After many years of great service from Vodafone (rock solid 70mbps 24/7) after the new year I started experiencing throttling on my service. Bang on 6pm until 1am my service drops to 10mbps and drops out every 5 minutes and surprise, it’s slow today too. I’ve just installed the free Proton VPN and i’m getting 60mpbs. FU Vodafone.
And of course, support haven’t got a clue why my service could be slow “as it looks fine to us”.
Their forum is full of this
I need to change provider. What do you UK folks use and how’s the service?
We were on EE for years and years with an average of 45mbps and a max of 70.
I was out of contract so they badgered me to sign up to another contract which turned out to offer half the speed of what we were on. It was totally inappropriate for our usage so I cancelled within the cooling off period. Our previous package was no longer available
So after swearing that i would never go with Virgin after the mess they made of our neighbourhood when they installed the fibre and the attitude of their contractors, I felt I had no choice but to sign up to their full fibre 125mbps package.
That was on New year’s eve.
Definitely an improvement on our EE but not as amazing as i expected. Haven’t done any checks into what the speed’s actually are but for a heavy use household it’s ok.
Always plug a laptop or desktop into your router to check speeds as so often it’s the Wi-Fi rather than the broadband. Also it is worth testing by plugging all of that into the master socket (ie where it comes into the house)
If you’ve done all that and it’s still the same then I always stick with BT. Not the cheapest around, but I always got a rock solid 70mb over copper and since going 750mb fibre last year and getting a new smart hub 2 I get 300mb over Wi-Fi across the whole house.
They are all shit on customer service but I think BT may just be a bit less shit than the rest of them when it goes wrong.
Forgot to mention… not a good time to go streaming. Tidal grinds to a halt with the throttling. Learned a lesson about having your music behind a service. Going back to my local library.
Ive been with Plusnet for years. They have the worst customer service known to man. There were installation problems and call waiting times were 2hrs. But its fairly solid 40megs.
Randomly my parents installed community fibre recently, cheap and they were getting speeds over 600megs.
If you’re dealing with Virgin Customer Service, ask to speak to a Tier 2 advisor. They’re UK based and usually as frustrated by Tier 1 service as you are…
Also, a few weeks before your contract expires call them and ask to be put through to the Customer Retention Team. Tell them you’re thinking of switching to another provider, but want to see what they can offer. Usually get a cheaper contract and a package upgrade. Takes about 30 mins to get through all the hoops, but it’s worth the bother.
The end of contract rigmarole really does my head in. I’ve been with Virgin for years, yet have to go through this convoluted dance just to get basically the same package for the same price.
I’m sure you’ve checked but does your broadband package have a data cap? You could be being throttled due to reaching your limit if you are a heavy download / upload user. Some providers call it a ‘fair usage policy’.
Any iphone users on virgin media have issues connecting to their wifi? Wife and offspring getting really annoyed now (my android works like a charm but i darent say anything
No but my virgin home broadband has been appalling for a few months now, especially for video calls. Thinking of doing that thing where they give you boosters throughout the house.
If you’ve had the broadband line in place for a while, call the provider and ask them to check the line or log a fault. Over time the line can develop issues such as noise on the line or could have deterioted somewhere between the exchange and your house. Get an engineer to check it before getting a booster. Also if you’ve had the modem a while might be worth swapping it out for a new one. I work in this game and slow wifi is the biggest customer beef and its usually down to quality of line. The UK network is archaic and consumer homes are still largely run off a copper analogue network. BT are gearing up to switch off the old landline network by 2025 to move everything over to the cloud so anyone on copper can expect more and more issues as the care isnt going to be there for it.
My wife complained to Virgin Media about poor network bandwidth and they sent an engineer out who upgraded our router box and suddenly we got close to the bandwidth we were already paying for. We were paying for 100MB and it was about a tenth of that max, even with a cable, not via WiFi… So definitely helps to complain.
Had problems with mine lately, watching netflix with a laptop and tablet running at the same time has been a pain, frequently crashing, i’m with plusnet
Dont be fobbed off with pin resets or wifi boosters. If the issue continues insist on an engineer to check the line. Also do regular speed tests & if your not getting near the speeds you are paying for demand an engineer
