Why does virgins charge so much for such a substandard product?

[DaveB1980]

I pay as much as I can possibly pay for the “best” broadband service virgin has on offer.

it is unreliable and frequently stops working all together.

Has anyone got any recommendations for better broadband providers?

[Koda]

With exception to the outage last night into this morning, the Virgin Media network is overall fairly reliable in all honesty. You do get a few minor outages here and there but that happens with the infrastructure operated by others like Openreach, CityFibre, Netomnia etc. too. 

Have you reported a fault to Virgin Media to see if there’s an issue with your line or hub in the hope of a repair or replacement?

Remember that paying more only gets you a faster download speed. It’s still coming down the same line. So it’s not going to be any more or less reliable. You need to have any underlying issues resolved to achieve that. 

If you can’t get anywhere with Virgin you’d have to look and see which other networks have service in your area. There’s lots of places where Virgin is the only option if you want to get anywhere near gigabit speeds at present. The others all have significantly less reach across the UK in comparison. 

[Adduxi]

Try checking with Area faults on 0800 561 0061 or if you have a VM landline 150 as small local faults are not listed on the VM status page.

Post the power levels, Pre and PostRS errors and network log from the Hub. Also setup a BQM to monitor your circuit www.thinkbroadband.com/ping

Once done we can comment.

VM is usually reliable, but like any major ISP's they can go wrong at times.  Lets see if your circuit can be checked and fixed by doing the above requests.