Ex Virgin Customer
Hi guys,
just thought I would post my experience with plusnet as compared to Virgin. My plusnet account just went live today, typed my details into the router and logged on with no problems. Did a speed check and a ping check, results are below.
I joined virgin from tiscali just over 4 months ago because tiscali was experiencing slow down at peak times. I had a 2mb product and from 3pm to 9pm it would slow down to 500kbs, bit of a pain if you watch iplayer,4OD or utube. Anyway phoned tiscali/talk talk to ask why my service was slowing down and I ended up speaking to a load of idiots who kept trying to sell me a lesser product on talk/talk. So I looked around for another provider. Anyway I settled on virgin because in the next 6 months I will be moving to Sunderland and they have a fibre optic network up there which I was going to transfer over to when I move.
Day of the switch to virgin, phone went off and then half an hour later it was turned back on but the phone was now echoing, crackly and very quiet and people were having to phone 3 or 4 times to get through. Hmmm, time to ring virgins 0845 number, anyway they blamed it on my cordless phone and would not acept any other answer untill I tried a new phone, regardless of the fact that my cordless phone worked fine with tiscali for over 2 years. Ok, jump on a bus to the next village to borrow a friends phone, still the same. Called virgins so called help desk to let them know and they said we will sort it. Also asked where my router was and they said it will be with you in the next few days. A few days later the phone was worse if anything and my router had not arrived, more calls to the 0845 number. Anyway it took 2 weeks to sort the phone out (and even then we still get echoing). It also took them 2 weeks to turn the internet on and post out a router. Total time spent on phoning the 0845 number - 15 hours.
The internet then went live but if anything it was worse than tiscali's 2mb broadband. Hmm, 0845 again 10 days and 25 hours of phone calls later and still no resolution so I decided to cancel within my 10 day cooling off period only to be told it did not apply to broadband (i have since found out they lied to me). Anyway 0845 again over the next 2 months, 30 hours of calls and an engineer who said the telephone line was perfect and I stll had broadband that was not working. My dad lives in Spain and he has a 1MB connection provided over a radio network and his broadband was faster than mine.
0845 again 5 hours of calls later and apparently I have a virus, so reformat my computer, still the same problem, dug out a pentium 4, reformatted, still the same problem. My brother bought a new computer from ebay, still the same problem. So definately not a virus.
Anyway I looked into the problem myself and it turns out it was caused by packet loss, I would get loss of between 1 and 40% with massively fluctuating pings so again I phone 0845 armed with this information, 30 hours of calls later, 2 engineers and they are still wanting to send another engineer out cause they still think its a line problem.
Signed up with plusnet and just over a week later I have been switched and as you can see from the speed and ping tests I now have no problems, thank you plusnet, now I am off to complain to virgin to get a refund of all the money I spent on their rubbish service and compensation for the extreme problems caused by them, if they wont I will be complaining through OFCOM.
In short avoid Virgin, they have the worst customer service I have ever experienced.
Anyway rant over, I will post on here to update how the plusnet service is and I will post on the progress of the complaint I send to virgin.
Thank you plusnet
Simon
just thought I would post my experience with plusnet as compared to Virgin. My plusnet account just went live today, typed my details into the router and logged on with no problems. Did a speed check and a ping check, results are below.
I joined virgin from tiscali just over 4 months ago because tiscali was experiencing slow down at peak times. I had a 2mb product and from 3pm to 9pm it would slow down to 500kbs, bit of a pain if you watch iplayer,4OD or utube. Anyway phoned tiscali/talk talk to ask why my service was slowing down and I ended up speaking to a load of idiots who kept trying to sell me a lesser product on talk/talk. So I looked around for another provider. Anyway I settled on virgin because in the next 6 months I will be moving to Sunderland and they have a fibre optic network up there which I was going to transfer over to when I move.
Day of the switch to virgin, phone went off and then half an hour later it was turned back on but the phone was now echoing, crackly and very quiet and people were having to phone 3 or 4 times to get through. Hmmm, time to ring virgins 0845 number, anyway they blamed it on my cordless phone and would not acept any other answer untill I tried a new phone, regardless of the fact that my cordless phone worked fine with tiscali for over 2 years. Ok, jump on a bus to the next village to borrow a friends phone, still the same. Called virgins so called help desk to let them know and they said we will sort it. Also asked where my router was and they said it will be with you in the next few days. A few days later the phone was worse if anything and my router had not arrived, more calls to the 0845 number. Anyway it took 2 weeks to sort the phone out (and even then we still get echoing). It also took them 2 weeks to turn the internet on and post out a router. Total time spent on phoning the 0845 number - 15 hours.
The internet then went live but if anything it was worse than tiscali's 2mb broadband. Hmm, 0845 again 10 days and 25 hours of phone calls later and still no resolution so I decided to cancel within my 10 day cooling off period only to be told it did not apply to broadband (i have since found out they lied to me). Anyway 0845 again over the next 2 months, 30 hours of calls and an engineer who said the telephone line was perfect and I stll had broadband that was not working. My dad lives in Spain and he has a 1MB connection provided over a radio network and his broadband was faster than mine.
0845 again 5 hours of calls later and apparently I have a virus, so reformat my computer, still the same problem, dug out a pentium 4, reformatted, still the same problem. My brother bought a new computer from ebay, still the same problem. So definately not a virus.
Anyway I looked into the problem myself and it turns out it was caused by packet loss, I would get loss of between 1 and 40% with massively fluctuating pings so again I phone 0845 armed with this information, 30 hours of calls later, 2 engineers and they are still wanting to send another engineer out cause they still think its a line problem.
Signed up with plusnet and just over a week later I have been switched and as you can see from the speed and ping tests I now have no problems, thank you plusnet, now I am off to complain to virgin to get a refund of all the money I spent on their rubbish service and compensation for the extreme problems caused by them, if they wont I will be complaining through OFCOM.
In short avoid Virgin, they have the worst customer service I have ever experienced.
Anyway rant over, I will post on here to update how the plusnet service is and I will post on the progress of the complaint I send to virgin.
Thank you plusnet
Simon
