# Virgin Media Outage



## Tim Harrison (9 Oct 2017)

Crikey it's good to be back online again. Virgin Media's network has been out in my area of Leicester for over 5 days. No explanation from Virgin just updates that kept pushing the resolution date back and further back still.

Is it just Virgin Media that are supremely rubbish or have some of you had similar experiences with other service providers. Seriously thinking of changing mine and wanted to test the water.


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## Edvet (9 Oct 2017)

Auch......that hurts, 5 days


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## GHNelson (9 Oct 2017)

Hi Tim
I'm with Virgin Media also....they ain't slow at sticking our bills up! ....I would enquire about 5 days money back and compensation!
I don't have much problems down this neck of the woods!
Its usually up and running within a couple of hours if the system goes down. touch  wood
hoggie


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## ojustaboo (9 Oct 2017)

I live in Gorleston (near Great Yarmouth) and was with Virgin for a few years.

I don't think 6 months ever passed without either my BB or TV (or both) going down, and when they did, usually I was given a date the following week when an engineer would be out to fix it.

About 50% of the time it just started working before then and about 50% of the time an engineer was required. The comments from a couple of them implied that basically another engineer had unplugged me to fix another customer.

I finally got sick of them when they introduced traffic management om their BB, I had their top tier BB  (cant remember now but it was at least 100Mbps) and when games I played got updates, they would throttle my speed right down, I saw no point in paying for that fast speed if it wasn't available on the days I wanted it.

On top of that, I started to get severe buffering on many youtube vids.

In the end I cancelled my contract and went to Sky BB.

My download speed with Sky is only about 37Mbps HOWEVER, I get zero buffering on youtube vids and if there's a 15GB game I want to download, it downloads much faster than when I was on the faster traffic managed Virgin.

In the 3+ years I've been with Sky, twice my BB went down, once for 3 hrs and once for about 6 hrs.

I suspect with Virgin it's dependent on where you live as I believe they have a lot of different infrastructure depending on which cable company they took over.

Personally I would never go back to Virgin


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## PARAGUAY (10 Oct 2017)

Tim Harrison said:


> Crikey it's good to be back online again. Virgin Media's network has been out in my area of Leicester for over 5 days. No explanation from Virgin just updates that kept pushing the resolution date back and further back still.
> 
> Is it just Virgin Media that are supremely rubbish or have some of you had similar experiences with other service providers. Seriously thinking of changing mine and wanted to test the water.


Been with Virgin for a while and had similar issues,complain and enjoy it,request money off your bill,if you have been a customer a while ask for loyalty reduction on the bill.Problem is getting through to the right person ,go to the “thinking of leaving us” and persevere and you get a dedicated team who sole job is to keep you as a customer .Back up any calls with emails. Martin Lewis has a site Resolver were they keep all your complaint emails in a folder and it’s really bad publicity for any tele company so they usually respond positively.


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## Tim Harrison (10 Oct 2017)

Thanks for the replies guys.
@Edvet, it hurt a lot, I didn't fully realise that we depend on it so absolutely for everything 
@hogan53 & @PARAGUAY, thanks for the advice. I talked to virgin and so far I'm not being charged for the 5 days the net was down, I'll ring the 'Leaving Team' and see about some compensation.
And thanks @ojustaboo, that's pretty much been my experience over the last few months leading up to their catastrophic outage, but paradoxically it's now faster than ever, so I'm hoping they've resolved all the problems.


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## LondonDragon (23 Oct 2017)

VM worst company I have dealt with both personally and professionally!  avoid at all costs!


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## Tim Harrison (23 Oct 2017)

Thanks for the advice Paulo, I know what you mean, the customer service wasn't the best either, no one knew what was going on 
Flip side is that I'm now getting stratospheric download speeds...although today it's been cutting out again for brief moments


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## Cactusface (24 Oct 2017)

Tim,
        I'm in Leicester too, with BT and I don't think much of them either, slow....  even the so called Infinty. I have been thinking of moving to virgin, as a friend it Derby seems to got the best speed and no probles. But one site showed me what connection speeds local (our Street) customers got, and it seems it don't matter who your with, it's where you are and that can meen just over the road get's better then you!!  Just don't know the answer??
Regards

Mel


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## Tim Harrison (24 Oct 2017)

Thanks Mel. I know exactly what you mean. Before Leicester I lived in MK. The most modern city in the UK...well supposedly 

Anyway, despite living in a brand new development with all the fibre exchanges (or whatever they're called) in place, no cables were laid...It took BT 6 years to lay them, and that was after substantial political pressure.
Basically, we only had dial up speeds, I was lucky to get 3 mbs. Yet my friend in an older house across the road was getting super fast broadband 

We moved to Leicester nearly 2 years ago, again to a new build, all the cables were laid by Virgin and the service was amazing with lightening fast speeds. But over the last year or so it got gradually worse. Now I'm hoping that whatever they did has fixed the problem and that yesterday was just a glitch


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## Edvet (24 Oct 2017)

Tim Harrison said:


> But over the last year or so it got gradually worse


I guess they hookup more and more people to the same hub thus "diluting"the speed.


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## Tim Harrison (24 Oct 2017)

I guess that's probably about the size of it, I was finally told as much by a supervisor in Virgin's call centre. Still not sure whether the outage was needed to update the system or not though, no one could tell me. I'm hoping it was.


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## John S (24 Oct 2017)

Edvet said:


> I guess they hookup more and more people to the same hub thus "diluting"the speed.



That is the case. My 200Mbps connection started slowing in June, it's now at 3Mbps and has been for weeks. I'm told it's a utilisation issue in the area, but they are still signing more people up, and it will be rectified in December.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (24 Oct 2017)

I've been with Plusnet for 15 years for both my business and home accounts as well as my tv. Never had any issues regarding speed or customer service, basically they are a sister company of BT but with cheaper packages and better customer service, anyone thinking of trying it PM me, there's a referral system where I get money off my account each month 

I wouldn't recommend them though if I wasn't happy. No need to haggle with them either, I guarantee when you're coming to the end of your contract someone will bell you and offer a better deal before you have chance to shop around and that deal will be competitive when you compare. Unfortunately where I live there is no cable so everything is coming through BT's infrastructure. Sky are so annoying, they keep advertising deals which are only available to new customers, thing is they post them to your house even though they know you are already a customer and can't get those deals then claim to be trying to save the rain forest, well stop posting pointless sh@t through my door and save on paper!
When I had my TV with them they would creep up my bills all the time, I went through the usual every year ringing the retentions team to get a better deal but since they were reported to Ofcom and Watchdog for being too persistent stopping people leaving this has actually damaged competition as they are not as likely to try and keep you which is a bummer, I know people who have threatened to leave and Sky have just said fair enough even though they just wanted a better deal. Its in much the same way as capping gas and electric prices, if people can't be bothered looking for a better deal which takes minutes everyone will end up paying more because the people who don't shop around subsidise the people that do, not good for competition in my eyes and a bad policy.



Cactusface said:


> speed and no probles. But one site showed me what connection speeds local (our Street) customers got, and it seems it don't matter who your with, it's where you are and that can meen just over the road get's better then you!! Just don't know the answer??



The problem comes from exchanges which are loop loss unbundled LLU some isp's put their own equipment into the exchange so they have some level of control over bandwidth, the likes of TalkTalk and Sky but if there is no connections left in that exchange BT will just drop you onto their own line and will only swap you over as more connections become available hence two people on the same road with the same ISP in the same exchange can end up with very different speeds if the BT equipment is running "hot"



John S said:


> That is the case. My 200Mbps connection started slowing in June, it's now at 3Mbps and has been for weeks.



People also need to look at their own equipment, when a line is set up it runs at the fastest speed possible speed then goes into training mode, basically if data packets being sent to and from the exchange get lost and need resent this uses more bandwidth so your isp will slow down your line. biggest cause of this is noise on the line, essentially the exchange couldn't read the data because of interference. Biggest causes of this is electrical equipment surrounding your router, try and make your line as clean as possible and keep things like transformers etc away, Basically don't keep a rats nest of cables around your equipment and minimum phone extensions. One of the worst offenders is the bell wire on old copper legacy wires which used to make your phone ring now redundant as your phone usually has its own power supply these days. being copper it acts like an aerial and picks up interference from surrounding electrical equipment especially if it passes by street lighting. This wire can be safely removed although it is BT's equipment and you should not touch this, you can only touch things after the box installed by BT, Yeah whatever.  Best way to check is lift the phone and press a key to lose the dial tone and see if you hear crackling noise on the line.

Other tips are don't keep knocking off your router by the power or if you do leave it for a while before switching back on otherwise the exchange will see this as a line drop and automatically drop your speeds and if you are going to reboot your router which is good practice every now and again anyway try and do it early in the morning with street lighting off and less congestion so you will get an initial speed. If you manage to hold that speed the exchange will try and give you more until you start dropping packets then they will hold you at that.

I've recently signed up for Youtv and broadband just because there is no contract and I can leave any time I want and where I am staying is temporary. the guy who came to connect me up on Friday couldn't do it, even though there is a green box just outside my house my line actually terminates at another box a mile and half away, the house I'm in as been empty for a long time so BT have robbed the wires for someone else's property for being redundant plus the box outside isn't fibre enabled without BT digging up the road so they just pile everyone in to the nearest box that has and run it hot until they can be bothered enabling the next box. general rule of thumb is the longer the lines from the box to you the slower the speed you will get. BT don't care as long as you have an active phone line and they get their money. then they leave it for you to argue with your isp over your speed and your isp will always try and blame issues at your end. If your isp have to call out BT to see what's wrong with the line and they have provided an adequate line then Bt will charge your isp for the call out and in turn they charge you. unfortunately that's the way it goes with broadband.


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## Cactusface (24 Oct 2017)

Hi,
      I didn't think that Plusnet did the TV thing, they never seems to mention it in th AD's. It's only the TV thing that keeps us from changing?

Mel.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (24 Oct 2017)

https://www.plus.net/tv/ Yeah mate, essentially it's the BT package rebranded and cheaper. You get the basic entertainment package then can add packs at £2 or £3 per month. The thing I like about it is the flexibility. If you just want any of the tv packages for a month you switch it on in your user account and next month knock it off. You don't get as many channels as say Sky but I found the main ones I watch were in the package and could be added if I wanted. My monthly bill was up near £60pm with Sky and i get pretty much what I'm after for about £32 now for unlimited fibre, telephone and TV. Like I say if it is something that interests you PM me, if you say I recommended them with my username I get about 90p off my account per month. Try ringing sales instead of signing up on line and tell them what you are after I'll guarantee you will get a better deal. I personally got the £50 setup wavered and free HD package on top of what was already a cheaper deal for me. They're quite negotiable that way.

They also do mobile sims now which I will be swapping over to at the end of the month, they use the EE network. Quite a good company actually all round, their forum is excellent frequented by staff so as well as support tickets they will personally look into problems and chase them up for you. Seems a bit odd in this day and age where customer support is full of faceless chat windows that someone you may have been talking to in a forum ends up being on the end of the phone  I've raised a query before in the forum and got advised to raise a ticket then when the guy rang me he already knew I'd been talking to Chris about it because he was chatting with him earlier! You don't feel as disconnected as you do with other suppliers. Their big USP is customer service and I think they can honestly claim that unlike many others who say that then don't.


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