Virgin Broadband Hell!

kig

I recently changed to Virgin 240mbps Broadband, previously I was with Eir 100mbps. My wifi service drops off and cuts out entirely sometimes (something I never experienced with Eir). I understand that during peak times when there are alot of people online or using the same connection, that there may be a slight drop-off, but my latest problem happened at 11:30 on a monday morning, and I was the only one connected to our modem. I phoned virgin today to get help for this problem, only to be told that it's normal for their service to do this and there is nothing that they can do about it. I find it incredible that a company can have that sort of attitude to their customers. As bad as Eir was with their customer service, Virgin are 10x worse, and at least Eir's broadband service although less than 1/2 the speed gave us no problems at all, I would go back to Eir in a heartbeat if I wasn't tied into this contract with Virgin now.

ItHurtsWhenIP

kig wrote: »

I recently changed to Virgin 240mbps Broadband, previously I was with Eir 100mbps. My wifi service drops off and cuts out entirely sometimes (something I never experienced with Eir). I understand that during peak times when there are alot of people online or using the same connection, that there may be a slight drop-off, but my latest problem happened at 11:30 on a monday morning, and I was the only one connected to our modem. I phoned virgin today to get help for this problem, only to be told that it's normal for their service to do this and there is nothing that they can do about it. I find it incredible that a company can have that sort of attitude to their customers. As bad as Eir was with their customer service, Virgin are 10x worse, and at least Eir's broadband service although less than 1/2 the speed gave us no problems at all, I would go back to Eir in a heartbeat if I wasn't tied into this contract with Virgin now.

While it may suck, Virgin only has to guarantee service to their modem and any troubleshooting that they might want done, would typically be done over a wired connection and not wireless. WiFi issues are your problem. You would get the same response from eir if you had similar issues with their service.

Anyway, you've come to the right place. You'll get good customer service here.

First off, if you ordered the service on-line or over the phone and you have had the service up and running for 14 days or less, you may cancel without breach of contract - as this is the distance selling cooling off period.

If you are beyond it, then you are locked in.

Virgin equipment is typically sh1te for wireless capabaility (limited range, etc.) so you may be experiencing a bit of that and also perhaps picking up interference from neighbours. Your eir modem may have been on a different channel, but your VM modem might be overlapping a neighbouring modem.

So get yourself the free inSSIDer app for your phone or laptop. This should show you what channel your neighbours are using. Then set your modem to use a different channel - bear in mind, for the 2.4GHz range try to use either channel 1, 6 or 11. So if your neighbours are using channels 1 and 11, then you use 6.

Another thing to note is that electrically "noisy" things like Microwave ovens can cause very bad wireless interference. Did you lose connection zapping a ready meal before a match maybe?

Check the channels and if you are still having problems, you might find the folks over on the Virgin Media Talk To forum are better to deal with. You might have a dodgy modem that needs replacing.

bk

Also check out this thread:

Guide - Getting the most out of your high speed Virgin Media (UPC) 240mb/s service
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057367191