back to article Virgin Media takes itself in hand after punter-package tickle whoopsie

An email that arrived in the inboxes of an unspecified number of Virgin Media customers on Friday that promised "faster broadband, for less" was embarrassingly pulled by the telco just hours later. The company had initially sent a message boasting about Virgin Media "tickles", which apparently the ISP gives to "people we know …

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  1. AndGregor
    FAIL

    SuperSnub..

    I have had the immense pleasure of hours on the phone to VMs script bot 'help' desk. The only time I got through to an actual technician was last week when I rang to cancel my contract. The reason being, as mentioned, I can't use my broadband for gaming or IP telephony. Router resets required almost daily.

    For gaming, I get maybe one or two nights a week when I have enough time to thing about base jumping into helicopters, only to give up trying to play on-line. The IP phone, I need a lot to service one of my clients, ironically for support.

    Line quality is actually better when tethered through my mobile.. Is enough to make me blub like a scolded child and am the butt of many jokes from colleagues, mostly asking if I am in a wind tunnel today..

    After being talked into getting my problems fixed, support conceded that there was an 'issue' with the cable in a local cabinet, my broadband did improve later that day. A week later it was down for an hour or two, Work being carried out in my area, ok.. When it came back up I had much less latency and packet loss, woohoo, they actually fixed it...

    I held my breath.. After two days, this is now fairly typical of my connection quality (Different day=same old story):

    http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/5028aeaab50b20e3b0a3fe7390446760-16-01-2012.html

    Fail. From a loyal, since the good 'ol days of NTL, thoroughly fed up, fobbed off customer.. Find somebody in your area and run a broadband quality test before even thinking about signing up, it could be 1000MB, is still useless if you don't get any packets returned..

    Hmm, I wonder if they will give me a free 56k modem redundancy option if I ask nicely..

  2. Ben Alderson
    FAIL

    I got the email and I haven't been a VM customer since last July.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Best of a bad bunch?

    If I understand correctly VM provide 2 distinct BB services - Cable where possible otherwise via conventional phone line. Cable is a "better" technology without the "how far from the telephone exchange" speed drop-off issues.

    In that case many of the comments here about poorer speeds presumably relate to BB on phone line.

    However when my cable connection was upgraded to 20MB as part of an increased package (XL - primarily so I could get the V+ box) and my monthly fee increased, they didn't trouble to tell me I needed a newer faster cable modem. A few months later I ran a speed test, found I was on 10MB so called to remonstrate - then a new modem arrived but my request for recompense for not providing the contracted speed for 3 months fell on deaf ears.

    Next to me in the gym yesterday was a guy on his mobile to Sky - 20 minutes complaining of their poor service - he'd called to cancel as he could get a better deal elsewhere, they'd said "You need to speak to customer retention". That's who he was speaking to and obviously expecting some kind of sweetener but they were offering nothing, not shifting at all so he was saying "cancel" and they were saying "we can't do that, you need to speak to accounts" so he felt they'd just wasted his time, he was getting the run-around.

    I've heard some real horror stories about BT - Just one of many: one business I work with upgraded to BT broadband and a package of phone & fax lines. None of it worked for a week after the "upgrade". Then they had a problem with email using their own domain name. BT said that was because BT needed to host the domain and website - complete rubbish, once I knew they had a problem, fixed in minutes.

    On balance VM is probably no worse than anyone else and in these straightened times it's good business sense to be promising improved service with no price change to minimise the number of customers drifting away for financial reasons. (And, by the way, their business service costs more but the tech support folk actually seem to know what they're talking about ! That's something worth paying for.)

  4. Jacqui

    50Mb servie in GU15 (NTHell)

    Received the "good news" and "oops" email but as a longish time 50Mb customer it would be nice to have an upgrade - mainly for the increase in outbound bandwidth - I track down/up traffic via the linux gateway stats and it is usually pretty minor unless I download a new batch of linux distros or upgrade systems.

    FYI: I get the 50Mb inbound pretty much whenever I try but do have roughly one day every few months of complete service outage.

    Jacqui

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    50 BB on ADSL dont think so

    RE: In that case many of the comments here about poorer speeds presumably relate to BB on phone line.

    .... not the case mate.

    I posted earlier that i had poor speeds on my 50 meg connection for 6 months + and just to clarify its CABLE and not ADSL, Virgins backbones are over saturated and cant cope at peak periods, so unless some investment is going into the core network upgrading customers from 50 meg to 120 meg is just going to get on my proverbials more as it will be just more bandwidth im paying for (be it the same price) and not getting what im paying for...!

    Speaking to other people on CABLE up and down the country this problem is pretty wide spread and the old argument of speedtest.net gives me x is a load of tosh, dont you think it would be in virgins interests to flick a high priority flag on packets for the speed test sites servers... also who cares when the speed test site gives me 50 meg to the server in the next town, when the data i want is in a server in say london or else where in the uk/world and all i get is 10 -30 meg or worse when the networks as high saturation.

    INVEST IN THE CORE NETWORK, i would be happy to stay at 50 meg and forgo the 120 meg if meant i would actually get 50 meg and you spend the money on the rest of the infrastructure.

    Actually i would have been happy to stay at 20 meg i hadn't been hit with the rate limit of hell you introduced a while back ... !! oh look you watched a couple of iplayer HD's now your broadband will be ruined for the rest of the day.

  6. John Goodwin 4
    WTF?

    One day later...

    And it's all gone titsup. No internet since 16:00 this afternoon, gave up trying to ring them after the 37th attempt. Virgin are the best when there aren't any problems (9.7Mbps and 22ms latency) but when it all goes wrong, there is no hope.

    Branson - pull yer finger out.

  7. Jop
    Thumb Down

    Faster uploads they promised...

    ...14 months ago and they still have not delivered. Expected date is April/May, a whole year and a half after they sent me a glossy leaflet saying my upload speed would be upgraded.

    Would be nice if they actually deliver what their PR promises in a reasonable time.

    Not to mention fixing all the peering issues they have had for weeks, national outage on broadband, telephone and TV yesterday.

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