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Virgin Media. Shite

Mullardman

Mullardman

Moderately extreme...
We had a Virgin Media Broadband a/c for yonks. It was Mrs Mull's for her business and wasn't actuallly so bad most of the time.

BUT.. It was only 5 Meg and was a bit crappy..

Then.. Virgin sent us a 'Hub 3'.. which we ignored for a while.

Then.. our BB dropped off completely.

I 'persuaded' Mrs Mull to get onto Virgin and bring things up to date.

She got a '100 meg' BB connection and a TV package for about what she had been previously paying.

TV is crap and doesn't even include half of the Freeview channels we already had.
'So called 'Catch Up' barely works.. and not at all on Ch 4

BB is shit and has dropped out more on the 'Wonder Box' Hub 3 than ever before.

On the 'Upside'. The Virgin Hub has a lot of pretty lights.. mostly flashing all the time.

I hate the thought.. but I may go with Sky. The bastards already have it all sewn up.. so no point cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Mull
 
No problems here with virgin. Find there customer service to be very good. Even came out on Christmas Eve to fix box.
 
Do we really need Sky Virgin anymore? I can't have sky as I'm surrounded by trees that are too tall, so have Virgin fibre with all the bells and whistles. The BB is v good, but the TiVo box is rubbish and my SD channels don't work anyway. Now, with Amazon & Netflix also subscribed to and a smart, smart TV I really can't see the point of sky/virgin.
 
I convinced them to give me the SH2AC back as the SH3 had some serious compatibility issues with their upstream server if you used modem only mode. They denied it up till the 180 page post on the forum and apparently have since fixed it. But the 3 remains in the drawer.

Mull when you say drop outs what do you mean exactly, on wifi or wired? Is it at the same time of day?
 
Despite having a fractious monetary conversation with Virgin every year, their service is excellent and free. I was underwhelmed by their TV coverage when installed some 8 or so years ago, so disconnected the box and stuck it in he loft; b'b was adequate and most importantly, reliable.

Since having a wi-fi hub and new TV box installed January 2016, Freeview hasn't been used (because picture quality and coverage are better on Virgin) and B'b plus Wi-Fi are superb. Pity they try to screw more out of you every year, though, but not sure I could revert to phone lines now.
 
I had Virgin's"100MB" service until last year. It was giving me anything between 0.5 to 75MB/s (ethernet) when it worked and their Superhub wifi was a bit crap. Call centre (abroad) for the many technical issues was just people reading off a crib sheet. Called up Sky who supply me TV and phone and they did me a deal for a quarter of the price for 38MB/s. It was actually practically much faster than the Virgin and the wifi reached all corners of the house. Don't know about technical service quality as I have not needed to use them.
 
We were using an ancient Scientific Atlanta Modem ( Virgin supplied) and an ancient Belkin router. Originally for my daughter to run internet on her Mac in a bedroom, but later used for web access for my smartphone and slightly smart TV. Mostly it worked OK although BBC iPlayer was a bit unreliable and I couldn't get any other TV 'players' as they appear to have 'tie ups' with certain manufacturers.. not including Panasonic.

We now have supposedly much faster broadband. Just did this test.

Ping Download Upload
94 ms 98.73 Mb/s 6.29 Mb/s
Virgin

But in practice it doesn't seem much different to the old 5 meg. When the BB 'drops off'... mostly around midnight.. I go through the whole 'switch off and back on again' routine. Hub and PC both off. wait for Hub to spend 20 minutes emulating Blackpool Illuminations then PC back on. PC is wired to Hub so Wi-Fi is only for my phone.. Tablet etc.

PITA.

TV works sort of but is a very clunky system, Catch up just doesn't work on CH4. Seems to work on BBC but it just directs you to iPlayer. Recording system seems uneccessarily complex. and has not always worked. Tivo box is painfully slow to respond to commands.

Not impressed.

Mull
 
No problems here, I pay for a 200 meg connection, and that's more or less what I get.

Not sure how recording programmes is complex, go to the programme in the guide and press the record button. If it's a series it asks if you want a series link to record every episode.

I use the TV's apps for iPlayer and Netflix etc., much faster than the Tivo - don't know if that's improved with the new Tivo box Virgin recently released.
 
virgin have been a million times better for broadband . 2 drop outs in 6 months compared to 4-5 a day sometimes with talktalk fibre

myself and neighbour been having a few problems with phone tho , seems the metal box down the road fills up with water sometimes and affects connection leaving us with no phone for a week . slightly irritating really
 
I agree with Mull they are totally crap. We have a 150 line that slows to a crawl at busy times. Slowets was three days ago when it went below 1 me. The engineers say there are too many using the service in my area and the infrastructure can't cope. The customers services team deny this. I obtained a two month refund and an agreement that Icould terminate my contract if things didn't improve by the end of May. Only game in town for us unfortunately as non of the others offer anything over 10 mb.
 
Mul it sounds like contention issues, i.e. your area is over subscribed so when it peek (sort of 8 to midnight and weekends, it crawls to a stop.

Essentially you need to get onto them and don't let go of the call until they address it. In fairness it can also be other things like a low signal on the line which can be fixed. In short don't settle for it.
 
Disable the firewall on the VM hub, my problems disappeared after doing that, it causes nothing but hassle.
 
I do think the TiVo box is shocking and has been since its release but I do find their internet first rate. Call them and get their advice, they should be able to sort it for you.
 
neilm said:
When I had problems I posted on the virgin community.

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/custom/page/page-id/CommunityHubForums

This got me some help very quickly so I would suggest you give that a shot. It doesn't cost you anything to try

Neil
Click to expand...

Thanks for this link Neil.

I have had a few problems with my VM TV / BB

BB intermittent loss of service, eventually fixed by breaking and reconnecting the cable screw in.

TV catch up on demand has been intermittent for 18 months currently not working at all for the last 10 days.

No TV scheduling, "Title Not Available" it says which means you have to set up manual recording for the time slots of desired program.

Since they uped the price the service has plummeted.

Virgin Media was recently sold to that outfit that bought Formula 1 from Bernie E,
I can't recall its name atm.

What to do? no other suitable alternative around these parts, it sucks!!

The forum link Neil provided on one thread it says the on demand / catch up server is broken.
 
Vm are superb for us; but, we've just downgraded the package as we watch nowhere the TV programmes that are available, a lot of what we watch are via Apple TV and Amazon Prime etc

Phone line, meh... Evenings & weekends, we've bottomless mobile capability etc

BB is essential though as I work from home, so have 200MB and it's faultless

We did have a lot of dropout issues when we first moved in 4 years ago; they came out and 'moved us on their box' and zero issues since!

Probably worth talking to their engineers and see what they suggest!
 
I 'upgraded' to a Virgin Superhub 3 a few days ago and perhaps my experience will be relevant. I previously had the original Superhub.

It appears that when SH3 was introduced there were real problems with the Intel Puma 6 chipset which was vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks. Virgin assured me that the firmware is now fixed.

My broadband is now as quick as a very fast thing. But I have been advised to reboot the router every week. I thought this sounded excessive but no, it is correct. I didn't really understand all the reasons for the frequent rebooting but as it's so simple I suggest you try it. You never know, it might help...
 
There is a lot to be said for modem only mode on virgin superhubs, its pretty much all they are good for.
 
virgin media are brilliant here for us. Their customer service is great, service is great and reliable.
 
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