Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

We went for the super oopmph package, but are so disappointed. The TV package never came. Two appointments, but no show, no reason, no explanation. Really difficult to get in touch. Should also have been two boosters. Nothing 

How have other people found Virgin Media?

Is there anything other?

Anything better?

Tags for Forum Posts: virgin media

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Virgin have just written to me to point out that in recognition of my 15 years of loyalty I get to pay 42% more than a new customer (£57 for me, as opposed to £40 for a new customer) for piping the same broadband into my house. I approached them to discuss this and they wouldn't budge an inch. What's annoying is that neither BT nor Sky can match their service for speed (even though it's the same cable currently going in to my house) so moving to either competitor isn't hugely appealing, even though they are both much cheaper. I'd dump Virgin in a blink for their utter contempt for customer loyalty and never come back if I could, but the product would be massively compromised. It's incredibly irritating. 

Rory - Were you talking to someone in the UK, or overseas? The people in the overseas call centres have no authority to negotiate reductions with customers, and can be pretty authoritarian and unmoving about it. If you can manage to talk to someone in the UK, they are the ones who have the ability to negotiate a reduction for you.

Re the BT or Sky speeds: the cable going into your house is owned by Virgin Media. To deliver their broadband, BT or Sky or any other broadband provider have fibre-optic cable "to the box", and from there it goes on copper wire telephone lines to your home, so it has to be compressed with ADSL. That is why they can't match for speed. BT only have "fibre to the box". All the other providers have to use BT's network. Virgin Media own the fibre-optic cabling in the street (started in the 1980s by a number of different companies), so they are the only company that delivers broadband by fibre-optic cable directly to your home.

BT have been offering FTTP (fibre to the premises) for some years, Virgin's circuits mainly use coax but It looks like they are installing fibre now, a price comparison would be interesting. Yes, many providers use BT's unbundled lines, the final speeds determined on the distance you are from the cabinet. 

I thought BT were only doing fibre to the premises for new homes.

I've made a few enquiries, yes, if you move into a newbuild it is highly likely that BT will have already planned and laid out fibre on the estate. FTTP (as we know) is being rolled out nationally so it should he available to everyone in time (five years according to Boris). It doesn't look like it's available on ad hoc requests. 

That new customer price will only apply to the initial contract and it'll increase to the standard rate after that. I'm guessing you were aware of this but just felt like moaning anyway.

Acknowledging that VM provide a service that others are incapable of and complaining that it's more expensive is a bit odd. £57/month for 350MB seems very good value compared to the alternatives at my address - BT and Sky are both ~£30/month and estimate *maximium* 3 and 6MBps respectively!

I feel as though I've been lucky because as soon as I had the booster fitted, I've had a great service where I get 100 Mbps consistently, and it's been reliable apart from a brief period at the start of the first lockdown, although I am shopping around as I've come off the initial 12 month deal and £50+ a month is steep for a single person.

In contrast, my experience with Virgin has been mostly very good – and I’ve been with them since the Telewest days too. There was a very frustrating time a few years back when, during a spate of service drop-outs, their sub-contracted Indian call centre (since replaced) had the quite infuriating MO of overpromising rather than to ever be the ones to deliiver bad, or no, news, at a time when I was trying to make scheduling predictions on the basis of when I could get back onto VPN at home.

I have the 100MBps broadband, and speeds are good, but it can depend where you are in the chain, and how many of your neighbours are using the service at peak times.

I’m sorry you’ve been having such a tough time even getting the agreed kit and timescale sorted. To give a recent example of surprisingly good service, my WiFi hub abruptly gave up the ghost on New Year’s Eve, but I had a replacement by 4 January – easy plug and play – and someone from Virgin even dropped by a couple of weeks later to pick up the old one for recycling.

I’d say persevere with getting through to a UK-based customer service. I take it they have your current contact number? Two no-shows with no follow-up is pretty shocking, all right. From time to time I get calls from delivery drivers who have been sent in error (or by themselves on their SatNav) to the identically-named road a  mile away from mine...

I've been with Virgin for over ten years and the actual product is, on the whole, excellent.

Customer service is terrible though, particularly for new installs where each person just passes you to the next person and no-one knows what is going on.

I found the customer service was far better on their forum https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/custom/page/page-id/CommunityH... than calling them. The people on there actually appear to have access to be able to see what is happening, unlike the call centre.

Virgin have been hopeless for us, my wife works at home now and internet very unreliable

..finally fixed a few weeks ago...took 2 years to get an engineer.  So many excuses. Wouldn't  terminate  our account  as they said they couldn't  see a fault

 We pay 50 com, and for that I'd  expect better. Crooks. 

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