Virgin Media – Broadband Service Review

Virgin Media’s broken broadband service is to blame for the lack of blog entries this week. Yes, let’s say that again so that the search engines find this page. My customer review of Virgin Media’s broadband service: in my recent experience it is highly unreliable.

For the last week or so Virgin Media broadband has been cutting out for chunks of five or ten minutes at a time. Then three days ago the service stopped completely. I called the help line and discovered I was not alone. The entire LE3 postcode area was apparently experiencing problems. No broadband and no cable television. But all would be well by 6pm. That’s what I was told.

The forecast proved correct. By 6pm we were up and running again. The problem was over.

Except that it cut again the following morning. I was getting used to the automated help line by this time and, having memorised the route through the maze, could key in the various number choices without waiting to be prompted by that insufferably cheery voice.

Yes there was a new problem, they said. A faulty fuse somewhere. But all would be well later on very soon.

When it happened again today I began to see a pattern. The service is on until work starts in the morning and then off until work finishes in the evening.

‘I suspect your engineers may be cutting me off,’ I said to the helpline worker.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They are working to upgrade your area. But it will all be over soon.’

‘This was planned?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Then why didn’t Virgin Media bother to tell its customers?’

‘It will be up and running by 6pm,’ she said.

‘And tomorrow?’

‘Your area is being upgraded.’

So here I am, composing my blog entry offline in the hope that the Virgin Media engineers may have a tea break and let me back onto the Information Superhighway at some stage.

Coincidentally, Virgin Media just hiked the price of their broadband. The justification? The service was going to be better.

Mr Branson, you are a highly successful dyslexic, an inspiration to dyslexics like me. But your Virgin brand is not looking so shiny right now. Quite frankly this service is shoddy.