What is virgin like

sparkie415 · 12-03-2010, 22:05

HI,
I am currently with sky .full bundle i.e tv/phone/broadband.The bb that Sky provide is the connect package which is bt sold on to sky and very slow.

Thinking of changing to virgin full bundle as with sky.Is virgin good and reliable any issues that you guys know about.Honest and blunt answers would be most welcome.
Thanks for any help.

Ben B · 12-03-2010, 22:12

Hi and

Well what I think is...

Broadband: On the 20mb package receive a consistent 19mb+ something which rarely if at all is acheived with services down a BT line

TV: I am on XL which gives access to all the channels minus the premiums and if you have a V+ Box you have all the HD channels available and can record 2 channels while watching a third. As an XL customer, you also get access to TV Choice on Demand and Music on Demand included in your package, as well as the Catch Up TV on Demand which all customers get. Excellent value for money.

Phone: Well it's just generally a phone package! Also remember, if you take out Talk evenings and weekends, evenings start at 6pm on Virgin not 7pm. You also have the option of taking Talk Weekends which is the minimum, or Talk Unlimited.

Overall I think Virgin provide an excellent value for money, that's my opinion truly and honestly.

Ben

oliver1948uk · 12-03-2010, 22:27

I have been an ntl/VM customer for 10+ years.

Sometimes customer services is less than perfect but I could name other companies that have given me a far worse experience.

Phone 99.9% reliable. TV 98% reliable. Broadband (I am on 10Mb) 98% reliable and only occasionally falls below 9Mb. (Used to be on 20Mb. That was equally as reliable)

V+ box excellent and 95% reliable. I consider its greatest strength being the upscaling of standard defintion picture (by HDMI) making HD an anti-climax.

I have two family members (one based in the same town as me - Mansfield) and one in Dover on VM. Generally both would agree with me though Dover has had intermittent problems with broadband and ntl/VM email.

Things seem to be getting better and better. Even the offshore customer services has improved!

Peter_ · 12-03-2010, 22:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by oliver1948uk

Things seem to be getting better and better. Even the offshore customer services has improved!

jtaylor06 · 12-03-2010, 22:55

TV:
It's great. On same package as Ben B and he's correct - the on-demand is great value for money.
Here is a link to what Virgin offer on-demand: http://www.virginmedia.com/tvradio/ondemand/
V+ is great.

Here is page, it explains what the TV packages includes.
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/tv/compare.html
It's unlike Sky's mixes where you have to have a certain mix for certain types of programming.

Internet:
Internet's great. You can see the speedtest result in my signature (I'm on 20MB/s)
Downloading's great, you get speeds over 1.0MB/s depending on the host of the file which is fast. You get free equipment too (I think it's dependent on package) so you get a fast N router, and the modem obviously.

Phone:
Can't really say much as a phone's a phone ;D

Reliability:
It is quite reliable tbh. I've only had one time when the TV service went down but it was no more than 5 hours or so.
Internet, it's always on. I can't remember the last time it cut out.

Hope this helps in some way

Useful stuff:

Broadband: http://allyours.virginmedia.com/webs...ervice.do?id=2
TV: http://allyours.virginmedia.com/webs...ervice.do?id=1
Phone: http://allyours.virginmedia.com/webs...ervice.do?id=3
Bundles: http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html...e-builder.html
New customer info: http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html...wcustomer.html

---------- Post added at 21:55 ---------- Previous post was at 21:53 ----------

Oo, just found this for Sky customers switching to Virgin:

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html...witch-sky.html

It tells you what differences you will expect (mainly positive)
Really helpful

Spectato · 12-03-2010, 23:37

They're better than BT, but then so is rabies.

Sephiroth · 13-03-2010, 00:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben B

Hi and

Well what I think is...

....

Overall I think Virgin provide an excellent value for money, that's my opinion truly and honestly.

Ben

I gotta go with Ben on this for my personal exoerience.

The poor experiences reported here are a very, very small fraction of the customer base.

That said, you might want to be aware of some issues. If you live in/near studentland for a major university, then do some research for your particular area. They live 5 or 6 to a house, downloading, P2P-ing, gaming - all legitimate acticities but they gobble up bandwidth.

oliver1948uk · 13-03-2010, 00:12

Preumably the same problems will apply to those on ADSL in student areas

Sephiroth · 13-03-2010, 00:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by oliver1948uk

Preumably the same problems will apply to those on ADSL in student areas

Maybe not to the same extent. The issue in studentland really is upstream capacity provided by VM's architecture.

Some DSL packages don't have this problem. I hope others can elablorate on this for you.

I'd say this - if you live near a BT exchange, seriously consider the up to 24 Mb/s DSL package.

broadbandking · 13-03-2010, 11:24

I have to say the TV is brillaint esp the on demand services, the V+ is great and is used by all memebers of the family, the broadband is fine 50Mb service, only had a couple of outages which lasted 5hrs max, since I have been with VM/TW, I have only had a one full day of no service, been with them since the analog days.

caph · 13-03-2010, 12:37

If you end up on one of the oversubscribed nodes, you'll wish you never swapped, but if you end up on one of the non-oversubscribed nodes you'll wonder why you didn't swap sooner. There isn't that much oversubscription but that will mean nothing to you if you draw the short straw.

50Mb is far less likely to suffer from oversubscription but far more likely to suffer one of a myriad of other problems. It's new technology that is still bedding in.

louisg · 14-03-2010, 20:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Maybe not to the same extent. The issue in studentland really is upstream capacity provided by VM's architecture.

Some DSL packages don't have this problem. I hope others can elablorate on this for you.

I'd say this - if you live near a BT exchange, seriously consider the up to 24 Mb/s DSL package.

when talking about living near a exchange. How close is near and how far is far?

---------- Post added at 19:46 ---------- Previous post was at 19:45 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by caph

If you end up on one of the oversubscribed nodes, you'll wish you never swapped, but if you end up on one of the non-oversubscribed nodes you'll wonder why you didn't swap sooner. There isn't that much oversubscription but that will mean nothing to you if you draw the short straw.

50Mb is far less likely to suffer from oversubscription but far more likely to suffer one of a myriad of other problems. It's new technology that is still bedding in.

how do you find this info out about what node your on?

Sephiroth · 14-03-2010, 23:35

You can look at www.kitz.co.uk and you'll see how distance will attenuate the DSL signal and lower speed.

You can put in your postcode and it'll tell you what you MIGHT expect.

I can tell you this - I'm about 2 miles from my exchange by road, more in terms of electrical length, and I can't get more than 1.5 Mbps on my O2 DSL line.

**Stuart** · 14-03-2010, 23:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparkie415

HI,
I am currently with sky .full bundle i.e tv/phone/broadband.The bb that Sky provide is the connect package which is bt sold on to sky and very slow.

Thinking of changing to virgin full bundle as with sky.Is virgin good and reliable any issues that you guys know about.Honest and blunt answers would be most welcome.
Thanks for any help.

I don't have broadband, but I have a V+. Not had too many problems with that. In fact I think in the three years I have had it, I have had one fault, which was solved by tightening the connectors and removing the splitter VM put in for the broadband connection they put in but I never used (because I still had 2 weeks left before my BB cutoff date when I had the V+ installed, the engineer installed a cable modem despite my objections.

As for broadband speed, there is a site where users can register the kinds of packages they are on and the speeds they get. In some areas (like mine) they don't have a lot of reports so may not be accurate, but in others they should have a lot, so should be accurate..

http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/

chickendippers · 14-03-2010, 23:58

There's always the 28 day money back guarantee. So if it turns out you're on an oversubscribed part of the network, give technical support the chance to fix it, and if they can't - just cancel.

No loss to you.