Lag/latency/overutilisation - business line fix?

[johanlon]

Hey

I've had issues with Virgin the past year with latency in gaming. Absolutely unplayable at most times, unless you want to be at a major misadvantage. I suspect overutilisation.

Has anyone got experience with a business line with VM? If so, will overutilisation also effect this? I'm not netwok savvy at all.

I run a small business from home so it might make sense for me, but if gaming latency isn't improved I don't see a point.

[Andrew-G · Accepted solution]

That's a noise or power problem, and would be fairly easily resolvable for a competent technician (unlike a utilisation fault where fixes can take years), but you'll need to convince VM staff that there's a fault.  The customer contact staff rely on crap diagnostics that often claim everything is fine when you know it isn't, and even some of the field techs are equally reliant upon similarly poor diagnostic tools.

Or use the price increase as the opportunity to cancel and take your business to a company that care.

[johanlon]

I'm just off the phone with customer service. Even after telling them that I'm using ethernet, they still tried to tell me the solution was wifi extenders that they wanted to send me. I managed to get them to get through to someone and they're now sending out a technician.

I'll show the technician the BQM, plus I'll let him know what you said in your comment. Anything else I should say?

By the way, there's no other ISP comparable in my area. There's BT, but it's the "basic" fiber package 35Mb or something like that. I actually considered getting that AS WELL as this Virgin package to use it only for gaming, but I don't want to take a gamble if my ping isn't fixed. Would the same issues be present?

[Andrew-G]

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@johanlon wrote:
I'm just off the phone with customer service. Even after telling them that I'm using ethernet, they still tried to tell me the solution was wifi extenders that they wanted to send me. I managed to get them to get through to someone and they're now sending out a technician.

I'll show the technician the BQM, plus I'll let him know what you said in your comment. Anything else I should say?

By the way, there's no other ISP comparable in my area. There's BT, but it's the "basic" fiber package 35Mb or something like that. I actually considered getting that AS WELL as this Virgin package to use it only for gaming, but I don't want to take a gamble if my ping isn't fixed. Would the same issues be present?

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Some of the VM field techs are excellent, and should be able to identify the problem.  A few are bumblers who aren't very good at all.  So you can show then the BQM, but it's pot luck whether they'll know what they're looking at.  See how that goes, and then decide how to go forward.  Openreach lines are usually much better for latency, but I can't promise that yours would be, but you could of course order one, and then you've got 14 days from installation to see how the latency is?  Cancel within 14 days and you'll pay nothing.

[Ilyas_Y]

Hey @johanlon, thanks for reaching out to us on the forums 🙂

I'm sorry to hear about the issues you are having with the connection 😞
I've had a look on my end and I cannot see any issues with the network but could see a massive drop in the connection for over a day.
Was your router turned off then or was that the service acting up? Let us know.

Kind regards,
Ilyas.

[johanlon]

Forgot to post an update, but still having issues. Tonight it has been really bad. Any way, I spent hours going back and forth with VM, like I said in my previous post, the day before the engineer was supposed to arrive I received this text.

"Great news! Your services are back up and running so you won't need a technician anymore. We'll cancel the visit and let you get back to enjoying your services."

So they cancelled it, without my input. Absolutely useless. I couldn't be bothered spending HOURS explaining on the phone again, so I just left it for now. I'm probably going to cancel services soon.

[darmo]

15 posts later looks we have reached a consensus....

1) Get used to it

2) Leave and move to FTTP

Noted, you can't get FTTP in your area which sucks. So this is how i recommend you play it now.

1) Threaten to leave so that retentions department will lower your monthly price. When my contract was up i renewed on a retention deal (just what i do with everything tbh) but later my gaming was also becoming unusable, so i complained, i genuinely was gonna leave, but they lowered my bill even lower from the retention deal i was already on, so it was just too good a price to say no to, so i stayed.

Then.......

2) Get a second BT DSL line put in just for gaming, believe me, even if you're far from the exchange, you'll still have a better multiplayer gaming experience on DSL than you will on Virgin. The money saved from option 1 can go towards your new DSL contract. 

[JuicyGoomba]

This is absolutely genius and is definitely the route I'd go if Virgin can't fix my connection.

Partner refuses to just outright cancel Virgin and go with BT FTTC due to the massive drop in speeds. She doesn't play competitive games though, only PvE coop so isn't affected too much.