessons next week, which won't happen if it's still like this. It's never been great and as good as it's meant to be but it's got absolutely shit since lockdown.

I've been on hold for nearly an hour. There's no live chat and you can't message them on Twitter. They were shit when I had it installed and I had no wifi for a week and now this. I fucking hate them. Only went with them as it was a great deal - even the Sky guy said it was a no-brainer to take the deal. God, I wish I'd stayed with Sky. My contract is up at the end of the month but at this rate I'll never get to cancel it and I want to complain!

I'm not UR am I?

I have Virgin broadband because the Openreach service to my property can only give a guarantee of 0Mbps download speed. I work for a competitor that uses the Openreach network.
I have found the Virgin bb and tv to be excellent on the whole, with any issues resolved quickly. The customer service has got worse, but really never have to deal with them.

The main issue for all the suppliers is that the hub/router supplied are mass produced rubbish. This is why suppliers will guarantee speed to the hub but not beyond, unless you pay for extra equipment.

My experience tells me that many people have a terrible experience with Virgin, but equally a terrible experience with Sky, plusnet, Bt etc.

If you are getting good speed from the hub apart from certain areas of the house, then a mesh solution, or something similar is worth investigating.

They have an issue with protecting data. Everyone I know who’s with them has had scam callers giving our legitimate info about their virgin packages to trick them. My mum got caught for £90 because the scammer knew so much info about her Virgin account she thought it was legit. When the same tactic was used on three other people I knew I wrote a letter raising concerns about a leak of information from their call centres to scammers. I received a call back from a ‘manager’ who basically denied there was any problem and she was very rude and argumentative, just told me, ‘it can happen with any company anyway even if you went with Sky’.

Maybe so, but I’ve been with Sky over ten years, my mum now with them for two years and the other people involved with the same problems all switched providers too and nobody has had any issues since.

Did you manage to cancel , OP?

Can highly recommend Zen Internet. I went through the big ones - sky, BT etc and their customer service had me in tears much of the time. Zen have a UK call centre and they answer the phone! Also it is consistent service and reliable.

Awful company. Barely cheaper than Sky and the Broadband went down regularly. They didn't answer phones when this happened. So frustrating with 3 teens and wfh.

I ran back to Sky and BT and have been problem free ever since.

Yes. I could type out why but only have one spare hour.
Check their online rating.
NEVER SIGN UP.
Never

@noneedtoexpelme

Can highly recommend Zen Internet. I went through the big ones - sky, BT etc and their customer service had me in tears much of the time. Zen have a UK call centre and they answer the phone! Also it is consistent service and reliable.

I couldn’t recommend zen. We had a plethora of issues with our Internet due to them (I work in IT and know my way around networks and logs) and as we solely used macs they said it was done to a complex internal network, even though the connection was being dropped at the router.

The speed will never be as fast as the maximum stated on your account. Nobody gets that. I am not particularly dissatisfied with them - but that's compared to Sky who I left because they were totally shit!

I do know a trick to get through to a real person though. No matter what you want, always select the "I want to leave" option - it always gets answered and much quicker! Oddly, they seem to be able to either deal with everything or find you someone who can immediately!

I see almost weekly people complaining on local fb groups about their virgin broadband being down for days at a time . I used to be with sky for years and never had a problem and my parents have had sky for maybe 12 years and I’ve never once heard them say it’s been down . For that reason alone I would never took VM plus we have 100gb of data each on our phones so use that which saves us money .

Why am I with them? Well, when we moved into our house they were NTL and they were ok.

Now of course things have moved on and they are not ok. To be fair, most of the time the service works well and there's no reason to call them or deal with their crappy customer service. Except that they keep putting the price up.

At one point I had a customer service email address for them which meant you could get things done, but they've changed it now. You used to be able to contact them on Twitter as well and they'd sort things out but I don't think they'll do that now, either. They just force you through their awful call centre system. Although I have used a text chat with them which wasn't too painful.

I don't think they are the worst though - I think that "accolade" goes to Talk Talk.

I have a second line with Plusnet. They are great. So far.

@CeibaTree

We've been with virgin for about 3 years now and never had a problem 🤷🏻‍♀️

Been with them for over 20 years and never had a problem.

The main issue for all the suppliers is that the hub/router supplied are mass produced rubbish. This is why suppliers will guarantee speed to the hub but not beyond, unless you pay for extra equipment

Yes, somebody was asking about the best internet service to go for in our area in a local Facebook group yesterday. Someone responded saying there was no competition - it had to be Virgin Media - but you needed your own router. I do use theirs, but have an extender too because we have garden office that it has to reach out to. That seems to boost it generally and not just in the direction of the garden office.

They are the worst. Practically harassed my elderly relative after her husband died and she was trying to cancel the contract. Letter after letter after letter with different amounts that she apparently owed them, despite near daily phone calls with them where individual operators confirmed that VM owed her money. It only stopped after I emailed the CEO on her behalf. We never got an acknowledgement or an apology but she hasn't heard from them since so we chalking it up as a win.

She was in tears about it so often. It was horrible.

We had Virgin for decades and whilst its customer service was shocking the product (we only had broadband) was really good and ideal for DS's gaming. The price kept on creeping up. Then the product started to be unreliable.

We moved house and couldn't have Virgin anyway. But I think it is too busy chasing new customers to look after its existing ones.

We are now with Sky for half the price and I'm really impressed with it so far.

Virgin are utter shit.

I moved a couple of weeks ago, booked my installation a few weeks in advance for the day after move in. I work from home and do a lot if video calls so really needed it up and running ASAP.

2 days before the installation they sent me a message to say that installation was delayed until 29th May

I rang to complain, finally managed to speak to an actual person after an eternity on hold, they said they were very sorry and please make alternative arrangements in the meantime. Fuming!!!

Never had a big issue with them and in our rural location it's currently the only way to get decent speed (we have VM fibre down our road) There CS is ok, not stella but when we've had replacement boxes or had to call due to an issue it was ok. Not the best but not the worst. There prices could be cheaper but there is usually negotiation room.
I am reluctant to ever go with sky after a terrible time with them years ago which through 100% their fault ended up with bailiffs turning up at my door.
BT hahahahhahahahaha

Have to agree with a previous poster - we do have our own router rather than their one and it's much much better.

We had to switch to Virgin last year when we starting working from home. We've had no problems at all.

We had to switch because all the others, (Sky, BT, Talk Talk etc) use the same BT/Openreach copper cabling. We spent years moving from one provider to another, but the speeds were always the same slow speed, huge numbers of dropped connections etc - it was basically unusable. Had BT/Openreach out countless times (via different providers) but they never got to the bottom of the problem and always blamed the copper cabling infrastructure. There was a long awaited promise of fibre to the cabinet for our estate, which we waited years for and put up with crap broadband. But when it came, it was barely any better. If the problem is the copper cabling between the cabinet and your home, you're stuffed with BT/Openreach as they've no plans to replace the last leg.

Hence we moved to Vigin who use their own cabling which is far better and up to modern standards. Not BT's copper cabling infrastructure which, for our estate, is over 40 years old!

When my dad died I found they’d been taking money from his bank account fraudulently. They told me to take it to a mediator which I did and then they claimed that I couldn’t deal with it due to data protection... needless to say I explained data protection isn’t valid after death and I won the case and had 2 years payments returned. They hadn’t quibbled that they owed the money but that I had to open an account with them to be able to get a refund

They paid by bac s as normally happens

Wouldn’t trust to use them after that

I've had no trouble with them whatsoever and I've been with them since they started.

It sounds.like you need a Wi-Fi extender that should spread the signal further

*They're better than having to deal with Openreach like all the other providers.

I have worked in Comms for the last 35 years and i would never go with anyone other than BT, i ve dealth with 100s of ISPs since ADSL internet came into being.
My partner has Virgin, they are rubbish, not only to deal with but in the quality of their service.

ISPs deal with OpenReach not consumers and whatever BT or the regulator say, i believe you get a better service with BT dealing direct with OpenR then say TalkTalk etc

Of course they'll be folk who have had a shit experience but overall, i pay a bit extra and stick with BT.

@Kazzyhoward Weird isn't? i live in the middle of nowhere and Open Reach put in fibre to the premises, my previous place was even more remote and i got FTTP there too.

Newer housing estates, get at best FTTC or copper ADSL.

I think there was a big drive to fund fibre by the EU to rural parts of Cornwall though.

Open Reach have upped the number of houses to get FTTP by 5m to 25m by 2025.

I know this is a bit of a zombie but I'll add my experience with BT.... Its a long un.

Back in November last year we suddenly became unable to send an email. Our download speeds were fine but upload was virtually none existent. This meant all our devices stopped working properly (Alexa, smart lighting etc) but worse still, WFH DH couldn't upload files.

We called BT who brushed us of with 'well your download is fine and thats all we guarantee'. Took some digging but finally found something in their small print guaranteeing a 'service'. Grudgingly, they sent out an engineer.

After the fifth engineer with no improvement BT actually turned around to us and said "Its your fault. You have 29 connected devices to the router, you're slowing it down, we're doing no more but you can leave us if you want to". We pointed out that the upload speed remained the same with nothing connected to the router at all, and we left.

We moved to Talk Talk on the basis they guaranteed 250 connections to their router. Instantly obvious there was no change. Took THREE WEEKS to actually speak to someone. Had an email that wasn't even in any form of English. We left.

It's March by now and we still cant send an email. We go to a company called Andrews & Arnold. They guarantee to fix all problem lines. Its more expensive and we lose our phone line but by now we are desperate.
We go through several more Openreach engineers who want to tell us it's our fault, but the difference is A&A keep badgering them, keep monitoring the line and can see it's not us. They even send out a REIN Engineer to see if there is interference from somewhere, there isn't.

Finally, at the beginning of this month 2 more engineers turned up, went to the cabinet at the end of the street, swapped over the connections and our upload speed shot back up. It wasn't us, it never was and had BT done this back in November they would have solved the issue, rather they couldn't be arsed, saw us as complaining customers and shut us down.

The moral is, BT are shocking, Talk Talk almost as bad and if you have a problem line go to Andrews & Arnold. Worth every penny.