Virgin Media

I have been a Virgin Media customer for over 12 years for my ADSL broadband service. I have only ever achieved 700Kb download speeds due to my rural location at some distance from the exchange. Last August they increased the cost of my service by 25% to over £23pm without warning me.
I can only contact them by phone (no email)which is difficult because I am deaf.
They make it difficult to access account details to control card payments.
They do not care about customers and I am leaving them.

Was suppose to be getting 50MB XXL package, but instead of that the speed was so bad that most evenings it would be under 1MB all the time! Every call to them they said it would be fixed in a few days, after weeks... nothing... Disappointed VirginMedia...

I've been with virgin Media (Blue Yonder) cable service since Red Hot Ant decided to shut up shop in 2001. Obviously, speeds have increased over the years, started off with 512Kb/s through the free upgrades to 10Mb/s. Over all this time, I've always received the download speeds advertised except the very few times when I've hit the traffic management limit.
A few months ago, I upgraded to the 50Mb/s, obviously at extra cost, and I get the full advertised speed. Now, VM are bringing in a 120Mb/s service. All customers currently on 50 100Mb/s service will be upgraded to 120Mb/s. %0Mb/s customers apparently won't pay any more, and 100Mb/s customers will see a reduction in price down to the 50Mb/s level.

In all this time, I've lost broadband connection only about five times, but the email system goes down on a regular basis. Unfortunately, getting hold of customer services doesn't usually get you anywhere, as they say they don't know of any problems, and they try and convince you it is your equipment at fault.

Other than that, I'm very pleased with the service I've received over the years.

Virgin failed to transfer my line to a new address on time.( this took 4 phone calls to correct)

Virgin lied about the services I had with them (1 adviser says I have line rental with them, the other said no).

Virgin changed my username and password and never informed me.
(this took 3 phone calls until someone finally told me)

Virgin disabled my account after 7 days without prior warning and for no reason.
( this took 12 phone calls )

Virgin charged ME! because THEY disabled my account.

Virgin wanted to charge again for reactivation, this is the point when I told them to shove it.

Virgin customer support is housed by inept, unhelpful, annoying staff who have NO desire or are skilled enough to resolve your problems.

Virgin customer support has no system to save information about your problem, you must explain it to every single adviser.

Virgin did not have the capability to send me an email confirming my account was closed, what a failure.

I have been with VirginMedia for 5 years now. Ever since I changed from a cable to an ADSL connection are they giving me grief.

2 years ago did I move into another road within Middlesbrough and about 2 miles from my old home. The move was anything but flawless. It took 3 months until I had my new VirginMedia connection. They were unable to move my connection, because there was no coax cable in the street of my new home, and they were not willing to change my subscription package from coax cable to ADSL. I ended my contract with VirginMedia and created a new one, which caused a lot of confusion with their customer service (they did not understand the issue, because they do offer a moving service for their customers). And because VirginMedia is also my telephone provider could I not do this from at home but I had to walk into a VirginMedia store each time and ask to use their phone. If it was not for me then VirginMedia would have lost me as a customer 2 years ago!

Now, for about a year is my connection dropping out and about every 1-2 weeks, mostly on the weekend and during the evening. These connection losses last between 5 minutes and 3 hours. Needless to say how annoying this is and asking their help desk just got me their standard explanation (that such things can happen).

I had given up on their useless help desk, when they changed some settings and my line speed went up by +2MBit/s and the connection losses disappeared. I was rather happy about the surprising change and assumed VirginMedia (or BT) had upgraded their systems. However, after only 2 months am I now back at my old speed, which is 6MBit/s out of the "max. 10MBit/s" advertised. Apparently, it is possible to achieve 8MBit/s with ADSL over my phone line and without these connection losses. So why are they holding back?

Knowing their help desk do I not expect to get an answer and therefore did not ask. Instead, I am now looking at other ISPs. I do not expect to find the perfect one, but it should be easy to find someone who will do a better job.

Edit:
I have decided to switch to Tesco. Because all ISPs need to go over the same copper line in order to connect me do I not expect much change. However, Tesco are noticeably cheaper than VirginMedia and their customer support seems to be as friendly as the staff in their shops.

Fun fact:
I asked VirginMedia for the cost of changing ISPs. Rather than giving me a straight answer were they trying to bait me with a price reduction and scare me with incomprehensible facts on changing ISPs. I asked them what they were talking about, but all I got as an answer then was that there would be no costs. They were being as useless as ever.