Not so

You can get TV without their phone service because I've got it. You can't do it via the website

"You can get TV without their phone service because I've got it. You can't do it via the website"

1) Just because you've got it doesn't mean it's still available.

2) I used to have VM broadband+TV without the phone. Having left Telewest before because of poor service, I didn't want cablephone again, but one day wandered into a street salesman who said he could do cable broadband, plus basic TV free for a year, in an offer only available door to door. So I signed up for the broadband+free TV. After three months they started charging me for the TV. It took months to get a refund, me and the salesbod were both accused of lying, and when my minimum term was up, I left. Again.

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

Won't get fooled again.

Not to mention I don't like Branson much.

Only if you have TV too. If you just want broadband it's cheaper to not have a landline. £21/month for just BB

Allegedly, the Superhub can be configured to act as modem-only, allowing you to use your router of choice. VM don't supply modems anymore, probably to make life easier for their script monkeys. "Turn off your hub, wait five minutes then turn it back on again." I wish they gave us the choice of hub or modem, with the understanding you may be on your own with some support issues.

Where is this click of which you speak?

It's in the advanced settings and called Modem Mode. If you don't have it then you need to power cycle your superhub as it grabs the latest firmware on start up.

As for Virgin and others, they're all penny pinching as the masses want really cheap Internet. So we have to put up with contention, traffic shaping and bandwidth limits.

"The VM cable service is quite good, consistently fast ..." Yes but my 20MB cable connection is now consistently fast at 7.7MB. At least when it was a 10MB connection I used to get a consistent 9.8MB.

As for their email luckily I'd ditched it long ago as it was never "best of breed", but I had it in my Mailwasher config so still checking in case anyone still had the old address - until it stopped working altogether then it was easier to forget it than try to get it back to life.

We were Telewest customers and service was excelent. However service went downhill pretty rapidly when VM took over.

VM BB is OK but TV/phone are a rip-off

I only went of VM for broadband 'cos the BT line dropped from 4MB down to just under 1MB over 6 months, they said it was too many subscribers in the area and there was nothing they could do. BT promised infinity but said a max of 10MB/s was possible at £35/month. I live just north of Enfield, 15 miles from central London, so hardly in the sticks! VM offered me 20MB for £25/month, touch wood, in 9 months I have not rebooted the modem once and it's been consistently the same speed all the time. The one thing I do like about VM is that they tell you up front when you'll get your service speed lowered, so you just do everything overnight.

VM TV and landline are a serious rip-off though, so I stuck with Sky for those two.

Not a fair assesment

To be fair, I am please that you have had good service from both providers, and I myself had excellent service from VM all the while the service for Broadband was up. When it was up, full 10MB no probs. As soon as any issues arise and you need to engage the help desk, thats when the problems arise.

I have had too many calls to count to the helpdesk where they a) dont understand the actual issue, b) try and fob you off with excuses

I don't blame the helpdesk, they are scripted to provide 1st line, I get it. I am techy minded so understand some of the process. But VM's main fault is not providing decent updates/information to customers experiencing issues.

As the the minorities have undue influence... just because you do not have issues doesnt mean nobody else is....

I was thinking the same.

Been a Telewest>blueyonder>VM customer for many (more than 10) years at my previous address. Recently moved quite a long way for work reasons, and the deciding factor in which house to choose was the fact that one of them had VM cable down the street. The BT line and the satellite dish which were already at the house are now unused. Lead time from ordering to fitting - four days.

I have never had any significant trouble with the cable services, and on the odd occasions that I have (mainly too strong a signal years ago, requiring an attenuator between the modem and the line, and the notoriously bad silver TV box two or three years ago), I always had straight-forward conversations with the folks on the phones, and the engineers have been great. This is in contrast with people who are with other providers (including a friend who works for BT Openzone, who hates the BT service he gets and only keeps it because it is free!)

You're lucky. We're stuck with a BT landline. No LLU, no 3G and no cable.

The annoying thing is that there is an illusion of choice in so far as you can purchase your line from somebody else, but it's still a BT line and BT Wholesale broadband into your ISP. The trouble is that most punters don't realise this. They think they are moving away from BT, but what they are getting is effectively a BT service sold by somebody else.

For me the market should be shaken up. Any ISP that advertises LLU services should be forced to provide ISP services at the same price to any property that can be connected to the BT network. Sure it would still go through BT Central, but they should be forced to charge the same price. I've seen plenty of bilboards advertising broadband for ridiculously low prices in areas where LLU is not available. Walk right up to the billboard and you see the small print reading something like "Where available. Prices may be significantly higher in some areas." Given that you can't usually read the small print since you're passing in a bus, train or car it's a pretty cheap trick. This to me this sort of advertising ploy is much worse than the "up to" business.

It's also amazing how many ISP sites you can visit where you are quoted something like £4.99 pcm right up to the last page where suddenly it has risen to something like six times as much even though you put in your phone number on page one.

I had this problem too. Fixed it by going into the superhub options and enabling multicast. Been fine since then.

The issue of slow speeds over Virgin or any other ISP is quite a complex one, but too many retards assume it to be simple. I'll give you a nice example.

I often hear statements such as "I'm on ISP X and I can't stream youtube or iplayer so it's crap." The first advice I give is always "call the ISP" and the response is usually that the ISP say everything is fine. And the ISP usually denies shaping the likes of youtube and iplayer.

The next advice I give is to run tests on at least two of the popular speed test sites. These usually come back as being slow.

Then I get the user to check the sync speed of their DSL (if they're on DSL) and they will usually tell me it's nice and high.

The next question is usually to ask what speed their wireless connection is. It's amazing at this point how many tell me that the speed is 1 or 2Mbps. And they still blame the ISP - they provided the router after all. However I usually find the problem is not down to specific router problems, but commonly using the default channel when everybody else on the street is using the same channel. Sometimes it's other things. Like my neighbour who's wireless card simply refused to run at anything other than 1Mbps. My card in her machine was fine at a minimum of 48Mbps anywhere in the house. A new card sorted her problem, even though she'd spent weeks bitching about her ISP.

Dear burnard,

My tolerance level is low today.

You obviously don't know what you are talking about so, follow the old advice of :

It's better to sit quietly and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

VM's service is dependant on which region you live in, in a previous job you couldn't use VPN connections within some regions.

The constant sources of crap with VM seems to be their Indian call centre for the following reasons:

1: The VOIP system that is either incorrectly configured, or bandwidth starved

2: The inability of said staff to understand that when you say you want to reduce costs, they try & sell you a more expensive package

3: The call centre's inability to understand any form of regional accent

4: If it's more complicated than turn it off & back on again it's a 3 day wait for their 2nd line staff to contact you (who then say have you turned it off & on again)

Once you get a hold of the UK staff things do improve though.

I dare say that if the Indian staff got some proper training it would probably help matters a lot.

http://shop.virginmedia.com/phone/phone-line.html

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=25512

Can't argue with you there ... not that I notice as I only use the landline to ring my parents at the weekend.

Ditch the VM phone and use a VOIP service instead. Vonage costs £5.99 a month for 2000hours of UK geographic calls. 0845 0870 a few pence a minute and no connection charge. You also get free calerid for with VM charge £2 so the actual cost is ~ £1 for virtually unlimited landline calls.

You need to use 18185 or 1899

I heartily agree with you - the solution is simple - sign up with a phone overrider like 1899.com or 18185.com and watch your phone bills drop dramatically

@jimmypage

I was getting irritated at the charges in general, in the end I went to the disconnections dept and said asked them to give me a reason to stay with VM.

They where helpful and I ended up with a tivo, keeping the original VM box (in a different room), larger tv package, faster internet, and a bill reduction.

Don't bother with any of the other customer service people.

Heh - they send the same crap (to "The Occupier") even if you ARE a customer :\

We get their marketing crap even though they don't provide a service in our area and say they have no plans to do so. Brilliant.