@adrianjacobs Scanning this thread, it seems to me that you are irretrievably dissatisfied with VM, largely because the relationship started with over-promise and under-delivery, and that has deteriorated because of VM's low cost support model. VM are a business owned and run by the ultimate cynics - people who, to use Oscar Wilde's words, know the price of everything and the value of nothing, and as a consequence you're never going to get the quality of customer engagement and support that you want.
You can get involved in chasing round, creating a Broadband Quality Monitor, trying to distinguish between what is your responsibility to fix, and what is VM's. Or, rather than keep circling around the same issues of VM not fixing the problem, and you venting on here, why not put the energy into getting released from contract without penalty?
The steps are that you raise a formal complaint with VM (use the form in My Virgin Media), asking for this outcome based on your experience, and stating that you require a deadlock letter within 28 days if the company cannot agree to this. If they release you, you're free to select a new ISP of your choosing. If VM don't release you, you take the deadlock letter and engage the CISAS complaints process, in which you elaborate the whole saga and the outcome you want. As soon as CISAS accept the complaint, VM have one final chance to settle the matter to your satisfaction, if they fail that an impartial adjudicator will review the case and issue an adjudication which is binding on VM. I can't say whether CISAS would side with you, but the data shows the majority of complaints investigated by CISAS are either immediately settled by the company, or investigated and found in the customer's favour.
If VM neither agree to release you, nor issue a deadlock letter, then you can still engage CISAS, but you have to wait 8 weeks from the date of your complaint.
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