Threatened "Do this within 12 hours." when I can't because of wall socket situation

[WiredPig]

I got a message today saying:

"We've activated the new Virgin Media kit. If you haven't already, or if you need more help with setup, use [VM link]. You need to do this in the next 12 hours."

I've read plenty of the stories on here on how people have found that they need to order a female to female coupler joiner (specifically the link would usually be given to a B&Q link so people knew what to order) to get their wall socket situation sorted, and I am one of those people too. I am a brand new VM customer who has a cable from the wall from a past occupant, not a box, and the end of it is the same as the cable I got in my start up box so can't connect it.... so I am waiting for the converter part to arrive and that won't be due today... so to get a message saying I have 12 hours is confusing and distressing when I still might need help if the part doesn't work for some reason!

Hopefully posting here now will delay things until I'm sure I'm set up!

[Adduxi]

First, don't worry about the 12 Hours. the Hub can be activated when it is installed.

If the wall cable is a female end, you can just screw this directly onto the Hub in the meantime to get your Internet up and running, while you wait for VM to sort out the socket.   Bear in mind, this cable may be disconnected in the street cabinet and may not be live.

You can also call the pre-installs team on 0800 052 1734 8AM- 9PM Monday - Friday or 8AM-6PM Saturday and Sunday, and explain you need a manned install.

[WiredPig]

Hi Adduxi, many thanks for your reply. 
I have done as you directed, plugged the hub directly into the wall socket, and the updating has occurred now.

Now connected okay, though my speeds are not as fast as expected (44Mbps, not anywhere close to minimum guaranteed speed of 132Mbps) so I'll start looking into why soon as I can.

[VMUser1812]

Just for the record and to help anyone else worried by the twelve hour ‘deadline’, it is mostly aimed at existing VM customers who are updating their hubs to a newer model for whatever reason. What it means is that once you connect the new hub up, it ‘should’ activate itself and deactivate the old one (there can only be one active hub per account), but if you don’t do this, the old hub will be deactivated anyway in favour of the new one, after twelve hours.

But yes, probably could be better worded!

[Adduxi]

How are you testing?  It should be a direct wired connection to the Hub with a Cat 6 cable.  VM only guarantee 20Mb on wifi.

Use www.samknows.com/realspeed and post the results here for comment.   Also post the power levels and network log from the Hub.  Get these from a browser 192.168.0.1 and click on "router status", you don't need to login to get these stats.

[Travis_M]

Hi @WiredPig 

Thanks for posting on our community forum and sorry to hear about the issue with your broadband.

Are you able to advise on the above from Adduxi for me please? We can investigate further on the back of this
 

Regards

[WiredPig]

Hiya Travis_M,

So my main gaming PC was set up with two tp-link Powerline Starter Kit boxes that take your connection through your electricity wiring so I didn't have to run an ethernet cable through my house from the hub to my PC when I still had my old service provider's connection (which was expected to be much lower in comparison to my VM contract, speeds wise anyway), and my connection was not great with this set up for some reason after the change to VM. 

Since my last message, I have made a long ethernet cable run from the hub directly to my gaming PC instead and the connection is a lot better now, a lot higher than the guaranteed speed in fact.

I don't mind that I'm no longer using these boxes, though I do now wonder if going through electricity wire boxes have these sorts of issues usually even though it's technically still a wired option compared to a wifi signal?

Thanks for any replies and thanks for checking in about it.

Edit: Sorry, forgot to add that I had just been using www.speedtest.net/ for just a rough idea on my speeds. My other devices were seemingly okay in comparison, though was weird because most other things are wifi, not wired.

[Zach_R]

Hi @WiredPig,

Thank you for the update on this. I'm really glad to hear that you've now been able to address and resolve this issue with your connection quality and speeds by using a direct Ethernet connection.

Please do let us know if there's anything more that we can help you with today.

Thanks,