Virgin Media broadband super slow in the evenings

[Rachael]

We have an ongoing problem with our Virgin broadband which drops in speed to unusably low levels about 8pm every evening and all day on the weekends. It's sometimes as low as 2Mbps. We are heavy users - four TV streamers, and an online gamer - and we can't do any of it at the moment. Speeds during weekdays are fine - over 160Mbps - so there is nothing wrong with our set up. This has been going on for about 2 months now.

Virgin don't seem able to fix this. Numerous engineers come, but only during the day when the speed is fine. So there is nothing they can see wrong. I've been told by one of the engineers that this is a widespread problem - Virgin have oversubscribed their network. They will only upgrade an area when 'overage' reaches 10%. Overage on my local cabinet is 2.5% so they won't so anything.

I've lodged a formal complaint with Virgin and have also written to Which about it. Looking online, this seems to be a widespread problem for Virgin users. Any other Sydenham residents experiencing the same?

[Parker1970]

We have an ongoing problem with our Virgin broadband which drops in speed to unusably low levels about 8pm every evening and all day on the weekends. It's sometimes as low as 2Mbps. We are heavy users - four TV streamers, and an online gamer - and we can't do any of it at the moment. Speeds during weekdays are fine - over 160Mbps - so there is nothing wrong with our set up. This has been going on for about 2 months now.

Virgin don't seem able to fix this. Numerous engineers come, but only during the day when the speed is fine. So there is nothing they can see wrong. I've been told by one of the engineers that this is a widespread problem - Virgin have oversubscribed their network. They will only upgrade an area when 'overage' reaches 10%. Overage on my local cabinet is 2.5% so they won't so anything.

I've lodged a formal complaint with Virgin and have also written to Which about it. Looking online, this seems to be a widespread problem for Virgin users. Any other Sydenham residents experiencing the same?

As an avid online gamer myself and as someone who (from a player perspective) helps other players with their technical issues with Blizzard games (World of Warcraft, Diablo 3 etc) and their connections to the servers, I can confirm wholeheartedly that the vast majority of connection issues and latency issues I have had to diagnose have been players on the Virgin Media network. They are known to be over-subscribed in many areas and quite often throttle traffic from one service (usually gaming) to free up bandwidth for other services, robbing Peter to pay Paul is a decent analogy.

Sadly I can't comment on VM in Sydenham as A: I would never use VM based upon what I have seen and B: My flat apparently is not in a VM area.

It's sometimes as low as 2Mbps

That's ridiculous, I get 8MB on standard broadband from BT (As I can't get fibre either... I'm on an exchange line not cabinet)

[Rachael]

Thanks, Parker1970. You've confirmed my suspicions that I'm never going to get decent peak-time speed from VM. I had solid 76Mbps all day with BT Infinity and miss it, despite their Kafkaesque customer service. I hear Zen are good, although I assume they use BT infrastructure.

I'm eventually going to get VM to release me from my contract, but not before I've taken my complaint to the highest level. It's a shocking way to operate.

[Parker1970]

Thanks, Parker1970. You've confirmed my suspicions that I'm never going to get decent peak-time speed from VM. I had solid 76Mbps all day with BT Infinity and miss it, despite their Kafkaesque customer service. I hear Zen are good, although I assume they use BT infrastructure.

I'm eventually going to get VM to release me from my contract, but not before I've taken my complaint to the highest level. It's a shocking way to operate.

I have used Sky Fibre in my last property which also runs on the BT network, however they don't ( or at least didn't a couple of years ago) outsource their support to countries where language/dialect was an issue. Always found them really helpful and if you are currently using Virgin Media's TV service, then Sky would be a suitable replacement for all your needs in that regard.

If you aren't bothered about TV, then I would probably recommend Plusnet over Zen. Plusnet is also on the BT networks but have better rates and service.

Good luck though and keep us updated how you get on in the battle.

One last piece of advice, avoid TalkTalk as if it has a deadly contagious disease, they are equally as poor with service/speed as VM.

[Rachael]

The reason we ended up with VM is because we could no longer get Sky in the summer months due to our neighbour's tree blocking the signal. I have heard that Sky Braodband can be pretty pants too, especially in the evenings. We have to keep our BT line as our house alarm is connected to it, so whatever option or combination of providers I take, I have to pay that line rental. It seemed worth taking the hit on that to get superfast. But I'm not getting superfast, so, yeah...

Oh, and VM's TV service is pretty awful too. The interface makes me want to weep. The upcoming Sky Q looks tempting as I would probably be able to stream from Sky Go during the summer when my dish is blocked.

[stuart]

I hear Zen are good, although I assume they use BT infrastructure.

I moved from BT to Zen about 10 years ago. I can only remember one break in service in that time (about 2/4 hours due to an Openreach issue). It was daily when with BT using the same landline. There is no comparison. Chalk + cheese.

I'm currently on fibre and get the rock solid 76 as you did. Zen has its own backhaul and as a primarily business ISP the evening is its off peak in contrast to VM. Customer support (which I only call when wishing to tweak my service) is staffed by experts at their Rochdale HQ. The downside is they expect you to know what you are talking about too! It is not 24/7 but extended business hours. No scripts like the BT drones.

Its also re-assuringly expensive. But you do get what you are paying for. If, like me, your income depends on it then its a no-brainer. Well except Arnold+Andrews the only other purveyor of high quality internet in the UK also with a commitment to protect your connection against government interference and third party commercial exploitation.

Stuart

[Parker1970]

The reason we ended up with VM is because we could no longer get Sky in the summer months due to our neighbour's tree blocking the signal. I have heard that Sky Braodband can be pretty pants too, especially in the evenings. We have to keep our BT line as our house alarm is connected to it, so whatever option or combination of providers I take, I have to pay that line rental. It seemed worth taking the hit on that to get superfast. But I'm not getting superfast, so, yeah...

Oh, and VM's TV service is pretty awful too. The interface makes me want to weep. The upcoming Sky Q looks tempting as I would probably be able to stream from Sky Go during the summer when my dish is blocked.

Sky Q is rumoured to have quite a hefty price tag associated with it. Nothing official, just rumour from various geek sites (I am geek and proud, even at 46 lol)

Tbh, 76Mbs is superfast in my opinion and more than enough for a family of heavy net users, if that's what you were getting from BT, well I would probably just go back to them. At least that way you don't bet batted between BT and your ISP if something does go wrong, BT will be doing it all.

[Rachael]

According to this report, Sky Q will be not much more than top-end Sky Plus, which is what we had before. VM is costing us more anyway. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 44276.html

I could get VM to release us now, but I'm digging my heels in for a bit of a fight. I'm stubborn like that.

[stuart]

Tbh, 76Mbs is superfast in my opinion and more than enough for a family of heavy net users, if that's what you were getting from BT, well I would probably just go back to them. At least that way you don't bet batted between BT and your ISP if something does go wrong, BT will be doing it all.

No that is not correct. Indeed the opposite is true. Ofcomm insisted on Chinese Walls berween BT Internet and BT Openreach. Openreach must treat all equally and makes a regulated charge for their services. This is a problem for BT Internet and other budget ISPs. They try and screen out all issues their side of the router. And their CS is notorious for having hard scripts which their reps have to exhaust for each and every call before Openreach will be contacted.

Many of us have spent countless hours with clients who have BT Internet as their provider trying to penetrate this barrier when our own tests have shown quite clearly where the problem is. That's not an issue with expert ISPs who can diagnose problems more accurately and faster and get Openreach (who are not bad people) to fix. So I would counsel if you want good Openreach service do not choose BT Internet.

People should also be aware that both BTI, VM and TalkTalk were caught selling their user's data to advertisers. These are companies that have proved themselves both incompetent technically and untrustworthy. Please choose a more ethical and professional company to carry your private data: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/n ... olded.html

Stuart

[Rachael]

I have plenty of experience of working my way through the set scripts at both BT and VM customer service. I try to be patient - it's not the fault of the operatives. With BT I spent three hours talking to five different departments. I finally went through the Twitter Shaming route which almost immediately got me a personal contact and their direct email. Problem sorted almost immediately.

With VM, their customer service is delightful and charming and makes you feel valued. Until you realise they are 100% stonewalling you and are not actually doing anything. Their social media teams have no access to either customer accounts or VM systems. All they can do is direct you to call the standard customer services number. Pure window dressing.

So, Stuart, are there any ISPs using Openreach that you would recommend?

[stuart]

Zen and Andrews+Arnold are both considered to be the creme de la creme. Both are pricey and neither afaik offer 'unlimited'. Indeed I don't think anybody offers 'unlimited' without limiting it by throttling when you take to much or their network is under pressure. They offer services you might not need (like I have 5 usable IPs I can run services that are very useful when I'm remote).

BTi, TalkTalk & VM offer competitive rates and spend fortunes on marketing and advertising. Something has to give and that their service can only be profitable if they ram their network to capacity with planned over capacity and get you to share services instead of them being dedicated. And their CS don't have or are not allowed to use their own expertise and initiative in support.

Its a bit like buying a car. You can get a cheap runabout (like I do). Its range is 'unlimited' but you try and fit 5 adults and their weekend luggage for a day trip to John O'Groats and the wheels start coming (virtually) off. You don't mind spending much more for more car that will give you a more comfortable and speedy ride. There is a problem with ISPs when people pay bottom dollar but expect racy performance. It won't happen - or not for very long.

There are gamers and downloaders getting 3Tb a month (I kid you not). You really don't want to be sharing a network with too many of those. Anyway I'm sure there are providers covering the middle ground. I don't know much about that. But I always hear good things about Sky. They were based on Easynet which was one of the original great good ISPs. Looks like Murdoch has seen sense and not taken them too down market. And there us Plusnet ironically owned by BT but considered to be much better than BTI.

Stuart

[Rachael]

Anecdotally, I've heard nothing but bad things about Sky Fibre. Same peak time throttling I'm getting with VM.

Looking at Bt Infinity, they are guaranteeing a minimum speed, as well as an 'up to' maximum. First time I've seen that.

[monkeyarms]

We have Virgin. I work from home. It's been terrible this morning so far. Coming and going. I've been online with no problems for the last 15 minutes, so fingers crossed whatever the problem was has been fixed now.

[mosy]

We had an outage on Monday late morning, which came at the worst time as it happens. Luckily it came back after about an hour, thank goodness.

As faults we're reporting on here don't seem to match, timewise, I wonder if the local hub or whatever it's called is just badly maintained if they fix one fault and another pops up, i.e. fighting fires. When I ring up, the recorded message always says that SE26 is a complex problem. Hmm.

[alywin]

We have Virgin. I work from home. It's been terrible this morning so far. Coming and going. I've been online with no problems for the last 15 minutes, so fingers crossed whatever the problem was has been fixed now.

Interesting you should say that. I was working from home this morning, and my broadband wouldn't stay connected properly. I'm in the same sort of area as you, but I'm on mobile broadband, and it's not Virgin. Wonder if it's a transmitter problem (again) in my case?

[Rachael]

An update. Virgin confirm the current situation is within their accepted parameters so they won't do anything. If and when overage reaches the required critical level, they would try to divert capacity from elsewhere in the network as a first resort. This would take at least a month after critical status is reached. Any permanent fix would probably not be effected until the end of this year.

My official letter of complaint has been lost and in any case will apparently not even be read, just attached to my account records.

They have offered me penalty-free cancellation. I will be taking it. Apart from the broadband issues, I find their TV service pretty lacklustre compared with Sky.

[Parker1970]

They have offered me penalty-free cancellation. I will be taking it.

Probably the best outcome to be honest.