Virgin Media phone and broadband issues Petition : [ powered by iPetitions.com ]

#	Name	Comments
101	Anonymous
102	Tony Dean	I have 4Meg broadband and although I can occasionally get full download speed, it soon drops to almost exactly half of the maximum speed. The drop is instant, almost as if someone has thrown a switch. I'm sure its a coincidence but this happened the day I cancelled my Telewest cable TV contract.
103	Steve Adamson	Absolutely disgraceful. They take off popular sky channels and replace them with repeats on Virgin central, and expect us to be impressed that we can now watch programmes we opted not to watch in the first place. Terrible mosaic & freezing on the picture and a charge for not paying by direct debit. Well guess what, i move house next week and won't be going with Virgin, although they sounded shocked when we told them where to stick it!
104	Anonymous	Pre mid feb 2007, i was very happy with 4Mbps connection, irrespective of where servers were located. Speed tests consistently gave me 3.85Mbps. Since then, something drastic must have happened at Virgin/NTL. To cut a long story short, as of 6/6/07, Senior techie told me Traffic Management takes effect from 2pm - 10pm and 10/20mb users will have speed reduced to 2Mbps so as not to disrupt the service of 2Mbps users. From this, we know where Virgin's loyalties lie. My neighbour uses 2Mb and his connection appears ok. I am on 4Mb but have been upgraded to 10/20Mbps frr-of-charge for the next six months due to issues I have been having since mid feb 2007. Currently, I am running daily tests on my download speed by downloading two files that Virgin Techies appear to using as benchmarks i.e. f1test.notlong.com and micro23.notlong.com. At 9.30am this morning, UK server was showing 17.5Mbps. USA (Microsoft) servers were approx 12Mbps. Hopefully, tests over next few days will give more of a trend on how the service deterioates during the course of a day.
105	Andrew Parkhouse	I have been trying since the end of January to get my broadband connection investigated. When I had the so called '10MMB' service, I hardly ever got above 2.4MB. But since the 20GB service was introduced, it has gone as low as 0.6MB. The only time it is above that, is in the middle of the night. After filling in the online support form 4 times, I received a letter stating that it would be investigated, and they would get back to me. Six weeks later ~ Nothing. I finally sent a another tech support form and did received a reply about 10 days later which informed me "...I have run a number of checks on your connection, and noticed an issue with it. This would have caused a speeds issue, so a change has been made to your connection. Please retest your connection..." That was the sum total response to 8 weeks of frustration! Nothing changed, I replied to the above email and was told that my modem might be a problem (it was after all 5 years old). A link was provided to test this theory and it confirmed that I needed a new one, It promised to send a new one in 14 days. Three weeks later nothing. Cust Serv told me to ring Virgin Media Accessories shop who despatch the modems. The were so unhelpful and rude, I lost my temper and told them to f*** off. Bad reaction on my part, I know but it is the first and only time in all this time it has happened, I have always been patient and polite ` But even I have my limits. Today (June 6 2007) a very nice girl at Virgin Cust Serv called Louise, has arranged for an engineer to come and install a new Ethernet modem for me on June 14th at no charge. I cannot speak for other customers, but until Virgin media took over NTL, I had used my broadband for five years and had been extremely pleased with it.. In January I switched to NTL/Telewest's TV service after being with Sky+ for a year. On paper the new NTL/Telewest set-up sounded more attractive, bigger hard disk in the virgin box, ability to record two programs and watch a third etc. The reality was that apart from loosing some of my favourite channels, after Virgin fell out with Sky, I found that many that were available to me on Sky were not available on Virgin, including Legal TV and Open Access. The worst thing was that the picture was constantly pixalating or breaking up. Not even a three minute cartoon of Tom & Jerry was immune from this, and it drove me nuts. You could never record anything for keeps, as it was such poor quality. Tech support said that this was to be expected and depended on the weather! I think that is nonsense. I could expect that with Sky which uses a satellite, but not a cable service using optic fibre cables. So, I had it discontinued and I have moved my TV service back to Sky and upgraded the Sky+ box with a 250GB hard disk which gives me 125hrs of Sky recording. I do in a way feel sorry for Virgin, but only a little, as this is going to hit them hard if more people like me vote with their feet. People perceive Virgin as a quality brand name with good service and ethics, but they are loosing this image quickly. Perhaps Sir Richard has really bitten more than he can chew with this one!
106	Anonymous
107	Anonymous
108	Anonymous	Slower that dialup speeds
109	steven	on hold for 15 minutes for the third time today! They won't let me talk to anyone to get my service cancelled. Virgin media is the sorriest telecom company this side of the atlantic....
110	owen	been a customer of ntl for 5 years now and since rebranding to virgin, the customer service is redicolous, the amount of times ive had to ring up and try and get my internet working because its broke is redicolous. All i ever get is damn indians who dont have a clue and passed on or the problems my end which im certain its not, then they book engerneers to come and they dont arrive. and after all that they add money onto my direct debit which leaves me no alterntive to stop direct debit but then take a £5 charge for them to take out my card when im satisfied they aint ripped me off. they add money onto bills because they know theres customers out they who dont check bills and all that money adds up. they should invest some money in the servers and the internet so that we the customers get what we pay for.
111	Hellena	Feel as if I am losing my mind! My landline has been out of action for nearly two months!!!!!!! No attempt made to fix it, as dates keep changing, supervisors dont call me back, can never get through by phone blah blah blah they did however divert my home line to my mobile and cancel my payment for line rental. HOW accomodating?! Anyway, I would like to cancel my d.debits but have my phone/cable service/broadband with them and do not want to be cut off. Any advice? And they are just DREADFUL! Regards, Hellena
112	Anonymous
113	Wayne Jackson	Problems experienced with my broadband internet started when Virgin Media took over the service. Since that date internet speeds have been steadily degrading. I pay for a 2mb unlimited connection and I expect to get that at all times. I don't expect to be capped, speed limited or traffic shaped. I am an online gamer or rather was until the take over. Latency on the connection now means that playing online is not possible.
114	Sam	over the past 2 weeks i have found that my £25 for my 4mb/sec line is no only running at a speed of 1mb, which is absolutly abismal. My pages are hanging when I load them and it takes at least 5 seconds to recieve a standard text only e-mail, whereas before hand both page loading and e-mails were almost instantaneous. I am going to give it till next sunday too see if it improves, otherwise i will be looking for another provider.
115	Stephen Parry	I am 4MB/s Yorkshire cable -> Telewest -> Virgin customer, and I have never had cause to complain until very recently. My connection speeds are still good (mostly). However, the POP3 service has gone to hell. Connections going out for hours on end, even though webmail continues. However this is not the main thrust of my complaint. Today the VM newsletter informs me that VM are switching from free 151 to 25p per min 0906 number for broadband support. This is a license to make money out of there own incompetence. It is an abuse of customer trust.
116	Anonymous	i sign the petition only for the poor speeds on 20mb (512kbps) and lack of hd
117	Karen L Reeve	Every month since December 06 I have had a problem, first I got 'cut off' a week early when moving, then ntl/virgin lost my dd, i've been overcharged 5 months out of 6, changed phone package when I never asked etc etc. The last 3 days broadband not working, phone tech insist its the modem -I note its not, for sure it is they say and set an appointment to come and mend, in 2 weeks they say-earlist appointment they have...um 1/2 hour later my 'modem' suddenly starts working!! amazing- more like someone finally took a look at the system/server. Well Ive just cancelled my direct debit so you don't overcharge me (again) and don't plan on wasting any more time waiting someone to answer a phone (ive worked out that ive spent 19 hours in 6 months waiting for phones to be answered!!) Don't touch them -try another provider theres better things in life,
118	Anonymous
119	James Wade	I have recentlyu signed up for virgin service or up to 4 meg, although only my line delivers up to 2.7 ish megs.. To be honest ther service I am recieving is sloppy, cuts out and gives stupid pings of over 200ms when I speed test.. My brother can no longer play online games and I swear to gawd that they must have capped both upload and download speeds.. crappy service, it annoys me having just switched from pipex due to complications..
120	Anonymous	Since NTL became Virgin, my speed has dropped, 2 mb has becom 500Kb. Technical support is next to useless.
121	Anonymous	reported a fault with my phone line 3 days ago. still not sorted. disgusting service. have spent nearly 2 hours in total so far on hold while trying to sort this out. staff inadequate and dont know what they are doing.
122	john	virgin media,are advertising unlimited, capping is not unlimited, 40 gb a month is not unlimited ,max 4 gig a night is not unlimited, halfing your speed if you reach 4 gb is not unlimited,what is unlimited ,is the appauling slow speeds, unlimited hours on the phone if you can get through, cant wait to see what its like when the 20mb comes out,knock of the zero and it will be closer to the mark, richard branson your showing your true colours now,upgrade your network!!!!
123	Graeme Laws	Single most problematic company i've ever had to deal with. charged me for multiple internet accounts via direct debit (of which I only use/want one). Took me 6 months to get them to change address (asked over 10 times) as hadn't recieved a single bill in that long. The list is endless.
124	Anonymous	Have had eight months of losing my broadband connection every day at 6pm and problems connecting on a Saturday. Just lost the connection totally for three weeks for which BT got the blame even though my phone line is perfect!!
125	jackie	i'm fed up with having to restart the pc just to get connected to the internet every few minutes.now and then all goes well for a few hours then loses connection again.i've rebooted the pc back to factory settings and tried everything suggested but nothing helps.this didnt happen until virgin took over!!!
126	Anonymous	as an ntl user I had no problems for several years with excellent download speeds. Since virgin media took over outages and poor download speeds have been the norm.
127	Steven Blake
128	andy chapman	since virgin media took over my internet has died a death massive packet loss continues i have been on to tech support over 20 times and they just shrug there shoulders then this sunday i got informed that second line tech know about the problem since march but are unwilling to fix the problem until my 20mg upgrade could be 4 weeks
129	Barry Stoker	Since VM took over telewest (Newcastle Upon Tyne, whom hand on heart, provided me with over 5 years of excellent service), my 10 meg broadband speeds and connectivity has worsened to the point of it being as stable and fast as a 56k dial up modem i used to use years ago. Absolutely garbage. I am having difficulty even connecting to google and BBC.com websites. Download speeds have dropped from 800k with Telewest to 50-150k with VM! Very very very rarely it will hit 450k for a few minutes before droppping right back down to sub 20-50k for very long periods, with intermittent drops of service completely. Not much fun for online games to be constantly timed out and kicked from the game server. Their CS leave me queued for 30 mins to an hour at a time, with a range of pathetic excuses, with my personal favourite being 'your network card is confused'. Have had their CS hang up on me numerous times when they have no answer to my querys regarding their worseneing service. Disgraceful. I've had enough and cancelled my VIP package because I am sickened by their abysmal service and taking my hard earned money for a service they advertise but do not provide. I also have issues with their V+ box and tv services (not being able to enter my PIN number via the red button to access movie. TV on demand and catch up tv just does not work enough, hard drive recordings crashing, recordings with dipping out sound and so on) Sort yourselves out VM, and unlike your broadband..make it fast.
130	Anonymous	I've been with telewest since start in Southend, good free support service & speed, upgraded to top speed package when first introduced. Rating:8.5/10. THEN VIRGIN took over......Pay to tell them their systems broke! Speeds that my free dial-up access was quicker than and all for more money than telewest charged. As for unlimited downloads, as long as it not over 3gb and thats only if luck keeps speed and connection live. Rating:2/10. RIP Blueyonder
131	Wendy Rees	Ever since blueyonder became virgin, our "4mb" line is downloading files at a rediculous speed of 12kb/s! The channels freeze and the replay channels are unaccessable half the time. If we weren't in a listed building, we would change to Sky straight off.
132	paul ingram	prices up - loss of sky tv - capped 'unlimited' broadband - charges introduced for helpline to report broadband is duff - slow speed - 10mb get 20mb at the expence of service to the average customer - lousy customer service - hours of wanky muzac whilst waiting to get thru to their indian call centre to be asked repeatedly ' which modem lites are on now' - and ....... blueyonder had problems but now its virgin its just expensive shite!
133	Anonymous	Service is a joke. They overcharged me for months, and the service didn't work properly from the TV to the broadband.I could NEVER get through to any customer service.Now they want me to pay for services i DIDN'T recive.Ive left and im very happy with SKY tv and my BT broadband service.
134	Darren Moore	To tell you the truth i am very angry with the level of service i have gotten from Blueyonder/Virgin media every year it gets worse. A number of times a year there will be aloss of service i understand things can happen but never get refunded. When i call through i need a ticket number so have to call tach. Who blame everything on me, it's your computers, wireless router, even with a direct connect all i get is monitor the situation. Every single year my speeds are 1/5 throughout january, like clock work. Tech couldn't give a toss and customers services won't do anything unless tech do something. Kinda like the BT roundabout but with less departments. And this fair usage thing is a crock, i pay freaking £37 per month for a fast internet service but am getting 4.6mbit connection just becauase i downloaded 3GB which in the modern day is nothing heck Game demos are almost that big now! Personly i have just about had enough and will be moving ISP to BeUnlimited atleast their fair usage policy is more reasonable.
135	Mark Guildford	Ever since they took over NTL the service quality has plummeted. These days even in the middle of a weekday the speed fluctuates with ping times up to 250. And in the evening, forget it- The connection just becomes appalling. This has been going on since Feb/March with no signs of any improvements whatsoever.
136	james rogan	virgin media totally suck they are all liars got told by one of there so called muppet engineers that they are gaining more customers than they are loosing ha ha don,t think so also told that restrictions apply 4pm to midnight to all downloaders because there outdated servers can not handle it TIME TO OWN UP VIRGIN AND GIVE SOME REFUNDS OR INVEST OUR MONEY YOU EXTORT OUT OF ALL OF US
137	Paul Rossiter	Recently the speed in the evening has become intolerable instead of just poor!
138	Anonymous
139	Richard Calam	I have also recently seen the change in d/l speeds. Sometimes i only get 70KBS which is pathetic. In Virgin medias defense they say if u d/l over a certain amount in a month alot of companies give u a d/l limit but with virgin once u hit that limit they cut your connection in half sometimes more. this is to give other ppl in your area a chance to d/l. I think this is pathetic and i know this info is true as when i phones them to complain about my service they told me this info. but it does not tell u this in the terms and conditions. This company used to be the best.
140	Steve McKeown	Truly appalling customer services section IT helpline that have no idea how to rectify an IT problem who did not understand my English. My broadband speed is so slow that it has recently been lower than my upload speed. We are now told we have to pay 25p per minute to report a fault with Virgin's service!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
141	John Hayes	Feel really sorry for you mate. my problems only been going on for two months with the slow broadband supposed to be 20mb now but still only getting between 512kb and 1.5mb, occasionally goes up to 10mb but at odd times. have not been refunded anything yet but been promised £74
142	Andrew Moore	2 instalations not done, refusal by customer services to do anything, V+ box with known technical error on recording; no known fix as yet but promised by 2 weeks ago. 150 misdirects calls through automated system and calls cut off by operators.
143	Kevin Bell	Virgin Media only took over NTL recently (although I believe that Branson is flogging it on soon) and so I can only score the values below as a percentage of the time post NTL (whose broadband service in retrospect was luxurious). After having my connection dropped and suffering dial-up speeds I emailed the technical staff, who after a couple of weeks (they were busy, although can't think why because all of their status pages show ,no problems) asserted that it was my router. Told them that I would change the router and wished Sir Richard 'all the best'. I've now got an N1 MIMo that can cut sheet steel with its signal and my machines all show an excellent link, but regularly cannot access the internet. I went on the wild goose chase of checking connections and then checked my so-called 4 Meg connection. When it is working I get no better than 1.5 Mb and have seen it plummett to 0.4 Mb. I wonder how much longer, particularly those of us who have had a lot better, are going to put up with these tossers having a laugh at our expense. Tracing down imaginary faults with my system costs me a lot of time.
144	Kev Pollard	20 meg connection is slow and when i say slow I mean half a meg constantly , I refuse to ring customer services anymore , they gave me 2 mths free service and if the problem is not sorted by then...hello sky. They have obviously oversold the 20 meg and the servers etc need sorting out...NOW !!!!.
145	wayne	Since virgin took over NTL my BB speed has been sooooo slowwww.. its like having 56k dail up again... im paying..£24.99 a month for just BB....for 4mb (original NTL package) but it feels like im getting less than 1mb.... I was with NTL for years and never had a problem with speed! im absolutely discusted with my current service... who the hell do the these big boys think they are......arent we the ones that are supposed to be in control.....after all its our money that pays for it all...... 'BRING BACK NTL I SAY' ... .:;'"Fuk u Virgin"';:. ..... im gunna change ISP...
146	m.lavilla	they have utter contempt for customers.i can't count the hours i've spent on the phone trying in vain to sort issues out.i'd switch right now but can't afford to pay a deposit to sky and lose the deposit virgin won't refund.It's very scary huge companies can do this to so many people.they get away with it because we can't afford the time to go after them.please get others to sign this petition.it's more important than you think.
147	John Welton	Just upgraded to 20mb. Receiving 0.5mb on average but still paying £37.00 for the full speed service. They will not answer emails. When they do they use excuses like "only received half of your email please resend" I believe this is just a ploy to waste time so that they can take the next direct debit. Had enough ,looking around for new ISP
148	Anonymous	Slow service since Virgin took over Helpline no longer free. Helpline waiting time is extermely long Bad service Thinking about changing.
149	james foster	Use proxies it bypasses there speed capping google for more information.
150	Ian	They charged me for over £230 worth of calls when i didnt even have phone plugged ito my virgin phone line. said i made interntaional calls, told me they would investigate. took them a month until i phoned them up they said that they had made a mistake... it had not be investigated ahnd that they would just drop the case ( al this time i had been recieving threathing you us money letters) and i recieved no compensation.