30M Unusable speeds at peak times (B29:Selly Oak)

KingA · 06-10-2011, 14:36

Is anyone else having this problem? I realize it's a highly subscribed area but even so, the internet should not slow to the point where it is completely unusable!

I spoke to virgin media on the phone about this 3 times, and was told different things each time. The problem occurs on both the wired and wireless connections, and also in modem mode. Internet is fine at the moment (before 4pm) but as soon as it hits that time it gets so slow that I can't even complete a speedtest to see how slow it is! Then it returns to normal speeds at around 1am. Which is practically useless as most days I am in lectures from 9am to 5pm so I won't be able to use the internet when I am actually free!

I have searched the internet for people with similar problems in the same area as me and found these two fault codes:F001746495, F001749951 (given on the 6th and 4th of October, respectively). What I don't understand is that if there is indeed a fault in the area, why would the tech support on the phone tell me this?

I have an engineer coming down today because the 3rd time I called and bullied the tech support into telling me something useful, they just somehow found a "line fault" with my connection, and not the area. I doubt the engineer will find any faults on their end (they never do), so I'm wondering what my options are.

I am still within the 28 day grace period, but I'd rather not cancel and switch to another provider (I don't need/want a phone line, and Virgin is unfortunately the only company I could find that could offer a 9 month contract). So can I expect compensation of some kind? I'm paying full price for something I can't use more than 50% of the time.

Sorry for the long post, it's just really getting on my nerves, and I was hoping some of you guys could help me get past these problems and understand what I could do to overcome them.

KingA · 10-10-2011, 01:24

The engineer came and tweaked some things but it made absolutely no difference to the problems. I have spoken to my neighbours who are on the 10mb service, and their issues seem to be limited to slight slowdowns during peak times and nothing more than that.

Is it possible to downgrade from the 30mb to the 10mb service within the first 28 days as a new customer? I would also like to know if that puts me into a new 12 month contract, as I am currently on the 9month student contract, and would like to downgrade from the 30mb student contract to the 10mb student contract.

Or is it not worth downgrading, and I will still get the same problems no matter what package I'm on?

Thanks in advance