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Is it just us getting horrible internet or is virgin media just **bleep**?

Elisa_Amila
Joining in

Hi, I've had virgin for years and I can pretty confidently say its god awful. There is no range from the router, if you aren't in the same room the Wi-Fi actually just doesn't work and you cant even google something. The download speeds have always been awful, with peaks of about 4mb/s. I've had 3 replacement routers from virgin because they claim it will fix it every time yet it never does anything.

Had one of their technicians round a couple months back to see what the issue actually was and he blamed it on virgin media itself and not an issue with the router/installation.

We called virgin to which they said we weren't paying for a good enough package or something so we upgraded to the next option up, literally not a single thing changed. Same god awful range and download speed just at a £20 higher cost.

Has anyone else experienced this with virgin? Its so annoying not even being able to watch a video without being a foot away from the router

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Andrew-G
Alessandro Volta

First up, if you're within 14 days of the upgrade in speed, phone and cancel it NOW under your cooling off rights.  You don't get better wifi on higher speeds, and if a slower connection is having performance problems, then unless those are resolved a speed increase means you're poorer, VM are richer, but your connection continues to be rubbish.  If it's over 14 days, then you're stuffed unless VM's agents advised you that increasing your speed would solve the problems.  In that case you have a clear mis-selling claim, if need be we can talk you through getting that resolved.

If you've been through three hubs, then we can be sure that the hub isn't faulty as such, so that leaves two possibilities - a [REMOVED] broadband connection, or [REMOVED] wifi.  The quality of wifi from VM hubs is mediocre.  In an easy environment they can work OK, if the environment is not good (eg thick walls, certain construction materials, competing signals) then you're best off buying your own wifi gear, as I and many others have done.  As an indication, I'd be thinking of a £100 mesh wifi setup (eg a TP-Link Deco M4), which should resolve all wifi difficulties.  But if there is in fact a fault on the broadband (which is distinctly possible if the upload speeds are slow) that won't be fixed by improving the wifi.  So don't rush out and spend more money yet.  To distinguish, we'd need to ask you to provide some detail that may seem technical, sorry about that, but as you've found VM are poor at supporting customers.

Connect to the hub by clicking on this link http://192.168.0.1/  That should pull up the log in page for the hub.  But don't log in, just click on the link "Check router status"  That'll bring up a window with five tabs.  Open the Downstream tab.  Select all the text (Ctrl-A if using a keyboard), copy it (Ctrl-C), then paste it (Ctrl-V) into a reply here as TEXT not screenshots.  Post that, do the same for the Upstream and Network log.  You'll get an error message when you post the Network log, just click on "post" a second time.  Ideally do this after the hub's run for 24 hours after a reboot.

Next setup a Broadband Quality Monitor that'll show what's going on with your VM connection.  Post a LINK to a LIVE, SHARED graph here and we'll see what's happening.  Usually needs to run for 24 hours before we can draw reasonable conclusions, but the live graph will continuously update so you can post the link immediately.

[MOD EDIT: Inappropriate language removed, please review the Forum Guidelines]

See where this Helpful Answer was posted

6 REPLIES 6

Andrew-G
Alessandro Volta

First up, if you're within 14 days of the upgrade in speed, phone and cancel it NOW under your cooling off rights.  You don't get better wifi on higher speeds, and if a slower connection is having performance problems, then unless those are resolved a speed increase means you're poorer, VM are richer, but your connection continues to be rubbish.  If it's over 14 days, then you're stuffed unless VM's agents advised you that increasing your speed would solve the problems.  In that case you have a clear mis-selling claim, if need be we can talk you through getting that resolved.

If you've been through three hubs, then we can be sure that the hub isn't faulty as such, so that leaves two possibilities - a [REMOVED] broadband connection, or [REMOVED] wifi.  The quality of wifi from VM hubs is mediocre.  In an easy environment they can work OK, if the environment is not good (eg thick walls, certain construction materials, competing signals) then you're best off buying your own wifi gear, as I and many others have done.  As an indication, I'd be thinking of a £100 mesh wifi setup (eg a TP-Link Deco M4), which should resolve all wifi difficulties.  But if there is in fact a fault on the broadband (which is distinctly possible if the upload speeds are slow) that won't be fixed by improving the wifi.  So don't rush out and spend more money yet.  To distinguish, we'd need to ask you to provide some detail that may seem technical, sorry about that, but as you've found VM are poor at supporting customers.

Connect to the hub by clicking on this link http://192.168.0.1/  That should pull up the log in page for the hub.  But don't log in, just click on the link "Check router status"  That'll bring up a window with five tabs.  Open the Downstream tab.  Select all the text (Ctrl-A if using a keyboard), copy it (Ctrl-C), then paste it (Ctrl-V) into a reply here as TEXT not screenshots.  Post that, do the same for the Upstream and Network log.  You'll get an error message when you post the Network log, just click on "post" a second time.  Ideally do this after the hub's run for 24 hours after a reboot.

Next setup a Broadband Quality Monitor that'll show what's going on with your VM connection.  Post a LINK to a LIVE, SHARED graph here and we'll see what's happening.  Usually needs to run for 24 hours before we can draw reasonable conclusions, but the live graph will continuously update so you can post the link immediately.

[MOD EDIT: Inappropriate language removed, please review the Forum Guidelines]

Hayley_S
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hello @Elisa_Amila,

 

Welcome to the community, thanks for posting.

 

I am sorry for any issues with your internet.

 

I can see you have been given advice from @Andrew-G, has this helped you? Please let us know so we can help you further.

 

Many thanks,

Hayley
Forum Team



New around here? To find out more about the Community check out our Getting Started guide


Thanks for the help

Elisa_Amila
Joining in

Had one of their technicians round a couple months back to see what the issue actually was and he blamed it on virgin media itself and not an issue with the router/installation. We called virgin to which they said we weren't paying for a good enough package or something so we upgraded to the next option up, literally not a single thing changed. Same shagle god awful range and download speed just at a £20 higher cost.

Thanks

@Elisa_Amila We called virgin to which they said we weren't paying for a good enough package or something so we upgraded to the next option up, literally not a single thing changed. Same shagle god awful range and download speed just at a £20 higher cost.

That's plain and simple mis-selling, and it is not the first time.  Hopefully the forum staff can get that sorted, otherwise it's formal complaint time, and because VM's complaint handling is done to the same standard as the rest of customer service any complaint may well be fobbed off and require the involvement of the industry arbitration scheme CISAS, which is slow but effective.  And if you have to complain, raise the poor performance of the connection, not just the disgraceful mis-selling. 

Give it a day or two to see if the forum staff can take ownership and get the matters here sorted, if by Saturday there's no sign of progress then I'll suggest how to approach the formal complaint route.

Hayley_S
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hello @Elisa_Amila,

 

Thank you for coming back, I am sorry to see you are unhappy with the package you are on at the moment.

 

Have you raised a complaint already? If not please let me know so I can get this raised with you.

 

Many thanks,

Hayley
Forum Team



New around here? To find out more about the Community check out our Getting Started guide