Pre apologies for the lenght of this post
Well I,ve debated with myself for months now and I have finally decided to abandon Virgin after 18yrs I think with cable, (1st Nynex then Cable & Wireless then NTL and finally Virgin Media) so as you can see I,ve been loyal to cable.
I,ve signed up to SKY, coming next week to start the installations.
Why am I leaving, there are a numbers of reasons, so where do I start,
here goes in no particular order,
SUPPORT.
Internet support can be absolutely awful, or none existent.
Tech. knowledge can be very sketchy to say the least (my apologies to the few good ones I have dealt with)
Please take note Virgin not all your customers have perfect hearing and I for one find it almost impossible to understand your personnel based abroad.
I don,t know if this story will ring a bell with anybody, but hopefully this will show what I mean. I,ve always had the top level of internet connection with cable with the exception of the curren 50meg. Some time back when the max available speed was 10meg I think, I upgraded to 20meg when it became available at a cost of £37.50 per month.
For approximately 2 years, numerous phone calls and visits from engineers,I argued with VM that there was something wrong with my connection as the max I could get with my new 20meg service was 8meg which was slower than I got with the 10meg service, finally they admitted there was something wrong but did not know what. I was promised but never recieved adequate compensation for this. Eventually A friend of mine who was a networking engineer came and had a look at my system and found the problem within an hour, I,ve no idea now what the problem was caused by but it was related to the modem I think. So out the window went my last ounce of confidence with Tech support.
COST
For the life of me I cannot work out how much I should be paying in comparison to other customers who seem to be on the same package as me. (by the way I,m on the xL package - I,m paying £88.90pm plus phone calls, I don,t have the adult channels) my monthly bill can therefore be over £100 easily.
Every time I look at different forums on different sites and compared to virgins own site information, people seem to be paying different amounts for the same packages. I can find about 4 or 5 different prices being paid for my package.
For example when I enquired about upgrading to the 50meg broadband package I told it would cost me another £10 per month, when you take into account I already pay £37.50per month for my 20meg connection that would make the 50meg £47.50 when if you look at Virgins own site the XL 20meg broadband is £20 and the XXL 50meg broadband is £28, which is £9.50 less than I,m already paying for a 20meg service.
And finally,
Because I recently signed up to a usenet provider and I no longer work I download a lot of the tv series I missed because of my work in civvy life and in the forces.
I got the following email from Virgin
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Detrimental use of your broadband connection
As you know, we don't place any limits on how much data you can use on our broadband service. However, we've recently noticed an unusually large amount of data being transferred over your broadband connection between 9am and 9pm.
This is a problem because it is now having an adverse effect on the quality and speed of other customers' service in your area during the busiest times of the day. Under our Acceptable Use Policy we do reserve the right to take action in these rare circumstances, which affects less than 0.1% of our customers.
With this in mind we would ask you to move a large proportion of your uploading and downloading outside the busy 9am-9pm period. This will ensure you don't inadvertently affect the enjoyment of other users in your area.
If you're not sure why your broadband usage is so high during these times, try the following:
1. Check whether other members of your household are using your connection for uploading or downloading without your knowledge.
2. Make sure your wireless router is password protected and that you.ve got encryption switched on - if your connection isn't secure, you could be sharing your broadband with the rest of your street (
www.virginmedia.com/help/wireless ).
3. Make sure your PC security software is up to date and active. If you don't have any security software or yours isn't up to date, try using PCguard to keep your computer safe from viruses (
www.virginmedia.com/help/internetsecurity
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
followed by a letter saying the exactly the same. When I phoned up about this I was basically told that I would not have this problem if I was on the 50meg broadband connection.
So as I see it, I can,t be detrimental to other users with my 20meg connection costing me £37.50 (which according to Virgins site should cost £20) but I can be detrimental to these same users with a 50meg connection which would cost me £47.50 (but according to Virgins site should cost me £28)
An absolutely crazy state of affairs.
So its of to the unknown with SKY,
At least the sky package I,ve got is the equivalent to Virgins
with the following additions if want to put it that way
I get a Sky digi box plus a Sky+HD box with the 35 HD channels in comparison to Virgins 7 channels.
My package includes free calls to all Uk landlines, all week as I understand it.
Plus my 20meg broadband is not subject to limits or restrictions (again as I understand it - hope I,m not proved wrong)
But at the end of the day cost was the overriding factor
My new package with Sky £66 for 6 months then £76 per month plus the initial £50 installation fee. For a better phone package unrestricted broadband package and a tv package with a far better HD package.
All compared to the £100 plus I could pay Virgin
Anyway thats my rant, Just hope I,ve made the right decision.
Join CF
You are here: 
I just hope your new ADSL connection is as stable as your cable was, in my area we are too far from the exchange to get comparable speeds from ADSL 
