Slow wifi at night

[Frustratedwithv]

Every night at around 10.30pm, the Wi-Fi suddenly slows down to a painful crawl to the point where it is unusable. Even stood next to the router.Ant other time there are no issues. 

[Tresy48]

I am sat 1 foot away from my hub 5. Using the VM Connect app to scan speeds I get 1144 Mbps download to the router which is good (I have 1 Gig broadband ) but the WiFi speed is only 81Mbps download. Why is this so bad with the router right next to me?

[Sabrina_B]

Hi @Tresy48 👋.

Thanks for reaching out to us. Apologies for the issues that you have been having with your speeds. This link will be able to assist you on the speeds and how they work and such 👉 Speeds. It is possible that when a speed test was performed the device was connected to the 2.4GHz network which does have slower speed. Have you done a speed test on a computer/laptop, this will give more of a guaranteed result?

If you are still having issues with speeds after the tests please reach back out to us so that we can do further investigations into this.

Sabrina
 

[Frustratedwithv]

 this is with me stood next to the router

[WorstISP]

Have you got an ethernet cable? I'd be interested to see what speeds you're really getting, just to see if it's actually a WiFi issue. I wouldn't trust Virgin's app at all, I've caught them out lying about connectivity before when my Hub was showing offline on its status page while the Virgin Media page (checked on my phone) was claiming "no issues observed".

You can't trust any of VMs status pages or monitors, always check it yourself.

[WorstISP]

Have you got an ethernet cable? I'd be interested to see what speeds you're getting on a wired connection to rule out just to see if it's actually WiFi or the network itself. I'm paying for 1Gig and I'm getting as little as 0.5 Mbps at certain times, forcing me to reboot, which fixes it temporarily (Well, "fixes" meaning it drops to 100 Mbps within 5 minutes, an gradually degrades until I have to restart the Hub again after a couple of hours).

[wingers13]

We have the same - I'm wondering if its a deliberate approach that virgin are using as its very widespread. We get 200Mb+ download speed in the day and it drops to 1-20 at around 10:30pm.

[WorstISP]

Hi Frustrated, I'm Frustrated too. I'm having the same issue too. If you restart the router you'll probably notice the speeds go right back to normal, and then drop again a few hours later.

Virgin are not looking into this issue, so I suggest you start with the official complaint process now rather than wasting too much time going back and forth with support.

Fill in the official complaint webform here: https://www.virginmedia.com/help/complaints
Complain to OfCom here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/complaints

After 2 months, Virgin will have sent a few engineers around to do pointless unrelated things like replacing cables and the hub. This won't fix anything, so after 2 months you can make a complaint to the Ombudsman, which is when Virgin will start lying about your speed being fine (They'll do a single measurement during work-hours and pretend that it proves everything is fine).

It's on you to keep taking speed-tests and keep a log to build up your complaint to the Ombudsmann.

Let me know if you want any more info, I'm deep into my dispute now (My speed drops to below 1Mbps every single day even though I'm paying for a 1Gbps service). I'm a professional software engineer working on internet traffic-engineering systems, so I can give you a proper insight into how to measure these issues and what terms to use.

Use this speed-test to see the full speed: https://www.samknows.com/realspeed/
It will do a speed test to your router itself which will show you if it's a Wifi issue or an issue with Virgin's network itself (I'll wager it's an issue with Virgin's network itself, they like to claim "Wifi" so they can sell you extenders and blame your device rather than admitting they're oversubscribing their service).

[Katehov]

Hi guys, 

Did anyone get anywhere with this one? Currently on my phone network because our internet goes down every night around 8:30-9pm. Tried ringing she just told me to up the MB as the usage was too high. For context, we have 2 x mobile phones, 1 daughter watching YouTube until around 8pm when its lights out and just bog standard Alexa’s etc running in the background. No high usage atall, 250 mb should be flying. I have a newborn so spend a lot of time awake in the middle of night when there is just me mindless scrolling and it still does not work!!

virgin seem to think it’s a problem at home, be with them 5 years at least router has never changed location but now I can’t even watch catch up TV!

just wondering if anyone managed to get any answers or resolutions??

TIA

[Frustratedwithv]

Mostly, the advice from virgin is to "ask the comunity". Usual non supportive customer service from virgin. They sell you a product and then leave you to the wolves. 

[WorstISP]

I got a 100 pound "goodwill" offer from Virgin after 8 engineer visits. Have no idea if it's fixed since I'm away now, but I doubt it.

My ombudsman complaint didn't get me out of my contract because unfortunately I didn't collect sufficient evidence as I was too busy with my job to take screenshots of the bad speed every night.

The important thing to check is the "Minimum Guaranteed Speed" section on your contract. Run a speed test with samknows every time you spot this, and ideally if you can get 3-4 days in a row screenshotted results you might get a better result.

By the way, 250mb should absolutely be sufficient for your purposes. Please take a note of that attempted upselling when you make your complaint, as it is proof that they were not addressing the poor service.