Virgin Media to issue firmware update after Superhub slows to crawl

Haha, phone call!

Had a phone call from VM today trying to persuade us we wanted a "free" upgrade from our 10Mb to the 30Mb package. They then said it would be an extra £5.something a month and a one-off installation charge, so I told them no thanks I'll just wait 6 months till they start upgrading people for free anyway :P Glad I did after reading all this!

It's utter crap

Not to mention the connection in the bag is utter tripe - Ours was "professionally" fitted by some slack jawed nob head whilst I was at work. The attenuator isn't even held in with anything, nor is the pin on the inside actually physically connnected to the board, it just lies there against a tiny contact pad. The thing fell off and VM wont replace it depsite it being utter crap.

Signed

Pissed off 50Mb customer

Intermittent Virgin broadband in GU15 1**

I am still on the (advertised as) 20Mb Virgin broadband and since the beginning of February have had a strangely intermittent connection. Most times are OK (well, 4M instead of the advertised 20, but then I'm not into video or gaming so that's not too much of a problem). But about once a week the service becomes intermittent (up for a minute, down for five minutes ...) and stays that way until well past midnight (no idea when it fixes itself, but the following morning is OK). And that's still with my original VM modem and my own wireless router.

NETWORK

This what I had to do get 50Meg working.

Phone them up again and again:-

1) They would send an engineer (I would use term installer) with new modem. That didn't fix the problem.

2) Send another engineer with great idea of another modem. Didn't fix it again.

3) Send another engineer to relay the cable modem cable in the house. Didn't fix it again. Told about NETWORK.

4) Send another engerner to relay the cable modem cable in the house again. Didn't fix it again. But told about lot about called NETWORK. (NETWORK is a magical virgin code or something)

5) Send another engineer to relay to cable between cabinet and my house. Didn't fix it again. The engerneer phone Virgin and told them need NETWORK to look in to problem.

6) Amazed that NETWORK do exists, been ever so happy since.

If there problem and no one else can fix it at Virgin then you sould call and demand NETWORK.

A figment of my imagination?

OK, now I'm confused.

I had my 30Mbps line installed on Friday along with a Tivo and a Superhub. The Superhub is plugged into the WAN port of my router, and all I've done is change its IP address, turn off its wireless radio and disable flood control.

With my PC connected to my own router I have an (apparently) rock solid >30Mbps download speed, and 3Mbps upstream. By all accounts I should be dropping packets left, right and centre, crying out for bridge mode and finding it worse than the flaky ADSL service I've just ditched. But I'm not - it just works. Maybe the fact that I don't own an Xbox helps?

The Tivo is buggy, but that's a different story entirely...

How to turn off Flood Control?

Where do you do that? Looking at Advanced Settings I see "IP Flood Detection" on the Services menu?

The super hub is a complete pile of wank!

I was happily on 20Mb with a little modem and decided to go for the 50Mb because I have no self control. The engineer came out and all was well for a couple of hours (or so my gf tells me cos she was working from home and let the engineer in), then I got home and decided to check out this superhub... Not very super is what I decided. I have a Linksys WRT320N which is a decent router, this superhub doesn't let you do half the stuff router can so I tried to get them to work in harmony, it is at this point that everything started going downhill.

Problem 1. The superhub does not allow bridge mode; I know, should have googled it before I got the f-ing thing. The bit that frustrated me most about this is that I've been with Virgin since they were Telewest and they had ALWAYS handed out modems hence me forking out £90 (at the time) for something that did what I needed. Oh, and BTW, part of the reason I went for the 50Mb is because a friend of mine got it before the superhub so he just has a little modem he can plug is OWN ROUTER IN TO. If according to Virgin the superhub is not to blame, then why is it that people with the little 50Mb modem don't seem to be piping up as much?

Problem 2. At this point I decided to get on the phone to Virgin to see if I could get a 50Mb modem sent out to me... oh my sweet jesus christ the amount of resistance to this is just unbelievable. I fail to believe that there isn't a single one of these 50Mb mdoems in a warehouse floor, van, engineers home that they couldn't send out to me to keep me happy. After speaking to several departments, including the HORRIFIC technical desk in India that I hung up on everytime through frustration I got through to someone in customer care who told me they could send a 50Mb modem out. Happy days... in theory...

The "50Mb modem" gets to my house, I have a look at it, this is not a 50Mb modem. I call Virgin to activate this modem and see what happens (worse case scenario is it doesn't work) they insist that it is a 50Mb modem, despite the fact that I have checked the event log on the thing and it clearly states that it does not support DOCSIS3.0. Funnily enough the activation for this thing never works.

After much frustration I call up and ask to be downgraded back down to 20Mb, that was 2 days ago and still doesn't seem to have happened. The really frustrating thing is that no one tries to appease me and they just go ahead and downgrade me, not at any single point has someone gone "this customer is really pissed off, we should really find a way of making him happy.". I have worked in a Broadband Tech desk as an escalation point and I would have taken something like this as a personal escalation, got on the phone and tried to find out SOMETHING that could be done, but there just doesn't seem to be any kind of procedure like this with Virgin media.

I've filed a complaint and am waiting to hear from someone in their complaints team, I'll keep you guys posted if anything does get resolved.

@ebbysantos

Have you actually logged into your device and checked the latest version? 5.5 supports DOCSIS3.0 and the event log on mine clearly says it does. I suspect most of you complaining just want a bridge and nothing more, and your failure to actually read what the new device did is now your own undoing and you need to get a grip.

I've got a patched cable across my front garden which they'll be here in next 2 days to replace and I'm reliably getting 15-20mbps even with that, and it's rock steady as I'm running a VPN to work. I know my neighbour over the road is getting 45mbps ++ all day long, versus BT not being able to deliver 1mbps in our area 31.

I wont be a new Virgin Customer now

I've been hearing all sorts of bad things about Virgins BB service, not just here but on other forums, I was going to ditch my Be 24Mb ADSL connection, SKY and BT and have VM installed.

Not now, at least my current setup works, it isn't 50Mb, by by the sounds of things you never get that anyway!

Mine works just fine!

I bit the bullet and installed a Superhub today.

I went from 19.55Mbps to 30.65Mbps with no packet loss and a 14ms ping.

I have no complaint but I'm very lucky.

Doh!

They come tomorrow to upgrade me from 20meg to 50meg. My Tomato router is going, my virgin modem is going and the 'orrible Netgear I bought to replace the Tomato but just ended up using as a gigabit switch is going. I wonder if I should be doing an Admiral Ackbar...

Another Lost Sale

I just wanted to post another FAIL icon for the awful thing. I began to research this hub tonight after discussing a tv,phone and 50 meg offer with customer services during the week. I have now made the decision not to go ahead.

I feel like Im being bullied into having it, my control is being taken away.

All I want is a modem, this bridge mode wont be till May, will it work out of the box after the wait? Then we have what? An over sized over engineered dust trap that eats power. What a waste. I find it inconceivable that they cant keep supplying the original 50 meg unit on request, but then, this is VM.

This is serious when an issue causes many customers like myself to baulk at the point of order and in the worst case (seen above) actually send techs away at the door because they try to impose this monstrosity on us. This isnt just a few awkward ones being unhappy about a change, its a rebellion under their noses, but they play it down as usual. Why oh why does this company always have to be at war with its customers over one thing or another?

Me too!

All of the above.

It's been a couple of months of hell and lost productivity for us. Finally went for the the "thinking of leaving Virgin" option after dialling 150. The guy on the other end of the admitted the firmware issue and agreed to send out an Ambit 300 (DOCSIS 3) modem so i could use a proper router.

Yesterday an Ambit 256 (DOCSIS 1/2) modem arrived which is realistically only capable of around 20Mbps. I'm on the XXL package which is meant to be 50Mbps.

At the end of the month we have the option of switching to BT Infinity, a 40Mbps service with an upstream limit which, i am told, is more generous than Virgins. Crucially BT (who i assume are following the Virgin debacle with great interest) will be supplying customers with separate modems giving customers the choice of a free router or using their own - especially important when running a small business LAN off a decent gateway configuration.

For now i've stopped updating the Virgin Forums on the issue because the responses i get don't really go anywhere. At best i get sent around the same old loop by staff who are trying to be helpful but alas don't really have a solution.

Methinks it's time for managers further up the chain at Virgin to be more honest with their customers. Me, honestly, i am not one for slagging off companies (unless you count one or two frustrated rants on social networking sites), especially ones with sincere goals, but i think Sir Richard needs to take some responsibility here in light of his recent campaigning on broadband speeds.