Virgin Upgrades 2Mbit Cable Customers to 10Mbit Comments

Thats good news for 2M customers but what about the exisiting 10meg customers paying for the L package, do we get a speed bump to 20meg or do we now get to pay the lower rate? Any chance you guys can find out from Virgin about that?

I asked Virgin yesterday and they said current 10MB price would drop. They also tried to sell me the 20MB package, though I didn't grasp all the detail, so I must ring them again - it did sound like they were offering a better overall bundle than the one I have currently.

when it works, which is most of the time, Virgin is great. When it breaks, which is rare, you get to speak to a voice which sounds like Mariella Frostrup's teenage daughter (i'm not saying there is such a person) and treated like one of her mates. Every time it happens I swear I'll change ISP, until I calm down! The product is great (and now even better?), Miss Frostrup's customer care ain't.

Obviously this news is most welcome and Virgin have just staved off mine and others leaving it.

No doubt Virgin has had some unhappy customers contact them about the inequitable situation arising with the packages of their long-time (loyal) existing customers compared to offers for new customers as I noted recently.

Their Customer Service needs a HUGE improvement. For starters don't treat us as lambs to the slaughter.

Take for example the silly on-line Form for contacting Virgin's various Customer query services rather than proper e-mail addresses as there are for your PR and Business departments. Also a direct e-mail address for the CEO as do other companies.

Here's something I refrained to mention (rant!) before. End the sham £1 charge add-on for paper statements which is then debited by a credit of £1 to those (like me) who opted for electronic (pdf) monthly account statements, i.e. giving with one hand and takeing with the other. Incidentally, I asked for electronic statements 6 years ago and repeatedly since and only got them autumn 2008!!!

The other 'con' is that Virgin have now (coinciding with the introduction of electronic statements) deemed that only calls costing 50p or more will be itemised instead 10p as when we had paper statements. Thus allowing them to make money from more people who want to keep tabs on their call. Now it is blindingly obvious that going electronic means it costs them next to nothing to itemise a call (0.000,000,01pence I would guess)compared to paper statements!!! In fact it would have generated a HUGE amount of goodwill among Virgin Customers if virgin said all those receiving electronic statements will now get ALL their calls itemised given the minuscule costs involved. The Virgin CEO pleaded the "5th Amendment" on this when asked by me. Thus demonstrating Customer Service is not a priority!

One way to improve this would be for BT (and other telcos who want access to Virgins fibre optic network) to say to the regulator(s)that why should they be obliged to allow other telcos to use their network while Virgin with even better and more modern network doesn't have to. After all both are private companies and it is decades since BT was privatised. Let the games begin and prices fall!

I'm a 2Mbit customer and was previously a top end subscriber but thier traffic management is so bad it's not worth having the premium services, try to download a game patch or mod over 1Gb in size and you won't play it till the next day. also, they are sneaking in a £2 a month price rise without asking us which is typical of the way Virgin work sinced they took over from NTL. if cable broadband wasn't the best way to access the internet they would have lost me a long time ago, sometimes you have to bite your tongue when dealing with them.

Yes customer service is rubbish and the way they price things is convoluted to say the least. BUT I posted the following on the general forum the other day.


Have just got my 50Mb connection fitted by Virgin and have checked it at speedtest.net. If you are interested in seeing one of the results check the link. This is only costing me £10 a month more than the 20Meg I was using up to yesterday.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/415411631.png

I cannot complain at that can I? However it is operating at about 48Mb when downloading a 100Mb text file from the Virgin speed test site. If I plug in the Netgear FVS124G router I have been using up to now the rate drops to about 12Mb, so the kids are no longer on the network ;-)). I get a new Vigor 2950 router next week that has a 90Mb WAN connection so I'll see how it goes then.

I am still waiting for the Vigor but direct to the PC is astonishing at times.

this story has made my day

10Mb is all I need so I can see myself downgrading to 10Mb in May when this upgrade occurs. That's if us current 10Mb's don't get upgraded to 20Mb.

Can anyone confirm what the changes will be to existing 10mb customers? Any ideas of what the price fall would be? I'd be surprised if they do reduce price. If they have enough free bandwidth available, it'll be 'free' for them to upgrade the speed rather than take a cut in revenue in these times especially!

It's a shame they can't provide a 10mbps service to all their existing customers already paying for a 10mbps service! We generally get around 2-3mbps here and that's a considerable improvement from speeds frequently in the low-hundreds before Christmas - seems Plymouth is horribly oversubscribed and Virgin aren't interested in investing further in the network to provide the required capacity.

They're not all bad, connection at my parents house in the Midlands is consistently 10mbps and considerably better ping times, etc. - certainly noticeable when I'm back there :)