Virgin Media Community

[CarlosOnDrums]

So, after being with Virgin since 2006, I am finally biting the bullet and moving on, and it feels great.

I have been having serious issues with latency on games and zoom calls since November and have tried every single channel of customer support that Virgin offer. It soon became clear that the issue is over-utilisation and that Virgin does not consider it a significant enough problem to take any action.

I begged to differ, so I filed a complaint on the 23rd November. Still awaiting any kind of acknowledgement from Virgin, so have decided to move over to Zen.

Once I know my install date, I'll be ringing Virgin (if I can ever get through) and telling them the good news. I know the retentions team will call me, but I'm genuinely looking forward to hanging up on them, or putting them on hold for 45 minutes whilst I transfer them to another agent, or lying to them about the reasons I'm leaving. 

Thanks to those people here that offered helpful and honest advice on my previous post. And thanks to the Virgin Community Forum team who never did get back to me about my issue, despite promising that they would. 

Good luck with your lag/ping issues guys. I hope it works out for you all.

[carl_pearce]

No lag here.

Bye!

[CarlosOnDrums]

Cool - I'm genuinely pleased for you.

[Andruser]

@CarlosOnDrums Once I know my install date, I'll be ringing Virgin (if I can ever get through) and telling them the good news.

I'd suggest you wait until the new connection is in and been working faultlessly for a week before cancelling, and then do so by recorded post, rather than risk hours wasted on the phone.  My personal dealings with Zen have been excellent, but if there were any unforeseen problem and you concluded you'd made the most dreadful mistake, you could cancel in the cooling off period and stay with the devil you know.  Likewise, if there's an unexpected delay on the new line, you'd not be without any connection.

And finally, I hope you'll report back here on the experience, along with a BQM to let others know whether the planned trade of speed for latency has worked out.

Hope it goes well!

[CarlosOnDrums]

Sound advice @Andruser.

I'm waiting to hear when my installation date might be, which I should find out in the next 24-48 hours as we're waiting on OpenReach supplying some info. My plan is to give Virgin the boot as soon as possible, whilst not doing myself out of internet service for any period. The fact that my internet has been so poor over the last few months has been far more stressful than I thought it would be. It has affected working from home, home-schooling and gaming and I'm sick of funding a company that clearly don't give two flying ducks about their customers.

Many thanks for your honest and helpful posts on my previous thread. These really helped me shape a way forward, and I would happily buy you a beer for that. 

I'll see how it goes with Zen, set up a BQM and post it here to help inform others who are having issues. 

[mikeyg23]

Best of luck with Zen!  Out of interest, what speed can Zen offer?

I am debating moving away myself, but there is a serious lack of offerings in my postcode area... unfortunately I am in the same boat as you.  Virgin don't even bother to respond to complaints now.  Submitted one online, as I didn't hear, I wrote to them recorded delivery.  Other than a stock 'we've received your complaint' letter 10 weeks later, I am yet to receive anything from them. 

Absolutely shocking customer service.

[RedGooner]

Whats lag ???

[CarlosOnDrums]

@mikeyg23

I'll be expecting about 55 down and 19 up from Zen. Obviously, it's quite a hit on download speed, but my connection is unstable from 9am - midnight every day, so I'm happy to sacrifice speed for consistency and reliability.

Sadly, I can't get FTTP here yet, otherwise I would have switched ages ago.

Yes, the tipping point was VM's approach to customer service. I have a complaint in place, but I'm not even going to follow it up, better to just cut my losses and leave. I just cannot continue to support a company whose customer service strategy is based on apathy and contempt. 

I'll happily comment here about how the switch goes, but I must say that Zen's communication has been excellent so far. My installation date is the 8th Feb.

Best of luck if you decide to stay with Virgin, or if you decide to switch! 

[CarlosOnDrums]

@RedGooner

Haha! You just won the internet! Congrats.

[dialatech]

I'm also in the same boat has you.. I had an engineer out recently and there basically said the issue is Overutilization and there is nothing we can do for you. 

So now im thinking of moving to Zen myself, so i would love to hear how your zen connection works for games and your general baseline ping compared to Virgin?