Virgin cable/ broadband bundles...?

[smee]

We already have Virgin Broadband via a BT line, but are thinking about moving to cable, so switching our line to Virgin. Anyone out there had good or bad experiences who'd like to share a bit of wisdom..?

our virgin cable line was fine. they were a bit crap at the installation, but we did get them back to redo stuff with no hassle frm them at all.

line was fine, cable was fine. and they're easy tyo beat up over price too :D

Agree with Yesterday about prices. I make a note on my calendar when I do a 'deal' with them and every year I tell them I'm going to leave because I can't afford it and they do me another deal!

Rarely have a problem with them at all. It does rather depend on your local team though, I suspect.

I have a 3 for £30 bundle with them, and have no complaints about their service. My modem packed up recently (it was ancient) and they had an engineer round within 24 hours with a new one.

Don't do it. Seriously don't. We've been waiting 18 months to get rid of ours.

We had really rubbish contention ratio and as such our 20Mb line was very rarely 20Mb. At peak times it practically ground to a halt. We phoned Virgin a few times to ask why our line was so slow when we first got it and they tried to pretend that it was a technical fault and they would get their engineers out but in the end they admitted that the had so many people in our street connected to the same line that there was no way anyone was getting 20Mb.

Also we objected to their not very publicised speed throttling. If you download or upload too much (how much depends on your package) in one of the 2 times periods, 10am-3pm and 4pm-9pm.

We seemed to find it really easy to hit the limit just through gaming and iplayer so were always throttled. I can understand them trying to encourage people not to go mad at night but during the day when most people are at work?

We migrated to O2 and almost a month in are finding it great.

I've always had great service from Virgin. I think a lot depends on who they were before they were Virgin though. I've been with them for over 10 years from when they were Telewest and Blueyonder and I've never had a problem that wasn't solved promptly.

yeh we started off with telewest

mm, so 4 votes for yes, 1 for no. Where do I find out about local area speed then? Think lottie might have a sound point, and it would drive DH beyond distraction if it all crunched up.

AFAIK, you can't actually find out what the contention ratio is. It all depends on how many people in your area actually have Virgin Media.

We also worked out that on our 20Mb package, if you downloaded flat out it would only take half an hour to hit their limit and be throttled back to 5Mb.

Can I ask what your DP uses the internet for? Is it just browsing or does he download music, films etc as well. This could be watching iPlayer or spotify etc and not necessarily illegal but takes up just as much bandwidth as those teenagers downloading films.

How is your speed on your existing line?

I presume everyone saying Virgin is cheap is on the 10Mb package or bundling. We got fed up of paying £30 a month for something we are now getting for £17 with O2.

We love our Virgin package. Tbh we didn't really have much choice who we went with because our BT lines are so bad we couldn't use the broadband and be on the phone at the same time & BT weren't interested in sorting it .

We were lucky though because the previous house owner had been with them so the cables were already in.

I've never, to my knowledge, experienced "throttling".

lottie, we have broadband with Virgin currently, but it's via the BT phoneline. Rarely a problem and the service has been fine. We won't download lots, but a slow broadband speed is a disaster as DH uses the internet for research for work. The bundle would definitely save us money, as it takes out the cost of the BT line cost so it's attractive, as is the free wireless router, though I know we could do that regardless. I will e-all my local friends and see if anyone else is using it. Hardly scientific, but it might help.. Thanks all for postings though, hugely helpful.

smee, its more like people in your street and the adjacent streets that can affect it. If you aren't downloading a lot you probably won't notice it. I live with 5 people so we can quite easily hit the limit and get throttled back.

SoupDragon, if you look on Virgin's webpage there are details there about throttling but if you aren't watching iPlayer/4OD constantly you might not have noticed that they do it. Students sharing a connection generally do notice the throttling

I'm currently paying £9 a month for a 20Mb connection with O2. Plus BT phone line and their offer for 3 months free it works out as just over £18 a month. Much better value than the equivalent package with Virgin imo which was another reason for the switch. If you want TV as well, it might well be cheaper but I can't comment since we just have freeview.

Forgot to mention we do get a free wireless router with O2.

There are of course many other local loop unbundlers that you can similar packages with.

In your situation of (probably) not being an online TV fiend you will probably be OK with Virgin.

My friends do all live in adjacent streets - we're a bit inbred round here. Strange for very urban London I know. I will look into O2 too though lottie. Thanks for the insider info..