The comments from the petition
| Cindy Nunn | The service from NTL-Telewest has been a joke. My connection completely stops no less than 5 times a day, and is supposed to be running at 10meg. According to their recent television advert new customers can sign-up to receive "unlimited broadband." Yes, I agree, if they mean Unlimited headaches, unlimited loss of connectivity, unlimited stupidity and unlimited bullshit! From the way I see it they are guilty of false advertising. |
| Colin Nunn | Like it says in the petition text, I've had my fill of being promised that my service will soon be of an acceptable standard. Answer me this, why should a business be permitted to garner a huge revenue on false promises? |
| steven wade | I have had 10mg since the start and was a trialist But the last month speeds around 6.00pm onwards are a joke ranging from 5mg right down to 200k!!!!!!I have a senier tech ringing on Friday so well see what he says |
| Alan | Same as yourself and it very strage your story exactly matches my own since january 2006 i have intermitten loss of service and very very slow speeds to which i am told same thing high utalisation on the UBR i am on which is sitting at a text load of 94% with a packet loss of 50%...they keep saying it has been fixed but the pain keeps comming back to bite them time and time again....customer care have given me a £10 per month reduction but i have and will be taking this matter further as i am completely unhappy with the service and the customer relations they have with us..i am even thinking of getting the TV, Telephone And Broadband pulled out.. |
| michael wileman | Good luck with petition,ive had slow speeds on the 10 meg service for over 3 months they keep saying it is a known problem in my area and it will be fixed,ok they have given me 3 months half price,and have now given me another 3 months,but as i said to them i want a 10 meg service,there are times my speed drops to 1.5kb/s,i am getting rather annoyed now so i hope this petition will help to get them to do something. |
| Peter Wilson | I pay for 10 meg, tonight it is about 80K - unbelievable |
| Helen Hamnett | Painfully slow to send emails.What's happened? |
| Chris Oliver | Blueyonder has become overpriced for the relative connection speeds they offer and the tech service just plain sucks.I blame the NTL merger, everything seemed good until then. |
| Ashley Morris | I have been a blueyonder customer for about 3 years to start with it was very good but when they did there speed increases last year it was nearly always comparable to dial up then after about 6 months it went ok again now we seem to be back to square one again Blueyonder need to stop blaming their customers and sort their dam network out. |
| gary thomas | i Supposedly have a 4 meg connection, until peak times wheni am lucky to recieve 300-500k |
| Jason Quinnton | I'm discusted with the service i'm getting right now i can't even play a simple online 2D game without this damn thing constantly lagging, download speeds are slow, don't even mention upload speeds it's a rip off and i'm definatly changing ISPs. |
| Steve Whitthall | It's just getting worse day by day, speed net test today tells me I am on 512 max download speed (paying for 4mb service) at 2pm not even peak time. Why are we all paying for a service telewest cannot deliver. |
| David Hinchcliffe | It is totaly unacceptable that we have to pay such a large ammount of money when we dont get the service, I have a 4mb line and have NEVER had it downloading at the correct speeds, my average remains 25kbps! I should of just stayed with my 512kb service. |
| Icecold | I really hate it when it goes down. Please atleast sort out the 'downtime' and keep a furious psychopath gamer off the streets! The nets no fun if I can't play. It's just one of the rare few things that keeps my mind from drifting into ***** reality. |
| peter | blue yonder connection speeds are crap i pay for 4 meg and half the time its more like dial up i am waiting for them to get back to me untill sutch time as this happens i guess i will just have to keep disconnecting and re conecting the modem to get on line |
| Chris Lines | Fed up with slow Blueyonder connections! It never used to be this bad but the last two months are dire. Regularly get kicked from my online games for high pings. |
| Michelle Marie Cameron | Yotal waste of time and money. I shall be changing my internet provider in the very near future |
| Karen Symonds | ...ringing the tech people doesnt help a lot - I have been told conflicting information again and again. As a result of this, I recently decided to cancel my broadband subscription (despite being a customer of theirs since way before broadland was released) - and faced another nightmare trying to get through to the right people to do that. I will not be returning in a hurry. |
| Dale | lol these stories are so like mine, paying for 10meg, only getting 1meg mos of the time. I too phone them and get all the bullshit, high utilisation, upgrade in progress, foreign call centre, whats the point in speeking to someone about a problem when they dont even understand english, i am from south yorkshire, i can only just understand what we say. Please sort this crap service out. |
| Tim Awford | Had experienced slow speeds intermittently for a while, but over last month the internet connection has started to drop away completely when in use, particularly when sending email attachments or doing torrent downloads. When using bit torrent the service always goes down within 15 minutes. I had made no changes to my firewall, laptop or modem settings before this started happening. |
| Pete | 10meg service has dropped rapidly since the NTL merger. Gaming pings of 150+ anytime of the day, regular speed tests report 500k - under 2meg. I'm paying £35 a mnth for not much more than dial up!!! |
| Derek Elliott | |
| Adam shears | Steady decrease in service over 12 months. Poor customer service from outsourced call centers. No recourse or satifaction for customers. |
| Roxton | Annoyed to say the least, I'm opening ports on my router, yet Blueyonder seems to cancel multiple connection to my computer, thus slowing down speeds A LOT. Ridiculous ever since Blueyonder turned into Virgin. Been a customer for nearly 6 years(!) |
| chris | |
| Carol Harris | Been wiv Cableinet and telewest from the beginning and things have definately dslowed down. Got a 10 Megs connection too and sum times wonder why I am paying £35 a month for such a crap service. It is also down to customers to tell the new Virgin when your internet is down ot tv or phone in order to get a reduction for services not rendered. Their down time and staus page tells them that. Admit when we r getting hwat we paid for and when we dont and alter our bills accordingly I say. Or maybe we all ought to ring and claim and clog their system up till they do. |
| Paul Bowers | The service is truly going down the pan and the steadfast loyal customers such as myself are now even contemplating leaving. |
| Peter Wilson | 10 meg link ok 05.30am erst orf the day 200K they told me it was my router but how come then it is ok in the early hours. they must need to dig the roads up again....is bt any better? |
| matthew darby | the servuse is a joke.. slow speeds custermer surport is a joke |
| Nick M | 2Mb service was fantastic while it was Telewest. The switch to Virgin was marked by a connection speed of 5kbs which doesn't even compare to dial up. |
| Paul Strudwick | I have been a customer of Telewest/Virgin since the start and subscribe to all their services so am very disappointed with the Internet connection speeds that I am experiencing at the moment. Downloading files is a complete joke colleagues at work laugh out loud when I say that a file that took them 2-3 hours to download takes me 2-3 days sometimes! I ahve a 4meg service but have never managed even 1 meg . The connection is regularly lost with no explanation and customer service is unable to say why. Unless things change for the better in the very near future then I will be changing everything over to BT/Sky. |
| Pete Skinner | |
| Tony Crammond | I have written to Blueyonder to ascertain what is happening, I have yet to receive a response. |
| Sean | Had service for over 5 years.Now on 4meg but often get less than 1 MegHave been told upgrade of virginsequipment is needed to help with over utilisation.No date for virgin to do this.thinking of changing provider. |
| Phillip Hassell | I can't wait to leave |
| Jonathan Browning | Pings of 200 -- 900 in online games |
| Ray England | I have been getting low speeds since I got blueyonder/virgin and I get the same excuses from thier engineers!!!!! (ha,ha)I'm happy to sign this partition and good luck to you |
| sean | INTERNET DROPS CONNECTION EVERY 15MINS I HAVE TO UNPLUG AND RECONNECT THE MODEM EVERY FU**ING 15MINS..CONSIDERING LEAVING |
| Glenn | I am also sick & tired of unplugging and reconnecting my modem numerous times just to get a finite time of useable connectivity. On top of that, when I do find myself able to access the internet I usually have less than half the download/connection speed that I'm paying for!Never had a minutes problems with Telewest!Looks to me that one Virgin is f*****g a lot of people!Unless they send Uma Thurman round for technical support, (I'd like to expand her bandwidth).I'm off to pastures new!My mum told me to never trust people who's mouth looks like Garfields arsehole.....guess she was right! |
| Jack Wallace | Blueyonder 4MB user. Service has been terrible since the move to Virgin Media. |
| mark bellamy | Speeds so slow now as much of 167kbs form a supposed 10 meg connection. |
| Alan Hindley | I find my connection to virgin's servers to be satisfactory, but my connection to the internet (through virgin's servers) is disgraceful in terms of speed. They need to up their bandwidth by about 800% in order to cope with demand. They signup far too many customers without any kind of upgrade in service (i.e. they take the money and don't invest it back into the required areas of the business). |
| dave clark | |
| Thomas Irvine | Less than half of what I pay for in the evenings, very poor :( |
| Peter Mitchell | I have been with Blueyonder/Virgin for about four years now, and up to last November things have been fine. Since then however, the broadband part of my package reliabilitywise has been atrocious. I only use the broadband for updating my anti-virus and windows os, though my main time is spent playing World of Warcraft. (Or trying to)! I have l lost track of the amount of times I have had my conection dropped at crucial moments in the game, or when I have come home from work looking forward to playing only to find that acces to the web is not possible. Like you I have become more and more frustrated at the helplines refusing to accept that there is an ongoing problem at their end, and being taken through the same old steps as they attempt to 'rectify' the problem with me I am now minded to give Virgin Media an ultimatum to sort the problem out within a fortnight or I will remove my broadband, TV and telephone custom from them. Many thanks for providing your site for this petition, I hope it proves succesful. |
| David Harrison | |
| Adam | Yes, much slower! It's driving me nuts! |
| Patrick Goudy | I am currently paying for a 4mb service and at the moment i am mostly receiving speeds of less than 1mb. I have been with NTL since they started broadband, have moved the service with me through 3 house moves without issue. The speed has been a problem for the last 2 months and i have had an admission from a Virgin Media engineering manager that my area is a known problem area and it was pointless to send an engineer to fix a problem that had nothing to do with the equipment installed in my home. The problem he confirmed had to do with the infrastructure in my area (Brighton) being woefully overworked. |
| Mark Markou | extremely slow download speeds since virgin media took over ntl/blueyonderI will be switching to another ISP & phone provider in the very near future |
| JAMES LEITH | A shocking way to treat paying customers. My download speed have suddenly been crippled. It is just like someone has turned the tap down to just a constant drip. They are obviously just on the very edge of what there servers can handle before a total collapse. I almost left when Virgin took over and lost the TV packages, this is just another very large nail in the coffin. I will not be recommending Virgin to anyone, if anything avoid it and get a better ISP. |
| Bethan Hamby | After very good and consistent 2mb service from Blueyonder and a not bad start from Virgin, the service i have received in the last month or so has been appalling. Pages taking an age to load, download speeds varying considerably but usually below 150kbs and frequently below 10kbs, latency speeds of 500ms, modem dropping the connection every 15 minutes. The service is worse than dial up at present and is, essentially, unusable. Outsourced 'Tech support' call centre know less about computers than I do and I have been told a load of nonsense (e.g. its spamware, a virus, your router, your virus checker, a firewall) and have not been able to explain why, if any of those things were true, I have the problem with/without router, virus checker turned off, and on 3 different computers. If I didn't know better I would doubt my own equipment and have spent time and money 'fixing' non-existent problems. I was eventually told that it was due to outdated equipment and the upgrade to 20mb that I won't benefit from as 2mb customer. I have been told that it will be fixed by 10pm tonight, although since it was also going be fixed 'last week' and 'yesterday', I have my doubts. I just want an honest response as to why the service is so poor and firm date for it to be fixed, unless I get this pdq, I shall be looking elsewhere. |
| jef gooding | Only had one break of service with blueyonder over 5+ years of use. This was fixed very quickly by a very knowledgeable tech. Since Virgin took over internet has completely failed twice and tech support was very poor - insisiting I had numerous viruses/trojans and advising I should go to PC World to buy some anti-virus software. Already using AVG, Adaware and SpyBot I spent several hours checking with no reports. Still didn't work. Next morning worked fine. If they are going to cut service an honest admission would save loads of time. |
| Paul Derioz | I used to have Telewest as my ISP with a cable connection, and I never had any problems. When I moved to a different address where cable was not available, Telewest recommended Virgin.Net to me (to be expected since they have now merged into Virgin Media) as a reliable ISP for ADSL. From the moment I signed up with Virgin I have regretted it. Slow connection speeds, high latency, slow downloads, and regular downtimes have been the norm for my internet use this past year. I am glad that somebody is finally doing something about what can only be described as a big corporation screwing its customers. |
| Tom Hawley | |
| craig wardman | since virgin took over from blueyonder my evening connection speeds are worse than dialup and im supposed to be on 10mbit..speed tests even at the best times have never seen more than 1.5mbit, so why do i pay so much more to share my contention with 1mbit customers?i do hope that this is all caused by upgrades to the infrastructure due to virgins claim that they will be putting the 10mbit service up to 20mbit this summer! |
| Ryan Gilbert | Virgin has ruined blue yonder and do not understand the way people use the internet in the year 2007. |
| badboy657 | what aload of complete utter rubbish i wish i could go up to branson and shake his hand.but i could never do that more like i spit vile abuse at him im glad though im not the only one in the same boat. 5formats 12 phone calls in 14days and 3tec visits in one week yeah in one week.well atleast the tecs are getting paid well and i all we get is bullshit after bullshit and heres a new modem that will fix it.what the hell i spoke to someone this afternoon i went ballistic at this female and this fella i went through 3 people to get told that im currently reciving 6meg, because of a law thats about to be changed ? lol yeah aparently there is whats called a public traffic cap on broadband speed and it decreses ya speed during 6pm and midnight.lol i phoned at 2pm lol.what a twat.ive been given 3months half price 10meg broadband for the troubles that aint nothing i pay money out to play on xbox live and buy online games regularly what aload of crap virgin media is. tv freezes not that im bothered about that but the broadband is terrible im paying 17.50 for rubbish.i download a 10meg file and the speed is 27kbps to 54kbps i can go to ma local shop and get a hamlet before its downloaded.virgin jokers messed a good service up ntl telewest what have you done letting thease jokers take over. the tecs that came out to my house have done shit all. i gotta stop writing im getting angry.ive been angry for 1month now ive had enough.and i feel all of you peoples anger. VIRGIN MEDIA SORT IT...... |
| moira morgan | to slow |
| Matthew Kenny | Six years of broadband from Telewest/Virgin media, 512k to 10mb,recommended to all friends and family. October 2006 signs of an over subscribed area, high latency and packet loss during peak times, no estimated time for a fix or upgrade. 5 months later and still no estimated time, left Telewest/Virgin Media for a adsl service,due to poor wiring I'm left with a 2mb connection, This being the only choice i have unless I'm to stop online gaming completely. This is a company i would praise to all turned into something i now loath and all in the space of 4 months. |
| Chris Hewitt | Usually my 4mb connection is ok, however it does go slow at times. I was having total loss of service on and off recently and had an engineer booked for a week later, in this time the problem sorted itself out so I called to cancel the engineer. I spoke to someone in India who assured me the engineer was cancelled, However when I returned home this afternoon there was a card from the engineer saying I would be charged £10 for not being at home. I will be writing to head office about this.When it was NTL you would get an engineers visit the same day or the next day, now you have to wait about a week. |
| john hume | Since NTL got envoled my service has went downhill from Oct 2006, i am on a oversubbed UBR and its a total joke.The 20meg with Shaping is a disgrace and I would rather be back on my truly unlimited stable Pre Oct 2006 10meg connection.Also billing issue where £100 went missing although paid by bank, I had to pay to get connection back on so ideally I have paid twice. |
| mad dog | i wish you'd all stop moaning you dont know sad it is to hear you lot screaming and crying about tv,bbi and telephone. people are dying in this world and you treat all of this as though the end of the world is coming if your that upset just go to sky |
| m sampson | terrible service since capping. |
| John Edgar | Under the old Telewest banner the Blueyonder service was the Crown Jewels of internet service providers. £35 for internet access (10 meg) is not really cheap in today's market but the service was fast, reliable and truly unlimited. How things change. Over the past few months my download speeds have gradually reduced - first during peak time only and now pretty much all the time. Its not worth ringing support as you get the monkey rather than the organ grinder. Furthermore, I might not be happy with the announcement to cap 'so called' heavy users but I'd actually be pretty glad to be able to download at the 'capped' 5MB speed - currently getting about 2mb on a good day. I'll give them a while to get this sorted out but VM have seriously dented my confidence in them. Also why start rolling out 20Meg connections when you cant even provide 10 meg. I guess its really just a marketing ploy to try and get one over on the DSL providers who are becoming increasingy more cost effective. Gonna stop now - making myself angry :-( |
| n page | rubbish speeds price increase what next me leaving if not sorted soon |
| James Clayton | Due to moving regularly I have been able to choose various service providers over recent years, this is how I would rate them:NTL = Terrible Sky = ExcellentTelewest = Very GoodVirgin = Terrible, just like NTL was. |
| Jonathan Boldy | Overall the service is good however the broadband service with STM (traffic shaping) and a so called 3gig cap i think is appauling, it has totally taken the words unlimited to limited know and it goes to show by many others that virgin media is no longer the bext isp due to this and speed problems!!listen to the customer, wake up and be different and stop following suite of other isps, stick to been different rather than this stupid traffic shaping!!!, you'll loose many customers due to this and also get the customer service and complaints services sorted out!!! |
| Ross | |
| jim macfarlane | the quality of the service recently has been diabolical. Gid rid of the overseas call centers and give us what we pay for. NOT up to or likewise. |
| Andrew | Fed up with slow speeds. 4 meg should be a constant supply of speed and it isnt its dribbles. why should i have to use download accelerators to get my service back? taking the piss dude cant surf like that man. |
| N Ross | I've been with Virgin (Telewest) for over 5 years now and never has it been such a joke as it is now! The service has gone from fair to bad since the rebranding. At the moment the broadband is slow, email is either working or its not and now the digital TV service is suffering too. I hope they sort it out as i dont really have any other ISP's with a decent service in my area. |
| Nick | |
| l butler | paying for an 8 mb service, which never gets higher than about 4mb and averages at 2mb. I also only discovered that they had started to throttle the service between 4pm and midnight because i came across it accidentallyy on a forum. So if you attempt to download a movie, for example, your service will be trottled for 4 hours. I am amazed that i was not informed of this by mail. |
| Sam | Bring back the good old days with Blueyonder! |
| Annon | Can someone please translate whatever message Virgin Media is trying to convey to its broadband customers as something that I might better be able to understand, like Yiddish or that Bushman clicking language?One of the first facts we should face is that Virgin Media keeps trying to deceive us into thinking that no one is smart enough to see through its transparent lies. The purpose of this deception may be to give lunatics control of the asylum. No matter how much talk and analysis occurs, according to Virgin Media, black is white and night is day. They might as well be reading tea leaves or tossing chicken bones on the floor for divination about what's true and what isn't.Some of its lies are in the form of miss-truths. Others are in the form of cock-and-bull stories. Still more are in the form of folksy posturing and pretended concern and compassion for its now frustrated customer base. To most people, the list of Virgin Media's foul practices reads like a comic strip, but its practices and excuses are actually taken seriously by its customer service agents who pompously claim that we can change the truth if we don't like it the way it is.Virgin Media think that its customer base is a magic purse that never runs out of gold and will continually put up with a decrease in expectations and an increase in a poor and unreliable service.At the risk of sounding a tad redundant, let me add that one of the goals of Pyrrhonism is to render meaningless the words "best" and "worst". Virgin Media admires that philosophy because, by annihilating our perceptions of quality, Virgin Medias own mediocrity can flourish.All in all, I realise that this rant has seemed incredibly bleak. However, expecting the worst from Virgin Media means we will never be disappointedHowever I have seen and heard enough. Now, it is time to break the mold and stray from the path of conventional wisdom and leave….. |
| Dean Anrold | A long standing NTL customer who is completely frustrated by the significant degradation in performance now that Virgin has taken over. My answer reflect my views in relation to NTL. |
| Darren Brough | Was a lot better as Telewest. The service has been getting gradually worse over the past few months, but recently it seems to go down on a nightly basis. |
| Keith Aggett | My internet is constantly significantly under the advertised speeds (both upload and download), as well as unreliable.Upon each phonecall they offer to resend the signal and ask me to reset my box, this solves the problem for a few minutes upon which they claim the problem is fixed and hang up, only for me to have to phone them back an hour later. |
| Ray | I am a long term customer with blueyonder been with them since Dec 2000 and i am considering another isp now. |
| Roy Dawahoo | Why pay the amount we pay for this service to, be achieve speeds that companies charge £14 a month to have, 10 meg if your lucky but £35 a month always, maybe we should pay based on per monthly basis basedIf they screw around and we get shoddy speeds half of what we paid for then we should only give them half the money they expect at the month, i'm pretty sure they would SUDDENLY improve their services to guarantee our cash. |
| Miles Williama | Since virgin took control of the ship everythings gone to shit, the blueyonder service used to be that damn best you could get in this country now its just slowly getting worse |
| Daniel Pidwell | Totally fed-up with Virgin Media on all aspects of the service ! In the last 2 months Ive had wrong billing, phantom phone charges , V+ not working at all, Sky movies not working , Red button not working , Ultra Slow broadband speeds or no broadband at all , Very Very poor customer service on the telephones resulting in huge amounts of wasted time & stress !one step away from calling it a day with them and NO amount of a reduction is going to change that feeling!! |
| virgin is gay | i hate these bastards |
| Mick Appleby | Its customer support that got me, phone up to upgrade broadband and to question an extra £1.50 on my bill. After 5 hours being transferred back and forth. I gave up and cancelled and I am going to Sky broadband. never thought I would say this but Telewest had a better service |
| Andy | |
| Samuel Bachellier | They have capped my internet connection after downloading a game patch, switching ISP very soon anyway, shame virgin took over |
| Egemen | I am disgraced with the appalling service I've received from Virgin Media since the "merge". Since NTL took over Blueyonder, my net has been slow as hell.I've also had to ring countless times but have gotten nowhere. They'll always try to brush you off with some half ass excuse about how they seem to be pinging fine to your modem. I've also had the phone hung up on me and another call reset. That particular phone call, I finally got through to a manager after speaking to 3 broadband support members. I was told I would receive a "months" reimbursement of £25. When I told her I pay £30, she brushed me off to another broadband support member. For 7months+, I've been paying £30 and I receive a measly £25. Well, they've given me a "rough estimate" to when the problem would be fixed. The problem being that too many new clients had signed up to the 4meg deal and an upgrade is due in May. Its the 21st and I've yet to see an improvement. I'm banned from the net after 6:00pm. This, to such an extent that I'm having to load Google. You would think the upgrade would have been fitted long before the huge increase in new customers but hey.. its more money for them along with more problems for us. |
| dan | i understand that all companies have technical problems - it happens. but it's how they respond to them that seperates the good from the bad. virgin media are the worst having outsourced call centres to people who dont understand what the customer is saying and who read from a script without effectively resolving the issue. awfull. |
| P Leverett | |
| Tracy | Used to be with NTL, never great for customer service but internet was fine. Now Virgin have taken over and internet speeds are pratically dead. I sit here in frustration talking to a call centre in india while they read lists of what could be wrong off a screen. Your computer is corrupted....no its not and neither are the other five that I use. When you actually question why they would suggest that the lack of technical knowledge becomes clear. |
| John-Paul Cain | I sign up for an 8MBPS service and rarely get 1MBPS speeds when I check it on Broadbandspeedtest.net. I usually operate between 0.5-1.5MBPS. Only once have I bettered this at 0400 on a Sunday morning where I got 5MBPS. It is obviously over utilisation and I feel I am being ripped off. However, there is no mechanism for compensation apart from a long consistent moan, I wish I had the time to do this. Thanks for your efforts. |
| Todd | I LOVE VIRGIN MEDIA ALL OTHER COMPANIES ARE SHIT |
| Stefan Lewicki | Very poor speeds ever since I signed up for Virgin Broadband last September - up to 8mbps, but I have never got even 3mbps, and currently at peak times it's around 200kbps. Customer service is very bad; their attitude is I'm getting what I pay for i.e. 'up to 8mbps'. I agreed to switch package to guaranteed 2mbps all the time, told it would take 3 to 5 working days, & here I am three weeks later still waiting. |
| HFD | |
| anthony stansfield | No broadband access daily between 1500 and 1900 which coincides with heavy usuage. Virgin suggest that fault lies with my BT line. If so why the intermittent problem and not constantly? |
| Lee Taylor | This is so frustrating i might aswell not have the internet! Over the last few days the internet has worked say 2 out of 10 times and even then the connection dies after a few minutes. |
| rob | Awful service, I have such high ping as to make gaming impossible, £170 was deducted from my bank account for no reason resulting in bank charges, web pages open at dial up speed! I feel conned. |
| Chris Carnegie | |
| Wazzer | Crap speeds. Can´t watch programs, can´t play online games. A bad broadband service all round |
| Steve Lee | Been reporting slow speeds to these Virgin Wa**er's since the 26/4/07 on thier 25p per min technical helpline which has now cost me a small fortune. Speeds are as low as 22kbs per second. I would get more sense out of a one cell being than I get out of this lot. It's about time every Virgin Media customer f***ed this ISP off because they are absolutely crap and will do nothing to fix anything |
| s moon | |
| 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. |
| 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! |
| B Stanic | 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. |
| 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! |
| Chris Dermott | |
| paul birmingham | |
| Delroy | Slower that dialup speeds |
| 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.... |
| 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. |
| 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 |
| Nyasha Siband | |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| m. hart | i sign the petition only for the poor speeds on 20mb (512kbps) and lack of hd |
| 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, |
| Jim McLeod | |
| 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.. |
| Ian Woollan | Since NTL became Virgin, my speed has dropped, 2 mb has becom 500Kb. Technical support is next to useless. |
| jane burt | 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. |
| 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!!!! |
| 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. |
| David Bailey | 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!! |