New Gig1 install - only 90Mps download speed

[metafeather]

Hi everyone,

I recently took the plunge to Virgin Media since they are the only option beyond ADSL for my house and had hoped that, despite their poor reputation locally, if I went for a sufficiently fast Gig1 package the minimal guaranteed speed rate of 565Mps would enable me to work from home even during slowdowns and contentions.

I'm afraid I'm not getting even remotely close to the minimum at present despite having an engineer inspect the existing installation and Speedtest indicating 230Mps at the time.

I'm 6 days in and have had:

* 3 days fast speed at up to 720Mps

* 2 days random connection drops followed by a "fault fix in my area" yesterday at 12.15pm

* 1 day of reliable connection but incredibly slow speeds at 90Mps

I've kept my old ISP as a backup and can swap my internal network between the 2 modems easily so I'm comparing like-with-like setups on multiple wired and wifi devices and seeing consistent Speedtest results across the board, so I'm confident thats its not my router setup.

I have had BQM setup from the beginning, and 9am today is when I swapped from my old ISP to VM, and 12.45pm is when I rebooted the VM Modem again: 

Right now I am Speedtesting from a laptop whilst directly wired into the Virgin Media Hub 4 and getting a direct IP via DHCP and consistently seeing 90Mps download with 25Mps upload since the last reboot. From 9am to 12.45pm I only had 18Mps!

I'm hoping that someone has just forgotten to flick a switch to set my account to Gig1, but I'm very concerned how fragile the Gig1 product appears to be with reliability and unknown faults - a fast speed is no use to me if I suddenly can't work. My ADSL has been rock solid for many years even though its only 10Mps.

Below is all the Router status logs, I really appreciate all your experience interpreting them and getting some customer support attention:

[Andrew-G · Accepted solution]

If there's an area fault already known, then that always takes precedence over individual faults.  That's a logical approach, but if this applies, you'll have to wait for the area fault to be fixed, see if your speed remains low or latency poor, and then try and get a technician.  There's no way of elevating the priority when there's an unresolved area fault, so even if staff want to, the systems won't let them.

In terms of ensuring that you get good performance before the 14 day cooling off period ends.....hmmm, I can't offer much helpful advice.  The 1 Gbps speed does work for the majority of customers, if you need it enough you might want to give VM the time to get it working.  Against which, for a very, very small number of customers they never seem able to pin down and fix the fault.  Since you can always invoke the speed guarantee after the cooling off period (and leave if they can't fix that), I'd be leaning towards sitting it out rather than cancelling in haste.  Much depends on your rationale for 1 Gbps in the first place, and to a much lesser extent whether Openreach FTTP is coming near you anytime soon.

[metafeather]

So it turns out the 0800 561 0061 is to check for service problems in my area - for which it said were none.

The correct number for Broadband queries is 0345 454 1111 and they were very helpful, and got an engineer booked in for Sat am - I hope he isn't going to waste my time.

I've flagged this for the automatic compensation scheme since they cancelled the engineer and I have to wait 3 more days.

However according to them there is an engineer at my junction box right now working on a job that is due to be finished by Oct 4th - but shouldn't be affecting me, but could be?? This is exactly the sort of unreliability I'm worried about - Virgin have been in my area for over 5 years and nothing appears to improve.

[metafeather]

Thanks for your insight Andrew.

I should say for context that I am rooting for Virgin Media to get this sorted out - please take my money for Gig1 🙂

I've just moved back to this property from 2 streets away where I had 74Mps fiber from another provider for 18 months without a single issue, so it's such a shame it's not available on this street.

[Andrew-G]

I'd agree things aren't improving, and lately they've got a lot worse, but there's a balanced assessment by @goslow in this thread:

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Community-Natter/Is-VM-Customer-Service-really-that-bad/m-p/482...

[metafeather]

Update on Friday - I think someone flipped a switch on my account at 11.30am GMT! Between 2 Speedtests I jumped from 90Mps to 780Mps whilst wired.

This is of course good news as it shows the install/hardware can support Gig1 at my address, but frustrating that it would seem a random remote change can make so much difference without any visibility.

My power levels etc have not changed, and the Upstream 16QAM mentioned in an earlier reply is still present. I even have the same IP address.

I'll keep monitoring for a while...

[Ashleigh_C]

Hi there @metafeather 

Thank you so much for your post and I am so sorry to hear you have been facing these issues! Also a big thank you to our community forums team for their help and guidance. 

Can I ask how things are looking since your last post and your engineer appointment? What did the engineer recommend? 

Thanks again.