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View Full Version : NOt happy with Virgin installation, now they want more money!


ChuckE
14-07-2009, 11:44
Moving into a rented place, we went for Virgin media for phone, tv and broadband, which we had at our last place as well. In our last place we had one installation point for TV in our front room, and a second point which I used for internet access in our back room, so all went well.

Our new residence has very few power points, just the one dso in the living/dining room, with 2 no seperate single socket outlets in the conservatory, so we don't have a whole lot of flexibility when it comes to moving anything anywhere. As a result, when the Virgin connection was put in, I asked my missus (I was at work that day) to make sure the installer put in a second point in the conservatory, that way I could have my PC in there and the TV would be in the living room, rather than having to be side-by-side in the one corner of the one room. Not suprising you'd think that I'd want that, ever tried to work while a TV is blaring away with Cbeebies from 2 feet away?

Instead, the installer convinced my missus that a wireless connection was better for us so we were given that instead, which I've found (and know would be from experience) is bl**dy useless, barely any connection whatsoever with it always dropping out. As "moving the PC closer" isn't much of an option with no flexibility in the house, like or not I've been forced to have my PC next to the TV and not use the wireless at all, and its starting to get a bit much, I simply can't concentrate short of wearing ear plugs or turning the TV (try convincing a 2 year old that they can't have Beebies because daddy wants to work!)

I've tried to do the obvious thing and ask virgin if I can have a second point (why not, we got it as standard in our last house) so I can the PC in a seperate room, and the response was that I could but it would cost £99!

Is this correct that Virgin would do this and charge this money, I feel I am being asked to pay to correct a problem that I didn't cause and which has come about due to the installation not being what i wanted in the first place.

Raistlin
14-07-2009, 12:51
AFAIK non-standard installations (multiple points in separate rooms) should be a chargeable extra - if you got it free last time you may just have been lucky.

ChuckE
14-07-2009, 13:52
AFAIK non-standard installations (multiple points in separate rooms) should be a chargeable extra - if you got it free last time you may just have been lucky.

I would have thought that few people would want absolutely every service into the one room? Not terribly flexible is it, and must be a nice little earner for them.

Kymmy
14-07-2009, 14:08
I don't know anyone round here who's ever not had a single point installation. 99% of them use Wifi which covers a whole house easy.. The Wifi might actually work fine,, it just needs setting up properly as most problems are caused by using a channel the same as someone else local..

punky
14-07-2009, 15:06
If they have given you a router, why not just buy an ethernet cable (£5) and run it along the room yourself?

You say you aren't happy with the installation but to be fair your wife accepted it and was happy. He only did as he was instructed.

ChuckE
04-08-2009, 18:58
If they have given you a router, why not just buy an ethernet cable (£5) and run it along the room yourself?

You say you aren't happy with the installation but to be fair your wife accepted it and was happy. He only did as he was instructed.

Actually my missus instructed something else, that we wanted the TV point in the front room and the internet in the back room, but was told the WiFi would cover it and that was what they were providing. Basically given the party line, which she didn't know enough to argue with (last 2 places I've had wireless it has been problematic, but I'm the PC user not her so she wouldn't know)

Mostly wireless does work, but then there can be (on occasion) a tendency for it to drop out, resulting in a cat and mouse game of trying to connect for a couple of minutes, connecting for a few seconds then dropping out again, which goes on until something sticks, rebooting works or I give up and run a cable through the house, all of which is a bit of pain if you only want to spend 5 minutes online and don't want to be tripping over cables running through the kitchen, and don't want cables tacked all over the house.

But much to my surprise, having complained direct to Virgin about the installation (via their website) I was contacted about this, talked it through and they offered to install as I wanted it, saying they would normally charge for a repeat visit but in this case as it wasn't done the way I wanted it, it would be Gratis....Virgin guy showed up this morning by appointment to "survey" what was required, and told me himself that if we wanted to have the second point put in it would have been done at the time with no extra charge! He also told me that in his experience laptops tend to work OK with Wireless Routers but desktop PC's can tend to have a problem (he couldn't specify why) so it would be better to have the installation wired in and not rely on the Wireless router.*

Guys showed up this afternoon as promised, installed the second point, even they were wondering why it simply wasn't done at the time as I wanted it as it would have saved them a trip out. :?

Seems everyone could have been saved a bit of hassle if the first installer had done as requested and not fobbed off my missus.

*A search online found that a possible reason for this might be a conflict between the Belkin/Virgin software running on my PC and Windows Wireless Zero Configuration, but despite disabling it, it still cr@pped out this morning anyway.