Virgin Media Community

[ChrisBrisland]

I had Virgin broadband installed mid March. The tech guy did a good job and showed me that I was indeed getting 200+ Mbps but for the past month and more I can only see around 70 Mbps on the built in speedtest link or on Ookla outside of Virgin.

Occasionally (rarely) do I see a fully functioning M200 speed.

I have been trying to get answers from Virgin by the chat bot, also with Whatsapp and phone. On the phone I have been hung up on and when I call back there is no apparent shortcut to resume any chat. I have to go through all that rigmarole of Q and A again. Then I discovered that the telephon number is a "premium" charge number - which explains why my phone bill is about £5 per call because I am kept in wait loops forever.

Is there not a direct e-mail link where I can send a detailed description of all my actions/problems? And besides - I have found that the call centre agents aren't technically knowledgable and sadly sometimes hard to understand as the call centre seems to be in a non-english mothertongue country where the agent is merely reading off a checklist rather than actually listening.

The PC app for my-virgin-media/home via the browser web page is very convoluted and difficult to navigate.

Can anyone point me in the right direction to communicating with a real human in real time that is not going to cost me 55p per minute, or is there a live chat link with a human that does not involve having to go to Whatsapp (which is a risky app at best)

I am gettiing really frustrated now after not having full M200 fibre speeds for 75% of the time I have been a customer and it is getting ever harder to stay calm with such a bad support system.

[japitts]

Are you testing over Ethernet cabled connections, or wireless?

If wireless, then you need to be testing over Ethernet hard-wired connections which are the only way speeds are guaranteed. Further advice on diagnosing problems with Ethernet cabled connections can follow if necessary.

[ChrisBrisland]

My PC is hardwired to the Virgin router. The connection has worked before. I check the performance using Windows task manager, Virgin's link to speedtest.net and any others I can find. I turn my McAfee vpn off - no difference.

The Virgin hub is is a "Hub 3" model and the reset sequence is disconnect power at wall, wait ten mins, power on and watch the lights. the sequence is as it apparently should be and ends with yellow light on and steady.

I have now been chasing the issue for four hours today, so I am going to turn everything off and go watch TV.

[jbrennand]

A speed drop to below 100 is often due to a faulty ethernet cable - have you swapped it for a new Cat6a one?

Also check in the PC settings what the speed is set to in the NIC cards setting.. they sometimes "drop" to 100Mbps - see that it is set to 1GB.

Also check its drivers are all up to date.

Finally. as you expect >100Mbps then connect a 1GB enabled computer/laptop, with up to date drivers, via a NEW and working Cat5e/6a ethernet cable, directly to the Hub which you have put into “modem mode”
(https://www.virginmedia.com/help/virgin-media-hub-modem-mode ).
This ensures that NO other devices are connected

Test speeds at https://speedtest.samknows.com/ - try on 2 different browsers.

If they are still low – boot your device into Windows safe+networking mode - to disable any potentially interfering software - and try again.

There are many posts on here (I have a list of ~30!) where QoS software, unknown/flaky software, old network card drivers, corrupted browsers, bad cables or other connected devices are limiting speeds on tests.

Report back what that gets.

[japitts · Accepted solution]

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@ChrisBrisland wrote:

Then I discovered that the telephon number is a "premium" charge number - which explains why my phone bill is about £5 per call because I am kept in wait loops forever.

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Also I can only assume you've got a "call-through" service from the top of a Google search that's using an 084/087/09 number..

VM-CS is on 150 from a VM phone (free) or 0345 4541111 from any other phone (landline rate)

But go with @jbrennand advice for now....

[ChrisBrisland]

Hey you friendly helpers - THANKS!

That tip about the cables was the probably right one. I removed the ethernet connections, reinstalled a TPlink USB wireless dongle and the speed went up a bit. Checked that dongle and found that the 2.4 GHz speed was not up to the Virgin speed. So I used a newer USB3 TPLink dongle (it's surprising the amount of PC hardware clutter I have collected over the years!) Also did the other checks John suggested - I get the same speeds across all my devices (iPhone, iPad, PC, Cloud drives, Toshiba laptop...

But despite being wary of WiFi, the newer TPLink Dongle gives me full speed on 5 GHz.

The fault is probably in the TPLink wired connection that uses the house electric wiring. It looks like the ethernet cables may have been damaged by kinking.

218 Mbps is back! If you use Microsoft Flightsim, then you'll know why I went for the M200 connection.

[Serena_C]

Hi @ChrisBrisland

Welcome to our Community Help Forum 🙂

Thank you for making your first post regarding the speed issues you have been experiencing on your M200 package, I am so glad to hear that the advice of our fantastic Community Members has helped to improve your speeds. Thanks for letting us know, if there's anything else you need please do pop back.

Kind regards,

Serena