Hello, I am hoping to get some advice.

[books]

Hi everyone, I am hoping someone might be able to offer me some advice.

I was on the 2mbit Virgin Media Cable connection for the last year or so. It was ok and it was only costing me £10 so I was happy. But earlier this year, my one year low price expired and it went up to £18 a month for that same little 2mbit connection. So I had to rearrange a new deal.

I went around and around with various companies, and in the end I managed to talk Virgin in to quite a good deal where I would get upgraded to the 20mbit connection, and I got my phone and TV with them too, and the overall price was Ok. A bit better than Sky and BT would cost anyway.

Unfortunately the 20mbit connection has been nothing but annoying for me. I download a lot of data almost constantly, and on the 2mbit connection it never seemed to matter. If I was downloading something big, I just knew I needed to leave it going overnight. What I have found with this 20mbit connection though, is that I reach the limit very quickly, almost every day. My speed then plummets to below what my 2mbit connection used to run at. The connection also becomes quite unstable, and I am unable to do some things at all, like connection to MSN game zone. If I am trying to download a file and then surf the web, it just doesn't work. A web page can take 2 to 3 minutes to load.. Also my download speed drops to about 30kB/s, and my upload drops to about 19kB/s. What is worse, is that this seems to come into effect early in the morning, and it doesn't stop until sometime in the middle of the night. So the connection seems to be slower overall than my 2mbit connection, and whether it actually is or not, it is no benefit to me because I have to leave it overnight to download things which means that I am no better off than my 2mbit connection, and yet I am paying much more.

So basically this connection is the worst thing I've ever bought, and every day I feel terrible and feel like I have made a fool out of myself. I used to have Sky TV, and for just £10 I could have got their internet connection, and although it was 16mbit rather than 20mbit, at least it would have been running at that speed rather than about half a mbit for most of the entire day on Virgin. I also could have gone with Be Internet who are meant to be extremely good and have no traffic management, and they told me on the phone that based on my distance from the exchange, I would have got 17mbit with their connection, which again, would have been like that all day and night and would be far better than my 20mbit for a very short time and then half a megabit for the entire rest of the day.

So my question is, is there any way I can get out of this contract? The contract is for 12 months, and I signed up in about June or July or so, and it pains me to think that I am stuck with this mess for the next year. They have done other things too like increase the price of my TV package, so the deal we agreed when I signed up, they have changed. I am not even sure if that is legal. And their internet policy is not like they describe on their website. So would it be possible for me to cancel my account with Virgin without having to pay the remainder of the 12 months? Perhaps on the grounds that they broke their contract with me? Or some other way. I really want a way out, any way out. Please help if possible.

Thanks in advance.

[moaningmags]

Can you give up some basics?
Which modem do you have?
It may not be 20Mb capable.
Do you connect directly to the computer or go through a router?

[stevos]

i'd start with dont download during 10am until 9pm... unless its nescessary.. thats what will be causing you to be traffic managed.
also my guess is the modem isnt upto scratch for handling 20Mbp.

[books]

Thanks for the replies. I can get 20mbit and do get that sometimes. I go through a good D-Link router which is well configured, and for testing purposes I have tried going straight into the cable modem (which Virgin supplied). The speed doesn't change. It is 20mbit when it's working, but it's about half a megabit when I'm being traffic managed. My problem is that I am downloading things almost constantly, even during the day while I'm at work I usually leave things downloading. I find that every evening when I get home about 6pm, the speed drops hugely and it stays like that for the rest of the night. I only usually get to use the net at home between about 6pm when I get home from work, and about 11pm when I start getting ready for bed, and during all that time, it is being traffic managed.

The few times I have been off during the day too, I find that the same thing happens. I'm not sure about the exact times, but one day last week I set something running at about 9am and I went out for a few hours and then came home around lunch time and it was being traffic managed.

And I know it's traffic management, because a few times I have been up at about 4am and the connection is extremely fast then. It can download at about 2.2MB (megabytes) per second which is very fast, and the upload is about 80kB/s which is decent. But this is at 4am and that is not really any use to me. If I have to leave stuff going over night, then I would prefer to go on a cheap 2mbit connection because after using a 2mbit for a year or more, I know that I am not any better off with this 20mbit connection than I used to be on 2. A couple of times when I haven't downloaded anything all day and I just need to get one thing, then it can be useful, but that doesn't really match my habits. I am either constantly downloading or I'm not downloading anything at all. And if I am constantly downloading, then it just gets traffic managed to an extremely slow speed, for what seems to me to be an entire day, and in that case, I was far better off with a cheap connection.

Do you think I might be able to cancel my Virgin account? Or maybe get them to drop it from 20 down to 2? I just hate paying this much money for something that doesn't really work properly, when I could get something so much better with a different company.

i'd start with dont download during 10am until 9pm... unless its nescessary..That would no doubt work, but that is not acceptable for the amount I'm paying. I am paying for the top tier broadband which is quite expensive, and not using it from 10am to 9pm is almost the entire day. I go to bed at 11pm, so it would mean I am paying all this money for 2 hours internet. If I was going to have to put up with such restrictive rules, I would prefer to just change it to a 2mbit connection again. At least that way I am not really any worse off and yet it would be much cheaper. If I could only switch back to Sky, I could get their 16mbit connection for just £10. But I think it might be too late for me now because I joined Virgin.

[moaningmags]

You must be downloading gigs and gigs of stuff to be hitting the limit repeatedly.
Or uploading gigs of stuff.

[books]

I do, but that shouldn't really be an issue these days. A rewriteable DVD holds 4.5 gig, and I have a 500MB USB hard drive, so I could make trips to and from the office with data on that and it would be ok. But then I wouldn't really need internet in the first place, except to check my mail and browse the web occasionally. So if I'm going to have to do it that way, I would like to close my Virgin account if possible.

[moaningmags]

In that case maybe you should downgrade while looking for an isp who doesn't throttle, shape, manage, cap your connection.
I doubt they'd let you out of the contract as there has been no major changes to the terms and conditions in the last 30 days.

[books]

I doubt they'd let you out of the contract as there has been no major changes to the terms and conditions in the last 30 days.
That's what I dreaded to hear.

The thing is, their own policy says a 75% speed limit, but even that should leave me with 5mbit which I don't seem to get. I seem to either be on the full 20, or about 1mbit (if that) when I am being speed limited. Also it didn't mention anything about the instability or the problem with webpages taking 2 minutes to load etc.

If they wouldn't let me out of the contract, do you think I would be able to arrange a downgrade to change me back to the 2mbit connection and lower the cost of it? Or would that not be allowed either?

[moaningmags]

Downgrading should be fine.

[books]

Ahhh, thanks! Ok I think that will be my next step. If I can get it down to the 2mbit again and get my bill lowered, I may think about just switching back to ADSL too at the same time.

[D.Casey]

Your on a 20mb connection & its droping below a 2mb connection, that dosn't sound like traffic management.

Are you sure your not on a over-subscribed UBR ... hence why your speed is very good at silly times like the 4am you mentioned? and bad most other times.

[books]

I'm pretty sure because it does reach 20mbit in the day and in the evenings if I haven't downloaded anything else. It's quite good for those situations. Say i haven't downloaded anything at all, and then I need to download a 1gig file or something, it whizzes down very fast, even in the middle of the day. The problem is just that once I reach the limit, the speed really takes a beating, and it does this for most of the day. I think it sometimes stays around 5mbit, but I think a combination of them limiting that, and the upload being limited too, can cause the connection to become saturated and it just ends up being very slow, and for some reason, some things are especially slow or just don't work at all, like the MSN gaming zone which I like to use sometimes.

I'm sure it's a good connection for some people, but for me, because I send and receive large volumes sometimes, I don't really get much benefit from it, compared the the 2mbit connection I used to have. Overall things might be a bit faster with this connection, but I preferred being on the 2mbit and knowing I wasn't paying much. Or ideally, I would prefer to be on Sky or Be Internet and I would get close to my 20mbit (or faster) without the very harsh traffic shaping.