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sniper007 · 22-12-2011, 12:06

I joined Virgin when it was NTL in 2002/2003. I started on I believe 256kb/s and always stayed on the mid or bottom tier I think. Over the years it became 256kb > 512kb > 1mb > 2mb > 4mb > 10mb. This took me right up to about 2008 with extremely reliable service. Quite honestly I would say I averaged less than one major outage/issue/problem per year and one of those years was a country wide big issue anyway. Ping/latency was always low. Speeds were rock solid 24/7 for me.
I felt like I was in a minority with the speeds and lack of issues I experienced compared to freinds on ADSL. Life was good. Life was simple. Everything worked. Fast. Reliable.

Roll on 2009 and I moved house. Same area, same estate. I decided to move from 10mb up to 20mb. I got moved onto a different UBR/cabinet/area of the network. The problems began. Speeds started to get really bad during peak times. To cut a long story short, I spend about 3 months on this issue with VM and they even sent cowboys round twice to dig up my lawn (badly) and do a repull. They kept saying they needed to monitor the traffic to ensure it falls into the "slow as a dog with no legs" type category figuratively speaking.

They avoided admiting the truth (local over utilisation) which an engineer even told me directly. Literally, he once came to my house to have a look at the problems I was having since it had gone on so long. He turned up, I explained the situation and told him for the sake of him and me, lets not beat around the bush type thing and he admitted straight up that yep it's rubbish on any tier other than 50mb at the moment locally. The only way around it was to move to 50mb as this put me on a different UBR/cabinet or part of the network for some reason at the time. Maybe to do with how it was being rolled out - don't know.

I complained about this having to pay a premium for 50mb just to get a good service so got it heavily discounted. Roll on contract renewal and they tried to get funny saying I was on an invalid retentions deal. I told them to reduce the price to what it was or I will leave and they finally obliged. So I am safe for another 9 months or so. It shouldn't be this much hassle, but I am happy to keep paying what I pay for the overall package I get and the internet (50mb) working really well, whenever I want it, without having to worry about throttling when I want to download more than a few gig during daytime. I love not having to think and calculate usage when downloading anything significant before 9pm. I just want it to stay like this please for now.

22-12-2011, 12:06	#14
sniper007 Inactive Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 480	Re: Over Utilisation...The laymans story I joined Virgin when it was NTL in 2002/2003. I started on I believe 256kb/s and always stayed on the mid or bottom tier I think. Over the years it became 256kb > 512kb > 1mb > 2mb > 4mb > 10mb. This took me right up to about 2008 with extremely reliable service. Quite honestly I would say I averaged less than one major outage/issue/problem per year and one of those years was a country wide big issue anyway. Ping/latency was always low. Speeds were rock solid 24/7 for me. I felt like I was in a minority with the speeds and lack of issues I experienced compared to freinds on ADSL. Life was good. Life was simple. Everything worked. Fast. Reliable. Roll on 2009 and I moved house. Same area, same estate. I decided to move from 10mb up to 20mb. I got moved onto a different UBR/cabinet/area of the network. The problems began. Speeds started to get really bad during peak times. To cut a long story short, I spend about 3 months on this issue with VM and they even sent cowboys round twice to dig up my lawn (badly) and do a repull. They kept saying they needed to monitor the traffic to ensure it falls into the "slow as a dog with no legs" type category figuratively speaking. They avoided admiting the truth (local over utilisation) which an engineer even told me directly. Literally, he once came to my house to have a look at the problems I was having since it had gone on so long. He turned up, I explained the situation and told him for the sake of him and me, lets not beat around the bush type thing and he admitted straight up that yep it's rubbish on any tier other than 50mb at the moment locally. The only way around it was to move to 50mb as this put me on a different UBR/cabinet or part of the network for some reason at the time. Maybe to do with how it was being rolled out - don't know. I complained about this having to pay a premium for 50mb just to get a good service so got it heavily discounted. Roll on contract renewal and they tried to get funny saying I was on an invalid retentions deal. I told them to reduce the price to what it was or I will leave and they finally obliged. So I am safe for another 9 months or so. It shouldn't be this much hassle, but I am happy to keep paying what I pay for the overall package I get and the internet (50mb) working really well, whenever I want it, without having to worry about throttling when I want to download more than a few gig during daytime. I love not having to think and calculate usage when downloading anything significant before 9pm. I just want it to stay like this please for now.