General : Is Virgin still crap?

[techguyone]

I'm happy with the internet part, but not much else, including price changing and the 18 month dance to get a half decent deal.

All is not lost though, after forever with no competition BT Openreach will have got fibre in by the time of the next contract renewal. Given that I only actually need Internet and nothing else, and VM actively penalise you if you don't have their all inclusive packages, I'll be giving very serious consideration to going with Openreach.

Their service has been fine for me, for 22 years.
However, their prices may end up driving me away.

I now have FTTP as my backup, and its also working perfectly.
Their 900M is cheaper than VM (and far better upload speed as well).

When my current contract runs out (or even a month or two before) I'll be considering dropping VM.

[ My contract and discount finish at the end of August ]

[techguyone]

Originally Posted by Paul

Their service has been fine for me, for 22 years.
However, their prices may end up driving me away.

I now have FTTP as my backup, and its also working perfectly.
Their 900M is cheaper than VM (and far better upload speed as well).

When my current contract runs out (or even a month or two before) I'll be considering dropping VM.

[ My contract and discount finish at the end of August ]

I completely agree, service side, VM has been very good, it's the damned pricing that just kills it.

It'll be odd for me with VM being literally the only game in town for many years to have Openreach rolled out in the next 1-2 yrs and of course Openreach allow many other service providers to use their infrastructure, like. Sky, BT, Vodafone, TalkTalk, Zen, and Plusnet.

I'm hoping that competition will be intense and I'll be in a good position finally after having to either suck up any shit VM deals or go to something like a 7Mb ADSL instead.

Originally Posted by Hugh

Your statement is not congruent with actuality…

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-tele...-tv-complaints

They were the most complained about provider for Pay TV, but not for Broadband and Telephony - Talk Talk, Vodafone, & Shell Energy had more Broadband complaints, Talk Talk and Shell Energy had more landline complaints, and BT Mobile had more Mobile complaints.

I believe that VM really need to up their Customer Service, especially their complaints handling, but I think you are letting your animus towards VM colour your statements.

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by Mr K

BB is fine, tv overpriced, and CS has got even worse.

TV overpriced? Talking Pictures is as cheap as chips, you old skinflint!

---------- Post added at 19:53 ---------- Previous post was at 19:50 ----------

People complain, as they do, but for me the TV service with the 360 box is brilliant. I just wish they provided a streaming / terrestrial option with all popular streamers available, together with a universal search facility.

---------- Post added at 19:56 ---------- Previous post was at 19:53 ----------

Originally Posted by Hugh

Your statement is not congruent with actuality…

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-tele...-tv-complaints

They were the most complained about provider for Pay TV, but not for Broadband and Telephony - Talk Talk, Vodafone, & Shell Energy had more Broadband complaints, Talk Talk and Shell Energy had more landline complaints, and BT Mobile had more Mobile complaints.

I believe that VM really need to up their Customer Service, especially their complaints handling, but I think you are letting your animus towards VM colour your statements.

It should be emphasised (as you have hinted at) that the complaints were mainly from people who were complaining.

I think I get the picture. Why don’t they just leave?

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

.... the complaints were mainly from people who were complaining.

Ummmm, what ?
All the complaints would be from people complaining, obviously.

[Skie]

Price rises and awful customer service drove me away to FTTP and a cheapo Sky deal. Now there is an altnet also putting fibre on the poles around here I've got even more choice so I'll never consider virgin for broadband again until they begin to get away from the old cable technology that isn't a patch on FTTP for latency/jitter.

Might go back to them for TV as Sky Q is pants compared to Tivo on the V6, but VM have gotten rid of Tivo too so not entirely sure I'd bother. Plus you have to take their broadband which would just be pointless.

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by Paul

Ummmm, what ?
All the complaints would be from people complaining, obviously.

What I meant was the complaints to Ofcom were made in relation to the way their complaint was handled by Virgin Media. Sorry that wasn't clear.

[nialli]

Originally Posted by techguyone

I completely agree, service side, VM has been very good, it's the damned pricing that just kills it.

It'll be odd for me with VM being literally the only game in town for many years to have Openreach rolled out in the next 1-2 yrs and of course Openreach allow many other service providers to use their infrastructure, like. Sky, BT, Vodafone, TalkTalk, Zen, and Plusnet.

BT is expected to increase its monthly prices by nearly 15% on 31st March 2023. This is the largest the UK has seen for broadband in decades, after combining the latest CPI inflation rate of 10.5% with BT's built-in price increase of 3.9%.
However, if you’re a BT customer, you may have agreed to an annual price rise when you signed up, as it's often part of BT's terms and conditions. This means it's unlikely you’ll be able to cancel your contract without having to pay an expensive exit fee.
Customers of BT’s other broadband brands, Plusnet and EE Broadband, are subject to the same annual price increase percentage on the 31st March. The annual BT price increase affects the majority of its residential broadband customers, as the policy is now part of its T&Cs. All new BT customers who signed up or re-contracted with BT after September 2020 would have been subject to an annual price increase in line with inflation plus an additional 3.9%.
This means that you won’t be able to end your contract early without paying an early termination fee. However, you might find that if you're approaching the end of your contract, you could save money overall by paying a few months' worth of early exit fees and moving onto a cheaper broadband deal.” https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/gu...-consumers-do/

[Peter729]

Originally Posted by Paul

Their service has been fine for me, for 22 years.
However, their prices may end up driving me away.

I now have FTTP as my backup, and its also working perfectly.
Their 900M is cheaper than VM (and far better upload speed as well).

When my current contract runs out (or even a month or two before) I'll be considering dropping VM.

[ My contract and discount finish at the end of August ]

You've hit the nail on the head, I have never had a problem with the service but I am fed up with their pricing.

[gimpymoo]

Originally Posted by Peter729

You've hit the nail on the head, I have never had a problem with the service but I am fed up with their pricing.

I am now on FTTP and service is more consistent and cheaper with a far better upload speed.

Been gone from VM after being a Cable customer for 20+ years straight.

Pricing was unrealistic and are which was once fine started to have more and more issues with bandwidth and latency.

[boroboi]

Originally Posted by Skie

You say jittery, which is usually a feature of DOCSIS. They haven't yet moved away from that, so yes, it'll still have jitter. FTTP is the best readily available connection type if you want the least amount of jitter and VM are supposed to be transitioning to it eventually - but it won't happen quickly!

Will it be better than you had previously? Perhaps if there was a fault or overutilization, or you get a new hub without a better chipset. But the only way to tell would be to try them again and bail out within the cancellation period if you aren't happy.

This is probably the closest answer to the question i was asking but thank you all for your input.

Indeed, i have no need for TV or any other service other than internet, which by the sound of things generally "quality wise" (if you're not judging just on throughput) still sounds inferior to the alternative due to the jitter introduced by the DOCSIS standard. From what i can see they only just finished upgrading to 3.1 from 3.0 a short while ago and from what i can also gather is they have 4.0 on the horizon. Might be worth seeing how that goes before i think of migrating back.

I already have FTTP with my current provider so i think ill just sit on that for a few more years and see what VM have up their wizard's sleeve.

[RichardCoulter]

In a few years Virgin will offer higher inflation busting prices, phone & TV via the Internet only and offer even higher speeds.

There will, thankfull, be more competition, so it will be interesting to see how it pans out.

Companies generally seem to be in it to make a quick buck these day's and sell them on after a few years, so Virgin may even have a new owner.

[punkrock101]

The broadband is good when it works, the customer service is an absolute disgrace I've never experienced anything worse than them, the constant price rises at every chance they get.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by punkrock101

The broadband is good when it works, the customer service is an absolute disgrace I've never experienced anything worse than them, the constant price rises at every chance they get.

Totally agree.