Ongoing upload speed issue

[Braggovic]

For over two weeks now, our upload speeds have been terrible. Well, mostly. It's intermittent, but mainly bad. We've been running various speed tests, and our download speed is mostly great (this morning nearly 540 mbps) but our upload speed struggles to even reach 4 mbps. I've had various conversations with Virgin support but all I'm ever told is that there would appear to be a network problem and that engineers are working on it. That would be fine, if I had confidence in it being true. The problem is, I'm getting mixed messages. A status check on my postcode reveals "no known issues in the area". But when I run a hub check, this messages changes to "it looks like there's a problem - rest assured that engineers are working on it".  Well, either there's a known problem, or there isn't. Both statements cannot be true.

The trouble is that we have an autistic daughter, who's lifeline is the internet. She live streams on YouTube but is now unable to do so because of the poor upload speeds. She's worried it will affect her channel and doesn't understand that we (as parents) simply cannot fix it. And it's very frustrating and quite traumatic (for her).

A week ago we arranged for an engineer to come to our house, in case the problem was with our equipment. But then almost immediately I received a text from Virgin Media informing me that they had "put this on hold" because they "suspected" a network issue. 

So, I'm in limbo. I'm paying for a service I'm contracted to, but ultimately not receiving. And the only thing I'm able to do is speak to a call centre that's based outside of the UK. As friendly as they are, there's only so many times I can be told that an "engineer is looking in to it" with no other feedback. Eventually I was told the problem would be fixed by June 27th (1pm). It wasn't it. I called again and am now told June 30th. But is this really being looked in to? How can I tell? It's all too easy just to tell me this, in the hope that it will be resolved. Where can I get accurate information about the problem? Could it be our end after all? It would have really helped if the visit by the engineer hadn't been cancelled. 

I feel I need to escalate this issue - but don't know who to or how. 

[jbrennand]

Firstly check for known issues by these 2 ways..

1) Try the “check service,”Area status webpage" (link at top right of this forum)

2) Then also try the “free & automated” Service Status number - 0800 561 0061 - which usually gives the most up to date info. and tells you of more local issues down to postcode level.

The 0800 is usually has the most accurate up to date info.

If nothing is reported on those come back and we can look at your Hub stats

In the meantime you (we!) can visualise any network issues on a BQM - as below. Good to have this as base information.

_______________________________________

If you haven’t already, set up a free, secure and “offlsite” - “Broadband Quality Monitor” to continually monitor the state of your connection and record any true network dropouts , latency issues, packet drops, etc - it will thus allow you to differentiate between those and simple wifi dropouts. It does it 24/7/365 and it keeps a visual record of any/all of your network disconnections, useful data to have to match to the Network logs (in your Hub settings) and also in discussions with VM - note it will take a few hours to start seeing a sensible picture - post up the “link” to the “share live graph”. Click the lower link (Share Live Graph) then click generate. Copy the text in the Direct Link box, beware, there may be more text than you can see. On here click the Link icon (2 links chain to the left of the camera icon) In the URL box paste the link you copied and then click OK

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