Virgin provide a mixed bag with their fibre service. The 200Mbps package, unless you're lucky enough to be in a building that's struck a deal with Hyperoptic, is the fastest option available.

When it works, it is fast - if you're not being throttled during peak times - but plenty of times it simply isn't working. The occasional down-time is to be expected but I had problems with receiving the service being paid for at least once or twice every two months, but it isn't the frequency of the issues that was the worst, it was the duration they lasted that are what make them Virgin an unbearable ISP.

In the four-ish months I've had them in my current property (yeah I should've learned my lesson from the previous time, but the previous owners were with them and there was no phone line installed...) there have been three times where we've been left with speeds of 1mbps for more than a week each time. There are only several countries in Africa that have lower average internet speeds than that, even Somalia has an average of 1.7Mbps! And that is the crux of the problem with Virgin, their reliability is not good enough and too frequently not providing even a 10th of the internet speed you should be.

If you want to send them an email then I wish you luck in your endeavour of finding a contact address to send it to. They do have an option to speak to an agent online via chat, but I've yet to see one available such is the volume of the issues they must have to deal with on a daily basis, they are a genuine rarity. On the times upon reaching them through their phone support lines they more often than not are helpful, I mean, it's not their fault my internet is terrible. Bless them, they do try to sort it out with channel changes, hub restarts, rain dances, and I let them get on with it even though I've already done them all innumerable times in the vague hope that something might reignite, and every time to no avail. It normally results in credit off my next bill for the duration of the outage, but that's a small consolation and not the point, I'd rather not have any money off and instead have a usable service 99% of the time.

In a World where most leisure time is spent on, or involves to some extent, the internet the frequency and duration of the service is not acceptable. I'll never, ever use them again after giving them a second chance in a different location only to experience the same recurring issues time and time again.

We're too carried away with speed, no one *needs* 200Mbps. I will forever value reliability over speed as the most important criteria and would happily switch to a 30Mbps service that provided exactly what I was paying for 99.9% of the time over a 100-200Mbps theoretical service.

Be warned folks, don't let the promise of speed blind you from what really matters.