Broadband deficiencies

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Broadband deficiencies

Post by mickthemaverick »

I have been having real grief with Virgin Media over our broadband. We are contracted for a 200Mbps service and generally when I test the speed, which I do with all devices disabled except the cat 6 connected laptop with which I do the tests, the average reading is 87-89 Mbps. The contract includes a guaranteed minimum of 107Mbps so I am not happy. Since February 2020 I have been complaining and trying to get some action from Virgin with absolutely no success until I involved our MP and lo and behold they arranged an engineer visit for this morning. They later amended that to yesterday morning subject to confirmation but it was not confirmed and they did not turn up, so I am presuming they are coming today. Interestingly I ran several tests during the day yesterday and the results were identical and awful:
Screenshot
Screenshot
So I got up this morning and ran a test to find the speed returned to the usual level:
Screenshot
Screenshot
Odd that yesterday was diabolical and they failed to turn up!!

So I thought I'd start a thread for people to post up their actual broadband speed and their contracted speed ideally with ISP and we can see for ourselves who performs the best. I intend to change to BT at the moment but I will wait for the report from this engineering visit as I intend to claim a refund from Virgin for their failure to meet the minimum speed throughout the contract !!

So please post up your speeds and we can see which is the best performing provider for ourselves.

Mine are:

ISP, Virgin Media;
Contracted Speed, 200Mbps guaranteed minimum 107Mbps;
Actual Speed, Average 88Mbps Worst result 9.5Mbps;
Worst percentage supplied 4.5% of contracted speed.
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by myglaren »

Mine is up and down all the time and has been since a total, one week long outage a couple or three years ago.
BT have investigated several times with no success whatsoever.

I am on a 50Mbps contract and it is generally around 23Mbps but drops out completely several times a day, usually a few seconds but up to around twenty minutes.
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Screenshot from 2021-05-18 08-35-41.png
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by mickthemaverick »

At least you have one test there Steve that is over your contracted speed!! I don't believe Virgin can meet the contract on our connection so I will be happy to reduce our payment to 45% of its current level to have the 45% of the contracted service. It will be amusing to see their reaction to that suggestion in the planned, post engineering visit, telephone call from their customer service chap!! :)
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by Dormouse »

mickthemaverick wrote: 18 May 2021, 08:29 I have been having real grief with Virgin Media over our broadband. We are contracted for a 200Mbps service and generally when I test the speed, which I do with all devices disabled except the cat 6 connected laptop with which I do the tests, the average reading is 87-89 Mbps. The contract includes a guaranteed minimum of 107Mbps so I am not happy. Since February 2020 I have been complaining and trying to get some action from Virgin with absolutely no success until I involved our MP and lo and behold they arranged an engineer visit for this morning. They later amended that to yesterday morning subject to confirmation but it was not confirmed and they did not turn up, so I am presuming they are coming today. Interestingly I ran several tests during the day yesterday and the results were identical and awful:

Image

So I got up this morning and ran a test to find the speed returned to the usual level:

Image

Odd that yesterday was diabolical and they failed to turn up!!

So I thought I'd start a thread for people to post up their actual broadband speed and their contracted speed ideally with ISP and we can see for ourselves who performs the best. I intend to change to BT at the moment but I will wait for the report from this engineering visit as I intend to claim a refund from Virgin for their failure to meet the minimum speed throughout the contract !!

So please post up your speeds and we can see which is the best performing provider for ourselves.

Mine are:

ISP, Virgin Media;
Contracted Speed, 200Mbps guaranteed minimum 107Mbps;
Actual Speed, Average 88Mbps Worst result 9.5Mbps;
Worst percentage supplied 4.5% of contracted speed.
keep running a speed checker app. that's what I do and miraculously our speed bumps up! my wife notices the drop as her Facebook games start to play up so I run Speed Test and hey presto contract speed reappears. I am convinced they deliberately throttle back individual customers who they hope wont notice
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by mickthemaverick »

Dormouse wrote: 18 May 2021, 09:14
keep running a speed checker app. that's what I do and miraculously our speed bumps up! my wife notices the drop as her Facebook games start to play up so I run Speed Test and hey presto contract speed reappears. I am convinced they deliberately throttle back individual customers who they hope wont notice
Not so in Virgin's case. It has never reached the guaranteed minimum let alone the contracted speed! Since my first complaint in February 2020 I have run the speed test twice a day and recorded the results for use in my intended compensation claim. That is why I use the Virgin Speed Test and work with all devices disabled except the one doing the test. Not once in 15 months has the speed got over 100Mbps and very seldom below 80Mbps. The one thing I would say is that we have only had one total outage for about 3 hours and that was due to an over eager JCB driver down the road so I can't blame Virgin for that!! :-D
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by Peter.N. »

We only used to have 1-3 mbps, we changed to BT who connected us to the fibre in the village which gives us about 15 mbps - brilliant although we still have about a mile of copper between us and the village. BT got to expensive so went over to PlusNet, they have been quite good and a lot cheaper.

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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by Gibbo2286 »

I'm happy with my TalkTalk set up, I did have a drop out problem at one time and they sent the Openreach engineer to sort it, he couldn't replicate it but as soon as he got out to his van it happened again, I called him back and he replaced the cable from the telegraph pole to the house, it's been fine ever since.

I have a UPS and it often warns that the mains have been switched for milliseconds, enough to make a computer drop out but not enough to be noticed, the UPS saves the day,

I'm told that the millisecond breaks are caused by the electric companies switching and rerouting services when faults are being dealt with, a bit like diversions at road works.

My speeds are pretty well what I pay for and at £28 a month for BB, line rental and free anytime calls I think it's a fair enough deal.
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by GiveMeABreak »

Don't forget the different technologies involved that will affect the speed claims....

FTTP: Fibre to the Premises - Fastest and most reliable as there is a direct fibre optic link to your house.
FTTC: Fibre to the Cabinet - Fibre to wherever your green cabinet is located in your neighbourhood and then copper wire to your home - distance will affect the speed and quality of the data.

This is my FTTP link, with 2 phones, 2 iPads, 2 Smart TVs (1 on and streaming YouTube), plus 2 PCs (1 on and at present) and 2 routers on at the time of the test. So I am getting pretty much what I contracted for (150 Mbps) and 10 Mbps more upload speed than I contracted for. :-D
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by mickthemaverick »

Well I am a happy chap again!! The engineer has been and gone and found two problems with the router's configuration. They have been corrected and I am now getting 163 Mbps!! Virgin have agreed to pay me compensation for the 18 months of bad service in the form of £29.25 * 18 payable as a deduction in the next 18 month's payments. I have agreed that because it is the easiest way!! (Especially as SWMBO was paying for the first 12 months and I'll get the whole refund :evil: )
So my issues are hopefully resolved but I'll keep an eye on it!! Thanks for your contributions chaps :-D
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by GiveMeABreak »

Glad you have had a result there - I didn't realise (missed that bit in your post) you contracted for 200 Mbps though - if that had been me getting less than half of what you were paying for, I would have had it resolved within a month - there's no way I would have waited that long for a resolution Mick.

It's another reason why all BTs 'Smart Hubs, Home Hubs' and the like are thrown in the cupboard never to be opened - I now have a collection of about 3. I always use my own routers, with no back doors in, unlike the BT versions, which are also heavily locked down, so you have limited options. I like to have full control of my network, options, features and configuration.
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by mickthemaverick »

GiveMeABreak wrote: 18 May 2021, 12:59 Glad you have had a result there - I didn't realise (missed that bit in your post) you contracted for 200 Mbps though - if that had been me getting less than half of what you were paying for, I would have had it resolved within a month - there's no way I would have waited that long for a resolution Mick.
Although the contract is for 200 Mbps it was the 107 Mbps guarantee that wasn't being met. My problem was the diabolical customer service from Virgin throughout the year. I tolerated it because of the Covid situation feeling that there were many more important issues than my slow broadband to worry about!! It wasn't as though we had no service, just occasional slow response on the PC's and blurring on the TV picture. It remains to be seen whether the football will be blur free but since our payment package is combined for all sports TV, Broadband and landline I am fairly happy with the compensation as only about 1/5 of the payment is for the broadband anyway, the TV Sport package being the major component. :)
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by GiveMeABreak »

As long as you’re happy, I just would not accept anything that is half the speed of what I’m paying for. It’s not good enough and should be illegal to quote that.

It’s like offering 1Gb speeds and charging £120 a month and only delivering 300Mbps - way off.
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by GiveMeABreak »

Or worse buying a top of the range car with all the options and being told as long as half the features work, that’s all we’re going to guarantee!
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by mickthemaverick »

Have you met SWMBO? :-D
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Re: Broadband deficiencies

Post by Sloppysod »

GiveMeABreak wrote: 18 May 2021, 12:59 I always use my own routers, with no back doors in, unlike the BT versions, which are also heavily locked down, so you have limited options. I like to have full control of my network, options, features and configuration.
Same here Marc, I have my own router, not only does it do what it needs to do I get regular security/software updates.
Gibbo2286 wrote: 18 May 2021, 10:45 I have a UPS and it often warns that the mains have been switched for milliseconds, enough to make a computer drop out but not enough to be noticed, the UPS saves the day,
I'm told that the millisecond breaks are caused by the electric companies switching and rerouting services when faults are being dealt with, a bit like diversions at road works.
Gibbo, I always wondered why my UPS kept switching over to battery, now I know. =D>
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