View Full Version : Had enough and cancelled today (it's not that painful!)
BigLarry
05-07-2007, 10:58
Been an NTL customer for about 5 years and ever since the switch to VM it's gone terrible. The new traffic shaping policy means that between 4pm and midnight my 20MB connection is pathetic and useless for a combination of VoiP, Video and Gaming.
After a 25 minute call to a call centre in India where the operator clearly had no understanding of shaping, throttling of perhaps even who Virgin Media where I was told I'd have to ring back in the morning.
In the morning spoke to a rude, patronising and generally annoying guy (think in Scotland?) who told me that even though I'd been with their Broadband for 5 years because I upgraded to 10MB (and hence got a new modem and also changed payment card) 10 months ago I'd have to pay an early termination fee!!!!
I told him I'd see him in court before they took any termination fee and eventually he agreed there would be no early cancellation fee (after 12 minutes on hold).
So I telephoned BT who have agreed to come out and sort me a new line (no installation charge and I keep my existing number) - they're ringing me back with a time slot for that and I've telephoned Be to prebook the 24MB package (£24.00 a month).
While I'm sure there will be some downtime for me, I can live with that and will keep the VM Internet on a 2MB package until the Be ADSL is live.
It's criminal the was VM advertise this unbelievably fast internet, when in reality it isn't and the only way to win is to stop bitching or thinking "it'll get better soon" and do something active - like cancel or downgrade!
You do know the grass is always greener ? :). Anyway, Good luck with BE and I hope you don't live too far from the exchange.
xspeedyx
05-07-2007, 11:32
Sorry to hear that mate hope bt and be are good for you. Just check your distance from the exchange because if you are only likely to get a few meg might be an idea to choose a cheaper adsl provider GOOD LUCK anyways
If you think vm teck is crap wait untill you have a problam with bt lines
hairport
05-07-2007, 13:18
If you think vm teck is crap wait untill you have a problam with bt lines
You're spot on with that comment. My BT line ran at 1MB for 3 years no problems, then suddenly ADSL lost sync. Changed everything, filters, modems etc and called BT with fault (through ISP)... Basically they can't get the line back to the state it was in and it won't support ADSL anymore... so I cancelled the ADSL.
BT are as bad as any of them when they want to be.
Tim
Retrovertigo
05-07-2007, 13:25
I'm giving this a couple of weeks then leaving myself. It's all very well people saying "wait for this and that on a BT line" - but I'm only getting a quarter of the speed I'm paying for. And at a premium compared to other providers.
Not good enough, so why not take a punt on BT (or ADSL in general). Just as some are happy with Virgin, so are plenty of people happy with (the considerably cheaper) BT and the like.
Been an NTL customer for about 5 years and ever since the switch to VM it's gone terrible. The new traffic shaping policy means that between 4pm and midnight my 20MB connection is pathetic and useless for a combination of VoiP, Video and Gaming.
After a 25 minute call to a call centre in India where the operator clearly had no understanding of shaping, throttling of perhaps even who Virgin Media where I was told I'd have to ring back in the morning.
In the morning spoke to a rude, patronising and generally annoying guy (think in Scotland?) who told me that even though I'd been with their Broadband for 5 years because I upgraded to 10MB (and hence got a new modem and also changed payment card) 10 months ago I'd have to pay an early termination fee!!!!
I told him I'd see him in court before they took any termination fee and eventually he agreed there would be no early cancellation fee (after 12 minutes on hold).
So I telephoned BT who have agreed to come out and sort me a new line (no installation charge and I keep my existing number) - they're ringing me back with a time slot for that and I've telephoned Be to prebook the 24MB package (£24.00 a month).
While I'm sure there will be some downtime for me, I can live with that and will keep the VM Internet on a 2MB package until the Be ADSL is live.
It's criminal the was VM advertise this unbelievably fast internet, when in reality it isn't and the only way to win is to stop bitching or thinking "it'll get better soon" and do something active - like cancel or downgrade!
Hope the switch goes smoothly for you and you get somewhere near 24MB with your BE connection, depending on your line etc.
I agree with your last comment, about people bitching and moaning about the shaping, it doesnt help one little bit and it certainly wont make VM scrap traffic shaping between 4-12.
For me Im very happy with the 20MB service, its blisteringly fast when i do my downloads, 2.34MB/s in the day and I can certainly live with 5MB between 4-12 as ive downloaded most of the internet while I was at work :)
Hope the change goes smoothly!
It's criminal the was VM advertise this unbelievably fast internet, when in reality it isn't and the only way to win is to stop bitching or thinking "it'll get better soon" and do something active - like cancel or downgrade!
i think it's more criminal for adsl companies to offer 24mb broadband when the majority of people will never see that
i think it's more criminal for adsl companies to offer 24mb broadband when the majority of people will never see that
It's not criminal. It's "UP TO" the same as VM is up to. Do you really expect companys to undersell the potential of their services? Car makers have been playing the same game for a long time, the difference is cable broadband customers till now have actually got the maximum possible most of the time. 20meg has changed that with bandwidth being very dependent on the server which is serving, the quality of the customers equipment and quality of equipment en route, including VM's own infrastructure.
BE* have a HUGE advantage over VM in this respect because line length restrictions help reduce the load on their servers and routes and only a small percentage of their customers expect close to full speeds.
There is clearly a lot of bad feelings with regards to the decline of the broadband service, and I for one cannot blame people who leave after having a bad run. My broadband has been awful for a week now, having been stable for the last two months having had a lot of problems. I only have 2meg, but it was 0.6 meg most of yesterday, and has varied up to 2meg over the last week, but most of the time around 1meg.
I decided to ring today to report the fault, only to find there is now no route to do that other than to pay 25p a minute. That is to me a disgrace, as the fault is clearly not local to me, and to have to pay to report the fault is an insult. I did download a large file in the 4pm to 12am slot, but to have to now suffer for a week with awful speeds is appalling.
I, like a lot of others, have been with Nynex, NTL and now Virgin a long time, and there is no doubt the service has declined, and only by people leaving will anything be done to improve the service. Paying to report a fault is to me the last straw, and reading these forums clearly indicate Virgin have sold services they cannot provide, to the detriment of their customers overall.
Good luck with BT, if they prove bad, then move somewhere else until you find a provider that delivers what you pay for.
A lot of us just live in hope. I kept my Cable BB after moving My Tv to sky. I'm only paying £10 for 2MB but I too am thinking of a move.
The good thing is the guy next door is on BT and he loves it. God knows why but he always looks down on my cable connection I’ve been happy over the many years but it has got bad this year….
Hope the switch goes smoothly for you and you get somewhere near 24MB with your BE connection, depending on your line etc.
I agree with your last comment, about people bitching and moaning about the shaping, it doesnt help one little bit and it certainly wont make VM scrap traffic shaping between 4-12.
For me Im very happy with the 20MB service, its blisteringly fast when i do my downloads, 2.34MB/s in the day and I can certainly live with 5MB between 4-12 as ive downloaded most of the internet while I was at work :)
Hope the change goes smoothly!try playing online games after 4pm its a fooken nightmare i love online games and its not worth booting a game up for
Been an NTL customer for about 5 years and ever since the switch to VM it's gone terrible. The new traffic shaping policy means that between 4pm and midnight my 20MB connection is pathetic and useless for a combination of VoiP, Video and Gaming.
Whilst I won't argue with any of the service issues, I don't think you can hold shaping responsible for unplayable games during peak time.
Shaped gives you 5Mbs, and I remember gaming and using voice comms etc. concurrently when on the lowly 128Kb broadband all those years ago. So a shaped connection can still perform those tasks with no problems. You're just jumping to an easy conclusion/scapegoat there.
Like most of you I have been on cable a long time, from Nynex through to VM and I have to admit to being disappointed with my 20MB connection. Web pages load as though they are filtered through syrup and depending on which sppeed test site you use and what time of day I get between sub 1MB up to 7MB generally. Downloading a large file proves that I actually have a faster connection but it doesn't feel that way when browsing, online banking, emailing or looking for a holiday etc.
However, at work I am on BT business BB and the up to 8MB connection always gives a sustained 6.5MB and my home page appears instantly. Browsing is always fast no matter which site I want to access and it has been consistently trouble free over the past 3 years.
I am seriously considering a change but I want to give VM a fair chance to sort out their problems so I think I wil wait until closer to Xmas and then if no different make the change to SKY.
I have gone down the happy medium of dropping voip, dropping sky movies, and having a bt line, sky BB mid, and sky anytime phonecalls - saving myself 3 quid a month + having the choice of adsl and cable at any given time...
admittedly i know i wont get any more than 4mb speeds on adsl, but 4mb is better than 0.3mb ( my current cable offering ), and if VM learn how to sustain a 20mb connection in my area i will build myself a load sharing machine and have 'UPTO' 28mbps ;) .. thinking about it, should the SKY BB work out to be pretty good i could throw them the extra 5 quid ( only costing 3 quid a month more than current price ) and have an UPTO 36mb connection on the go :D
BigLarry
05-07-2007, 19:50
Don't get me wrong, it's not just VoiP and games, I am probably a fairly hefty downloader and while it's OK to download things "out of hours" as it where, it's not really "convenient" and I like to think my internet connection should be exactly that, I'd be ****ed if between 4pm and 12pm Virgin reduced my available channels by 50% because I'd watched too much in the same way.
Worst is, I don't even get 5mb after the shaping more like 2mb which is what really pushed me over the edge.
I'm that ****ed about it all, I just cancelled my Virgin credit card too. :D
Dawn Falcon
05-07-2007, 21:35
Whilst I won't argue with any of the service issues, I don't think you can hold shaping responsible for unplayable games during peak time.
Shaped gives you 5Mbs, and I remember gaming and using voice comms etc. concurrently when on the lowly 128Kb broadband all those years ago. So a shaped connection can still perform those tasks with no problems. You're just jumping to an easy conclusion/scapegoat there.
As you note, raw bandwidth dosn't really matter. No, it's ping and packet loss, both of which have climbed since the rebranding. Blaming the traffic shaping is allways going to happen, and entirely correct since it masks actual symptoms (and hence is a part of the problem).
To confuse things even more, I've been getting about 90kB/s Dl speeds in the evenings (on XL), but about 1100kB/s if I attempt to DL from a premium usenet server (although sometimes that's crawling along at 90kB/s, too) ??!!?
WTF are VM playing at?? I wish they would enlighten us...
Am in the same boat - dropped from 20mb to 2mb this week after getting fed up with the 1-2 day/week dropped connection for most of the day. Used to happen with my tv every now and again, then 3 weekends all weekend on the trot, so I went to sky. Been a customer of C&W, NTL, now VM and it's a shame it's come to this. Currently searching for a reasonable/decent/reliable adsl provider.
Also got a tech supposedly coming between 12 and 1600 tommorrow, last one didn't turn up, to see why my connection drops like clockwork every week, usually on a monday or tuesday, all day, with no problems in my area and the indian robots in the call centre baffled as to why (it's because it's not on their checklist, can't blame them, though they are first port of call for someone wanting to vent anger.) Also got them to refund the call cost as well though am more or less past caring.
Even my 2mb is all over the place. Managed 600kb measured speed the other day, actually touched on 2mb today, then later waiting for things to load is like going back to 28.8 then 56.6 dialup. Hell, back then (90s) I was paying £50/month on the phone bill and £50/month to compuserve using Netscape (anyone remember that?) browser. £100/month for internet. Can anyone beat that?
We never had it so good :erm:
I'd be prepared to pay £50 a month for a fast reliable service - only £13 more than what I been paying.
Unfortunately 'fast' and 'reliable' don't seem to be options for most of us, seeing as we don't live inside or on top of a telephone exchange and VM have somehow screwed up a reasonably good 10mb service. :rolleyes:
Dawn Falcon
06-07-2007, 00:27
Apness, some of the smaller business ADSL providers are quite good. Yes, they're more expensive than the big consumer ADSL ISP's, but you get what you pay for.
BT may not be the greatest in the world but im sure they can better the 100+ ping we get to uk servers for CSS on a 20mb VM line.
I mainly surf while my 2 kids play CSS and have watched the pings they get to UK servers and its a farce.
Be interested to know how you find BT as i will soon be making the same step just to keep the kids happy. :D
BigLarry
06-07-2007, 07:42
I'm moving to BT/ Bethere mainly because we use them at work and it's been fantastic (and work is farther from the exchange than home too).
Bethere has had a couple of outages but you always get an email telling you when they'll be etc.
Call centre is UK too!
I am waiting my Dc from VM on the 20th of this month. I moved back over to adsl with ukonline 22meg service. i am synced @
DownStream Connection Speed 21577 kbps
UpStream Connection Speed 764 kbps
Not had any problems getting a good solid 14 to 16 meg d/l speed any time of the night or day. and yup its alot cheaper in the long run also. only 24.99 pcm.
i live 180 meters from the exchange and just as close to the VM local server.
dont see why i should have to pay over the top price for a p!ss poor service from VM.
ho well good luck to all those still on VM, wish you all the best. I for one could not stand the poor service any longer, shame as my last 10 years with ntl was much better thats for sure.
Been an NTL customer for about 5 years and ever since the switch to VM it's gone terrible. The new traffic shaping policy means that between 4pm and midnight my 20MB connection is pathetic and useless for a combination of VoiP, Video and Gaming.
After a 25 minute call to a call centre in India where the operator clearly had no understanding of shaping, throttling of perhaps even who Virgin Media where I was told I'd have to ring back in the morning.
In the morning spoke to a rude, patronising and generally annoying guy (think in Scotland?) who told me that even though I'd been with their Broadband for 5 years because I upgraded to 10MB (and hence got a new modem and also changed payment card) 10 months ago I'd have to pay an early termination fee!!!!
I told him I'd see him in court before they took any termination fee and eventually he agreed there would be no early cancellation fee (after 12 minutes on hold).
So I telephoned BT who have agreed to come out and sort me a new line (no installation charge and I keep my existing number) - they're ringing me back with a time slot for that and I've telephoned Be to prebook the 24MB package (£24.00 a month).
While I'm sure there will be some downtime for me, I can live with that and will keep the VM Internet on a 2MB package until the Be ADSL is live.
It's criminal the was VM advertise this unbelievably fast internet, when in reality it isn't and the only way to win is to stop bitching or thinking "it'll get better soon" and do something active - like cancel or downgrade!
I agree with all that you have said, can you keep us informed as to how you get on :tu:
I was paying £50/month on the phone bill and £50/month to compuserve using Netscape (anyone remember that?) browser. £100/month for internet. Can anyone beat that?
Even further back on the old BBC Model B me and mate used Prestel it was early internet that looked more like Teletext. :o:
We ran up a £300 phone bill in the 80s downloading games his parents were not even that annoyed just to be sure it did not happen again…:cool:.
Great days when the dogs ******** was the space game Elite! You can take all your cinematic looking games that game was the business.
BigLarry
06-07-2007, 19:30
Well said, Commander Jameson.
jcardiff
06-07-2007, 20:17
Well said,Commander Jameson .
ooh that brings shivers down my spine,
fire up the cobra mk III
Nice to know I'm not alone in having issues with VM. Has anyone actually gotten through to someone important on the phone that can actually explain the issues we are getting?
DerekRothwell
06-07-2007, 20:54
Nice to know I'm not alone in having issues with VM. Has anyone actually gotten through to someone important on the phone that can actually explain the issues we are getting?
Thats the plan methinks VM have - just think of all those lovely phone calls getting charged at 25p a minute. What a beautiful way to bring in revenue.
Ive been thinking of ditching them too, my exchange is roughly 8mins walk away. So suppose my speeds would be okay if I was to get ADSL.
Thats the plan methinks VM have - just think of all those lovely phone calls getting charged at 25p a minute. What a beautiful way to bring in revenue.
Well someone has to pay for the network upgrades that are so obviously needed and be sure virgin aint lol :angel:
Thats my one gripe with Virgin, i had to give up online gaming altogether.
Cable has it advantages, but not on this one. :(
pity they had to bugger up the service to accomadate the torrent users more than the game players i remember when playing games over the net was the selling point for cable broadband.
pity half the ubrs on the network are done in by torrents and traffic shaping long term problem :(
A different twist to canceling perhaps?
After about 8 days(since the upgrade basically) of really slow speeds, today I canceled my service. Now all through the evening the speeds have been getting better until now its at about top speed for the 20Mb service it is. I have also been promised a refund for the lack of service when the issue, for which I have a ticket number; is resolved.
If the service is like this before 12 midnight and it maintains this quality for at least seven days, then who knows I might even consider un-canceling the cancel..... ;)
Strange how I have had no joy out of VM for over a week, and then when I cancel..............................hmmm
ooh that brings shivers down my spine,
fire up the cobra mk III
:D in those days the only thing on your mind was buying that ECM and docking computer....
Spitfire12
08-07-2007, 21:53
I'm moving to BT/ Bethere mainly because we use them at work and it's been fantastic (and work is farther from the exchange than home too).
Bethere has had a couple of outages but you always get an email telling you when they'll be etc.
Call centre is UK too!
No its not
Bullergia
BigLarry
09-07-2007, 19:17
Whenever I've rung them they've always been definitely in the UK. Haven't rung them in the last few months so perhaps it's changed?
Not painful at all....:)
BT line to be installed in the next few days, cancelled the Virgin phone line, got my ADSL isp sorted - can't be any worse for £25 a month!!
May stay with Virgin for the TV, but there again the other half is moaning about no Sky1 and stupid travel channels........;)
PS: Just as a matter of interest I tried to ring BT's 0800 number from my Virgin landline and it did not work - rang from a non Virgin mobile and guess what??? Coincidence or what!!!
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