Virgin Media Community

[VermeerF]

So I just came off the phone with them for the 4th time. I am experiencing extreme quality drops on streams, rubber banding in online games and more. Completely clueless bunch there at customer support. 

Ping/Speed is fine (9-25 ms consistently, over 12MB/s actual download speed with my 100 connection), just extreme packet loss. All devices, both over ethernet and wi-fi. Did soft reset and hard reset of the 2ac Superhub, no help. 

It spikes in the afternoon and evenings, which tells me their head end has issues / is congested. 

From my pings to the first two hops from my house:

Ping statistics for 62.253.175.130 (tcl3-ic-2-ae4-0.network.virginmedia.net)
Packets: Sent = 50, Received = 38, Lost = 12 (24% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 12ms, Maximum = 42ms, Average = 21ms

Ping statistics for 212.250.14.74 (74-14-250-212.static.virginm.net)
Packets: Sent = 50, Received = 37, Lost = 13 (26% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 15ms, Maximum = 36ms, Average = 21ms

My pingtest with other software looks like this: https://www.netmeter.co.uk/ping-test/201900-166167-842b.html. 4000-5000ms spike is too extreme to be a regular latency problem. 

I saw a mod confirming on a related thread that they're aware but that's not useful if there is no ETA. I told them I'd demand a refund on the broadband costs as it's completely useless for me at the moment but I don't want to switch to another ISP. Completely stuck here.

What can I do? Contact an ombudsman? Get my bills refunded?

[LDN_ALPHA]

I HAVE HAD THIS HIGH PACKET LOSS PROBLEM ON MY XBOX ONE MAINLY FOR THE PAST 2-3WEEKS, IVE CONTACTED EVERYONE MULTIPLE TIMES, VIRGIN ARE NO HELP, TRYING TO TELL ME THERE IS NO PROBLEMS ON THEIR SIDE, THAT MY CONNECTION IS FINE, AFTER TRYING EVERYTHING I CAN I HAD HAD ENOUGH, SO ON FRIDAY JUST GONE I SPOKE TO A VIRGIN MEDIA WORKER AGAIN FOR 2 HOURS AND HE KEPT REFFUSING TO SEND ME AN ENGINEER TO SEE IF THERE WAS A PROBLEM INTERNALLY, BUT AFTER NAGGING HIM SO MUCH HE FINALLY GAVE IN, so Today I had a engineer come over and he said to me he’s found out what the problem is, apparently it’s my Superhub 3.0 that is the problem. Apparently all the CHIPS inside the 3.0 routers are all **bleep** up and it cannot be fixed. So I asked why and he basically said it would be a huge thing to go around to every single persons house to fix everyone’s superhub 3.0, so he said the only 2 things I could do to fix this UNBERABLE **bleep** LAG, IS TO DOWNGRADE TO A LOWER ROUTER (2.0) OR BUY A ROUTER FROM ARGOS AND USE MY HUB 3.0 AS A MODEM AND CONNECT IT TO THE ROUTER AND THAT SHOULD FIX IT APPARENTLY.... I am in Islington and my brother in-law lives 30 min away in archway, and he is having the same packet loss lag problem but he is on a PS4! And he has a 2.0 HUB!! So I have no idea if this guy was bulshitting or his MANAGER told him what to say, but that’s my answer. So apparently they won’t fix this area 15 problem or whatever it is because it’s affected to many people and he thinks virgin won’t be bothered to go round everyone’s houses to fix each and every one. Honest guy atleast 

[Jay429]

Nah i think its the area mate, Archway and islington are both area 15

[LDN_ALPHA]

So why he trying to tell me it’s all of the superhub 3.0 ? And we can’t do **bleep** about it ?

[ravinestan]

Yup. Virgin is sweeping this one under the rug. Is there a government body which we as consumers can escalate this to? All the internet is good for right now is general browsing and email. Even watching Twitch when the packets start dropping causes it to stutter and drop to a lower resolution.

[LDN_ALPHA]

I literally don’t know what to do, i game online everyday, and this lag/packet loss is unbearable, literally losing my mind here, can someone please update if they find an answer to this, or what the next step is for us.

[ravinestan]

Same man it's beyond a joke. Work starts full force on Monday and we're Virgin in Area 15. I've got a BQM on my office and it's just as bad. We use it to stream live conferences so it's gonna be a joke. Virgin, get ready for some **bleep** off business customers on Monday.

[all129]

"Is there a government body which we as consumers can escalate this to?"

Not that I know of. 

And I suspect VM customer support aren't allowed to tell us the full story even if they know it.

I hope VM might feel obliged to say more to journalists calling their press office - especially journalists whose comments might just possibly impinge on the Liberty Global share price.  I've emailed a few with links to these forums and to Tweets. 

And also El Reg for luck

And if anyone has a human interest story - e.g. young daughter couldn't Skype daddy serving in Afghanistan on her birthday - then the tabloids are only an email away (albeit possibly not quite as quickly as before!)

[LDN_ALPHA]

Everyone just needs to keep calling and keep telling them the problem, they will soon get it. Everyone post on here anything interesting you hear 

[samuarl]

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@LDN_ALPHA wrote:

so he said the only 2 things I could do to fix this UNBERABLE **bleep** LAG, IS TO DOWNGRADE TO A LOWER ROUTER (2.0) OR BUY A ROUTER FROM ARGOS AND USE MY HUB 3.0 AS A MODEM AND CONNECT IT TO THE ROUTER AND THAT SHOULD FIX IT APPARENTLY

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Nah mate, engineer fobbing you off, probably just wanted to get out of there as he knows there's nothing he can do at your end to fix it. He's right in that the Hub 3 chips are known to be bad, but I think it was worked around by firmware update a while ago. This is an area wide issue (much of north London apparently) that is known issue only to the customers but not by VM themselves. You can tell because everything is fine apparently if you go to the service status page