Virgin Media Community

[alanmorgan7]

Virgin arrived in my neighbourhood about 5 weeks ago. I signed up for a TV and fibre package to replace BT.

Since day 1 I've had frequent connection drops across all my devices. My printer will not recognise the hub unless I enable 2.4ghz on it, which causes the connection drops to become even more frequent.

I contact customer support and get told they'll run a diagnostic on my line and phone me back in 2 days. This obviously didn't happen.

I phone support again today and have to go through all the tedious troubleshooting stuff I've already done multiple times before being told "we'll run a diagnostic on your line and contact you in 7 days". When I explained this wasn't acceptable, the guy says he'll put me on hold and find some other resolution and then he just hung up on me. This was not an accident.

I phone again and this time I speak to a different guy. This guy tells me its actually a problem in my area (it's not) and that there are engineers out working on it (there is not). When I point this out and insist on speaking to a supervisor, he hangs up.

I then phone a third time (by this point I'm over 2 hours on the phone) and when I get through explain straight away that I don't want to go through any more troubleshooting, I just want to speak to a manager. I get immediately transferred to retentions instead.

I then speak to a woman who informs me that there's nothing she can do and that I'll just need either deal with the awful service or pay an early termination fee. The only way I can avoid the termination fee is if at least 3 engineers have been out on site. Of course, you are not willing to even send 1.

I then phone a fourth time and speak to another tech support agent and explain everything I've been through. He puts me on hold and then hangs up.

What kind of cowboy operation is being run here?

[goslow]

Doesn't sound like a very great start with VM.

When your connection drops, is 'all my devices' just wireless clients that are affected or do wired clients drop out at the same time (which may help identify a wireless problem or a connection problem in general)?

[alanmorgan7]

I don't have any wired clients but I'll be obtaining an ethernet cable over the next few days to see what effect it has. 

I suspect the issue is purely a wireless connectivity one.

Regardless of how that turns out, there is simply no way I'll be remaining with Virgin after being treated like that from not just 1 but several members of staff. Outrageous.

[goslow]

Well FWIW, when a VM connection is set up properly, it does generally work very well. Having to deal with the VM corporate entity is often a less-than-happy experience.

So you are aware, the wireless performance of the VM hubs is not that well regarded by many who post on the forums. It is a basic device. Regulars on the 'Networking and Wi-Fi' forum will recommend putting the hub into modem mode and using third party wireless equipment, particularly if you are using lots of wireless devices.

CS availability and quality by phone can often be frustratingly poor. You are much more likely to get helpful and professional advice from the VM forum team on here, albeit that the service is not real-time so can be a bit slower to progress things.

If you are minded to do any more to investigate why your connection is not working well, you will probably need to check signal levels to the hub and other community members (fellow VM customers) may well chip in on here to help with that. There are some very knowledgeable regular technical contributors who can help diagnose problems and offer suggestions for improvement.

Setting up a BQM graph can also be useful in tracking your VM connection 24/7 to monitor the service (in case you do actually have a general connection issue). I had to do this myself for the first time the other day and it was very useful in monitoring the problem

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality

A VM forum team member will usually pick your post up within a day or two (but may be from Mon onwards as it is now the w/e).

Edit: (Also worth checking the service status info in 'My Virgin Media' and via the service status number 0800 561 0061 (if you have not done so already) that there is not some kind of general, ongoing issue affecting your connection)

[logindetails]

Virgin only guarantee connection to your hub, so if your on a 100 Mbps connection you should be looking at a min speed of 54 Mbps to a PC (for example) wired directly to the hub via an ethernet cable, you can see their broadband guarantee here: https://www.virginmedia.com/shop/broadband/speeds

Virgin don't - and neither does any other provider - guarantee the WiFi performance within the house. They may suggest Wi-Fi boosters to amplify the Wi-Fi signal through parts of the house and in many cases this will work but if your WI-Fi signal is bad in the first place boosters will not help.

The first thing to do is to make sure your hub has a chance to broadcast clean Wi-Fi signal. This means not having anything that could interfere with the Wi-Fi signal within 6 feet of the hub. The most common problems are caused by cordless home phones and TV's as people tend to want their hub placed next to one or the other or both.
Another common problem is placing the hub next to a wall shared by an adjoining property (semi or terraced) - you have no idea what could be the other side of the wall interfering with your Wi-Fi signal.

It's also beneficial not to have the hub installed next to mains sockets or desk lamps - anything that works on electricity can be a source of interference to the Wi-Fi signal coming from the hub.

Ideally anything that is rarely moved such as desktop PCs, printers, smart TVs, FireTV sticks etc should be connected to the hub via ethernet cable and have their Wi-Fi turned off if possible..

Virgin and any other provider can only test and diagnose their cable connection up to your hub and/or TV box, beyond that they're guessing which is why you are getting fobbed off - there's not a lot they can they can do.

Rule out all the above and if you're still having problems then you may indeed have a dodgy hub in which case pester VM CS to send you a replacement hub, engineer or both - escalate the problem up the chain if they don't.

[Anonymous]

Other providers do guarantee wifi such as BT's "Complete Wifi".

The VM Hub 4 is really not fit for purpose as a router.  We had to install a router ourselves and put it into modem mode.

Advice to have no electrical equipment etc within 6 feet of the hub would render a third my living room unusable.

My own router works perfectly fine placed where two Hub 4's struggled.

VM's customer "care" is absolutely attrocious.  Some really good folks here in the forum but they are diamonds in a very large terrain of rough.

[alanmorgan7]

@logindetails

I've already been through all of the diagnostics and troubleshooting - the issue is the 4 customer service agents who have lied and cut me off.

Can't escalate the issue when they point blank refuse by lying about not having the ability to do that.

[jpeg1]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Other providers do guarantee wifi such as BT's "Complete Wifi".

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 Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't their guaranteed WiFi speed just 10Mbps?  Many of the complaints here are about WiFi speeds much higher than that.

Not that I'm defending the Hub4 of course!

[Anonymous]

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@jpeg1 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

Other providers do guarantee wifi such as BT's "Complete Wifi".

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 Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't their guaranteed WiFi speed just 10Mbps?  Many of the complaints here are about WiFi speeds much higher than that.

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They guarantee wifi will work in every area of your house and speed is dependant on your BB package.

My sister is the one who uses it.  She's guaranteed good signal and backed by a £100 guarantee.  Her slowest speeds are circa 250 to 300 meg via wifi.

And she pays less than I do with VM.

[Tudor]

“And she pays less than I do with VM.”, then more fool you.