Virgin broadband presenting challenges (again)

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Permalink Reply by pipplypig on December 10, 2012 at 19:48

I'm afraid there is a theme of Virgin reporting network maintenance / upgrade issues since the summer (and cynically I recall a similar theme where I previously lived).

If you are dissatisfied with the service or support you receive my advice is to consider switching provider - life is too short. We live on Hewitt and switched to Plusnet over the summer, and have been v pleased the connection, service and installation. And even more pleased not to have to spend any time on the phone to a virgin call centre achieving very little, very slowly.

I also understand Zen internet to be very highly rated.

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Permalink Reply by Bob Lindsay-Smith on December 11, 2012 at 0:48

I am on the basic Virgin tariff, and have stuck to it for about 4 years as it's fast enough for us & I don't want a phone line so it's about the cheapest option.

In our area (Northumberland Park) there have been occasional outages, apparently while upgrades are going on - and it is a lot faster now and I gather there is another upgrade in the pipeline. I can live with the occasional blip - but understand that not everyone can.

I think when they say they 'do not support wifi' they just mean that they don't provide technical support for doing that. That isn't to say that it won't work!

I found a wifi router on freecycle and stuck it between the Virgin box and my main PC, thus allowing a laptop or any other gadget to access the net too. It was a bit fiddly to set up.  eHow was a quite useful source of advice , as well as the manual for the wifi router.

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Permalink Reply by 3dabemynv2wyk on December 11, 2012 at 19:47

We've got Virgin broadband and TV and phone. I've found our wifi seems to have been cutting out quite a lot lately (ie: I have to unplug the modem/router etc for 10 secs to get it going again).  However, this is after a period of several months when it seemed to be perfect, on all the time.

I dunno, maybe Xmas is a busy time of year for the broadband pipes? Or the weather? It's irritating but not bad enough for me to even ring them... so far... fingers crossed! 

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Permalink Reply by Anette on December 12, 2012 at 13:22

Claire, we have exactly the same problem, the Stupid Hub they gave us stops working and needs re-setting very frequently all of a sudden.

I also has one instance where it has completely re-set itself and deleted all the settings, network name, passwords, everything. Without me even touching it.

It worked much better when all we had was a Virgin modem, and our own router. Now it's all in one, and it's crap.

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Permalink Reply by Gerry N on December 12, 2012 at 2:21

Presumably you are using the Cable (TV network) to access the internet ( and not the BT phone network).

Presumably you have 2 items:

 1/ a cable modem ( which is provided & owned by Virgin )

and 2/ your own router/ Wi-fi hub connected into this cable modem with an ethernet lead??

Virgin support stops at their own modem. (Presumably you can use an ethernet lead to connect directly to the internet using just the modem and one computer ?)

When Virgin they say they "do not support wi-fi ", presumably this means they will not provide customer support on your OWN wi-fi router equipment.( hub)  of which there are many makes,and models   ie they will not send someone round to try to troubleshoot, nor will they try to help you on the phone. Suppose they damaged your own wi-fi router by telling you incorrect things?  You would hold them responsible !

Presumably they are offering to post you their own ( free) wi-fi hub/router  as a replacement for your own.( which you would have to fit yourself, and have to set up yourself?)  

Virgin customer phone help would presumably then be able to give you help with the wi-fi as the staff will be fully familiar with the hub they post you

perhaps there are too many presumptions here!

...but hope this helps

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Permalink Reply by Josephine on December 12, 2012 at 10:52

Thanks for all the comments.

In reply to Gerry, I have a modem and a router, both of these are provided and owned by Virgin. This was the only option mentioned when they installed it all 2 and a half years ago.

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Permalink Reply by Bob Lindsay-Smith on December 19, 2012 at 14:57

Hi again Josephine,

I hope that the problems have gone away for you by now. If not, you might like to check out the discussion of similar issues back in September:-

http://www.harringayonline.com/forum/topics/virgin-wifi-problems

In it there is a suggestion by Bulent Ozlem as an alternative to resetting the router.

I tried that a week ago. As applied to my (Belkin) router it involved logging into it, choosing 'Internet WAN', and then setting the connection type as 'Dynamic'.

This gobbledegook seems to have worked so well that, touch wood, I've had uninterrupted service and haven't had to reset the router or do anything else since!

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Permalink Reply by Gerry N on December 19, 2012 at 18:41

Thanks for that link,I have had read through the other discussion. I wonder how many of you are aware of "bandwidth throtttling" !  It is described here approx half way down the page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Media      & it seems to be an automatic 5 hour occasional fine imposed as a temporary punishment to those not on the most expensive XXL service. Could this partly explain your outages? though clearly there must also be other serious problems in the Harringay area.

I have always had fantastic service for many years, from when cable internet was first introduced ( by Telewest ) up to the present Virgin Media. Have had three different addresses, but none of them were in Harringay & also have been on he most expensive bandwidth tariffs. Richard Branson must love the £££'s I have paid !

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