Anyone else having problems with erratic speeds? On a claimed 20Mb internet connection package I have seen speedtest.net download results as low as 0.64Mb. I get that 8pm is busy and I don't expect the full 20 at that time, but 0.64? seriously!!?? They also claim that I should be seeing consistently 18-20 outside of 4pm-9pm. But today alone I've had steady periods of connections ranging from 3Mb to 12Mb - averaging about 5-7Mb I just spent 40 minutes on the phone with them and had to share this... Spoke to customer service and they couldn;t even tell me what speed I should be able to expect. On hold for 4 minutes and a speedtest at the end of that delivers 20.58Mb. Coincidence??? Asked to speak to tech team to establish what they consider acceptable. When I finally got through to their technical team (20 mins hold time ) the guy asked if I have a router and what make. When answered with - Yes, it is a current Asus model with gigabit LAN connections - he decided to tell me that was my problem. When I explained that before calling I had connected my pc directly to the modem with consistent results he told me that he could see no problems. Because the router is not a virgin one, to do anything else for me would require that I connect PC to modem and grant access to my PC. - Hell no.... I get transferred to a manager and he can see that the server I'm being routed through is under heavy load and speeds are erratic. It's under maintenance and is scheduled to be fixed on 14th May - a full week from now. His explanations of the fault were unclear and nonspecific but implied increased capacity when fixed through some form of server build process - whether rebuild, additional, or replacement he could not seem to make up his mind. That said, a full week for this seems too long to me... either that or the IT people I work with are grossly underestimated. Have complained about the erratic speed, pointing out that my invoices and payments are not correspondingly erratic. Have complained separately at the threat of non-assistance and no further advice without access to my machine. That to me is completely out of line, even worse than their blatant traffic management. As worrying is the implication that they have access to their own distributed routers - presumably through some pre-programmed firewall exception?? What's your view on this? Am I right to be outraged or should I go buy a tinfoil hat and try to find a conspiracy theory forum ??
Guy will get confused by the virtual box internal addresses While living with a friend in london used his virgin media net connection and it was dire. It was dropping packets left right and centre (which is shockingly bad for online gaming) and there were repeated outages. Months of phone calls never got anywhere. I think in the end he upped and left them (which was a pullava in itself) and now has a decent ADSL connection
Same here mate except I'm in Nottingham, Have a look at the box where the line enters your house. (mines a brown colour box) There pretty flimsy and easy to open, if yours is anything like mine it will be a mess of uninsulated even rusted wires some insulation tape and shower sealant later my speeds began to become more stable. Makr
I sometimes have occasional issues up in the distant lands of Manchester. But never as bad as you, if I were you I'd threaten to cancel on them, that tends to get the whole 'customer service experience' running smoother when I have an issue
Virgin are a terrible terrible isp. If you have any issues at all you come up against a seemingly sparsely occupied call centre full of script reading simpletons. Also love the fact that it costs from any line which is not a virgin phone, eventhough I want a virgin phone and cant due to over subscription! And they always recomend to put you through to technical support which costs even more! Currently I am with them, I find their traffic management a pain in the arse as I dont download a huge amount but if and when I do I get my internet crippled for a entire evening. You have done about all you can do, got some answers about maintence. Wait and see if it improves if not get a land line and a decent adsl provider. Thats prob going to cost more but thats your only alternative.
Hmm, not great reading given I've got the 100mb being put in this weekend. Always had a great experience with Sky Unlimited averaging 9.5mb and only dropping out for 30 mins in 6 years so they have a lot to live up to.
I have been having similar problems. I pay for a 30meg line. They are sending out an engineer out tomorrow (and given me a discount on my bill). I do wonder if its just that I have a few compulsive downloaders on my connection as it goes pretty much dead (no youtube, 150 ping to WOT, terrible sounding teamspeak) at random times. I don't tend to download anything apart from game updates and the occasional song/album.
Mine (50Meg) used to be perfect, but ever since they started upgrading their service to 100meg it's been terrible. They looked at the UBR in my area and said while it was busy it wasn't oversubscribed and so there shouldn't be any problems. I need to get it sorted but I hate the whole process, and the connection is always fine when you have a tech round. I don't need the stress at the moment.
I noticed on their website that they are offering 30 as the package now instead of the 20 I got. Bonus 'we're crap' points to virgin for failing to upgrade existing customers when they improve the sale package.
I used to have their top package when it was 50mb, but downgraded a while back. Never had any problems on the top package, despite their protestations that there is no prioritisation. You nay be fine. If you are getting tv too, try buying an hd movie on demand. Hasn't worked for me since i downgraded my packages. I just takes money then when you try to watch the movie you get an error message saying the network is too busy and I should try later I don't even try the HD movies now as it takes so long to get someone on the phone to refund the money... Hope you get better service than I get. Seems to me that an isp should not be allowed to sell more than they can deliver, assuming everyone makes full use of the service at the same time... If that means higher costs then I for one would like to make the choice myself
With bethere.co.uk in south west london. They are awesome. Have a friend with a 50meg virgin line which is awesome for him too though, but I love bethere because there technical support is honestly perfect and when my mate with virgin had a problem he said it took them weeks.
okay. really hacked off now. Could do with someone else confirming this is as disgraceful as I think it is. The slowest I've caught on speedtest in the past week... - When there is a sufficient connection for speedtest to run that is... Tonights delight... And I've called them daily for the past 4 days (average call time about 80 mins, only one call answered in less than 20 minutes) and been assured each time that they have found the problem and it will be fixed in 24 hrs... Yeah, right...
the results just posted are based on my pc connected directly to their modem.... There is no appreciable lag created by the Asus. Just the same as there was none by my old netgear. I only only replaced the router to get - wireless N - a gigabit LAN - a usb HDD connected to the router shared across the LAN - a stronger wifi signal due to the amount of other wifi networks around here.
I'm on 10mb down and 1 Mb up, and get: Will be upgrading to 50Mb in a few months (100Mb after they upgrade), after I get my fileserver built.
What did they identify as the problem? At that level I would assume a problem with cabling either in your house or to it from the street, obviously if others on your area are having the issue it could be something else Sent from my HTC Sensation XE with Beats Audio using Tapatalk 2
I had a similar problem with Virgin's 20mb service a couple of years ago, after lurking in their support newsgroup and chatting to the tech staff there, they finally admitted that there was a physical fault with the UBR port I was connected to. Any kind of localised load on the whole UBR from my area would stop upstream traffic (meaning everything just times out). They refused to plug me into another port, they refused to repair the UBR (because they were planning on replacing it as part of the 50mb rollout "shortly") but did give me my broadband for £10 per month. I worked from home at the time so for about 6 hours during the day it worked - kind of - as the local load wasn't bad during working hours. As soon as the evening or weekend came along, I was stuffed. After three scheduled dates for the UBR replacement came and went, I gave up and cancelled the cable and telephone service I had with them and went ADSL with BE. Never looked back and have been very, very happy with BE since - now on my second house with them. I found that by calling them and asking to leave the service gets you put through to UK based people who do actually try to help (Retentions Dept.). Their job is to keep you as a customer and have the authority to give you a discount whilst you are awaiting a fix. Keep a note/record of all conversations with ticket numbers, dates, times & names - it will help you keep track of it and will be useful if they claim never to have heard of your problem.
