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http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/ -
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http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2007/07/21/virgin-media-need-to-change-their-speed-capping-policy/ -
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My major frustration is that the cap is imposed for four hours regardless of when you go over the download limit. So if you hit it at 11PM, you're capped until 3AM. I don't agree that this is traffic management during the peak time, as they claim, rather a punishment for downloading too much.
Many many years at NTL.
Now its time to move on.
BE Broadband 24MB, unlimited and no capping.
This site has even more complaints
We're all bitching about this but something needs to be done instead of just complaining on sites like this.
I'm calling Virgin tomorrow to complain and threatening to leave unless my original service which I ORIGINALLY signed up for is reinstated. If they wont then i'm going to be complaining to the Advertising Standards Agency because on the Virgins website it states there are "No download limits" and what is happening here clearly is a "limit".
Does any one know when this actually came into effect?
Good luck to those who are going to complain. I've tried but after hunting down anyone willing to even speak about the issue you get "speak to the hand because the ears arn't listening".
Whilst Virgin may think they've struck gold they might reflect on the old marketing adage...."for every customer who complains another 10 simply walk away". If I'm going to have download limits I'd sooner have them from a company honest enough to be up-front about it.
how do you do this
Been years with Blueyonder.now Virgin have taken over,i have noticed capping of my bandwith.Would have cancelled alreday,were it not for the fact i still have 7 months left,on the contract.I tried to argue the fact they have changed there 'Terms of Service' and wanted out.Only to reply they could change they polcy.
I f you pay for a 4mb or 10mb,and they quote it as UNLIMITED.Then it should be so.Its a big CON.Look forword to moving my service.
Still haven't got through to cancel my account, gave up by this point
Now they send me bills for an account i haven't had in months.
Really is a joke.
Be broadband are great, even though im 2 km from the exchange i get a connection speed of 16mbit and no caps , great customer service.knowledgeable and friendly forums too!
And we as staff have also complained i work in a network department and there is nothing wrong with the network its a massive stunt so that they can sell lower packages and say to people they will not be affected because they cap big users
0906 calls for nothing..
Im gonna call them tmrw and threaten them with BT (there greatest rivel) im going to threaten paying off my account in full (they will pass me to the team that deal with people leaving) and threaten to take them to court over the terms changing..
BE were always the best choice, but it means getting a BT landline ..................... oh my god.. maybe 2mb is worth the BT customer service?????
Hope he has more success with this project than he has had with NTL and Telewest.
I have been a Telewest broadband customer for years but since the recent Virgin takeover things have become a real mess.
He fires thousands of staff and our services are now terrible, what was once a really good service provider is now hardly usable. In just a few short months they have capped our usage even though the adverts state clearly unlimited, changed the billing of phone calls from second to minute, now charge 25p per min to report a fault on its end, that’s if you are prepared to wait an hour to be answered.
I could go on all day about this but guess you get the picture. So the advice I would give to staff and customers of the rock is beware the light you might think is at the end of the tunnel is just what’s left of your credibility going up in flames.
Seems you can stay with Virgin, and switch to the "Inferior" NTL cable connection. I have used NTL for over 7 years myself, simply because dialing in to Broad Band seems pointless when you have a cable providing the TV which doesn't need to dial, is permanently connected, has more bandwidth and keeps the same IP regardless of reboots. I can even join my work domain, and be confident my login will work, because the internet connection and IP is up before I hit the log-in prompt.
8 Megabytes (and I mean Bytes not Bits) a second is enough for me, :) it never drops, and is still only £25/month from Virgin. It's faster than the 6Meg we got for the same money from NTL last year.
My best advise, is to move to a different area, with uncapped cable. ;)
I believe that the bandwidth limit is still a Post Code lottery, any provider is limited by the communication infrastructure in your area, and have to maintain acceptable levels of service for all their customers in that area. Those in highly populated areas (London, the Midlands etc) and those in impoverished areas receiving EU grants for Internet upgrades such as Cornwall and parts of Wales, stand a much better chance of getting a good service from the same providers as those in "middle of the road" areas.
Just my two pennith.
Virgin claim it is nothing to do with them. That I should download a new Internet Explorer. I did this, but it made no difference and Microsoft emailed back asking I should get back to the person who installed the files on my computer!!!!!!!!!
I have another friend who joined Virgin Media four weeks ago and is having the same problem.
How best to resolve this? What is going on?
Stage 1: 100kb/s between 5pm - 8pm
Stage 2: 210kb/s between 8pm - 8:45pm
Stage 3: 100kb/s still 00:34 and still no file....
how can providers offer a 100kb/s service, which is essentially what they are offering for double the price. Durp bye bye Branson Pickle
I have the so called 20Mb service (which has never actually shown 20Mb speeds except from multiple simultaneous connections to usenet, which doesn't represent most people's usage - as mentioned by a previous poster, Youtube is virtually unusable, while smooth streaming video would be the primary reason for needing such high bandwidth for f**k's sake!) and I've just been to 7 or 8 different b/b speed test sites, bringing in results anywhere from 1Mb to just under 4Mb! I haven't downloaded much today at all - and it's 04:50 right now, so even if I was capped at midnight I'm still way over 4hrs clear.
I'm livid and feel I've been mis-sold a crooked product.
If I didn't live in a flat where I don't have permission for a Sky dish, I would ditch VM tomorrow, regardless of any offer from their customer retention department.
Disgusting.
Thank you.
We won't see 64megabit broadband in our homes any time soon as those speeds aren't even possible with current domestic cable technology (which I think max's out at 30) - and if they were you'd be paying just a little bit more than your quoted £25 per month for it!! lol
You mentioned being on a "6Megs" service with NTL last year - these 'megs' are indeed megabits, not megabytes (and 1 byte = 8 bits). I mean crikey, if you really did have an 8 megabyte per second download speed you'd be able to download an entire DVD (4.7 gigabytes) in less than 10 minutes, or 2 to 3 MP3s per second - can you do that?
intentions(probably because they forgot to mention it to me when i requested an upgrade).Its bang out of order well they can stick their ficticious contract im
moving my posts and cancelling and moving on...Oh yeah i hope to find a
provider were it doesnt cost me about 5 quid spelling out my name when im speaking to their tech support.
fromthepool.
This is ridiculous, I am not getting the speed I am paying for. Isn't this false advertising?
games,it became clear that around an agonisingly slow 200k was not really going to cut it.
I had no idea they were restricting my service :(
It was nice knowing you blueyonder, RIP
Goodbye Virgin, hello BE. 4x the speed for £5 less and no capping (ok, it's adsl2+ which is 'up to' 24Mbit, my next door neighbour gets 16Mbit)
Virgin suck and don't deserve to be an ISP
Funnily, Virgin Media sent me loads of surveys to fill in, none of the questions said "Do you want 20mb broadband as long as its capped?!"
The only altern to cable and ADSL I can think of are the wireless broadband guys (can't remember the name) who don't have a lot of coverage. Out of the ADSL guys if you are looking for speed go for BE internet who do unlimited 20MB for £18 - a BT line will add £11.75 to the cost, taking the total £29.75
By reducing the line speed with bandwidth shaping (capping) they are charging me for 20mbit/sec even that between 4.00pm & 12.00am I'm limited to 5mbit (and yes on 20mbit 3GB is reached in 20min approx). Charging for a service with strings full 24hrs x 365 days @ 20mbit but restricting the service is theft. Richard Branson aka Virgin need to listed to Telewest and give the customers back there service.
I've reduced my Cable package to the lowest and now use the saved money for a ADSL provider so I get 2 broadband connections. If they ever phone me with telesales I tell them to sort their act out, then I'll consider extras.
They are the dumbest cable company in the UK and thanks to there dumb approach, they are loosing revenue like a leaking bucket.
My normal internet use is after work just in the 4.00pm to 12.00am cap period... Now rumors are flying they think they can raise the band to 40-50mbit, what a joke and cap you for 12 hours...
Viva la revolution...
In actual fact their policy is that they will cap the top 5% of users every week. which has a knock on effect that because the top 5% are capped the usage drops but they still cap the top 5% again so it drops still further. pretty soon they will be capping you as soon as you connect!
I am getting out, and I hope that Virgin go bust because I am sure that they will be losing a great many of their customers as a result of this policy. and as the top users leave that will just bring the top 5% figure still lower again!
They are a crap company, STAY WELL CLEAR OF THEM!
The ONLY good thing with Virgin was that the internet was unlimited so you can watch whatever you like but now with internet capping, its really the final straw.
It is time to move back to SKY.
Remember back in the old days, when I had a shared connection with my brother and sister sharing 150k, oh terrible speeds, but at the time it was great, then wow speed boost to 300k, now that was good, then to 750k then 1mb now were at 20mb, although other places in the world has over 100mb,
I may consider looking into WPA hacking so I can use my neibours 20mb service :) lol, anyway it is a scam because at these prices £25 a month, £35 a month that should pay for some of the piracy,
Phoned them up about this and they said any capping would occur only if I went over thier limits. I explained that very day my PC had been off all night but as soon as is it went on at 11am I was being well and truly capped. The operator insisted I was either mistaken or (through implication) was lying.
Asked to speak to a supervisor, was told none was available.
Very dissapointing, after being a loyal customer for some 8 years now, to being treated in such a manner.
In any case I would urge people to keep an eye on their connection (use BWMeter to monitor DL/UPloads) and see if Virgin are capping you off by default during 'peak' as they are me.
However, being in one of the better, former-Telewest areas (best ISP in the UK bar none when I signed-up) I don't have so many problems. Throttling is in place, but I do have to download stuff first.
If you don't like it, you could get it for free instead (certain online sites sell certain network equipment to enable certain things). I have to say, the throttling download allowances are still too low, and the upload speeds too.
im almost finished but i tried being sly with virgin so i started my download at about 2pm so that it would finish by 4pm which is when the second capping takes place, (first being between 10am to 3pm) but it didnt work and now its only got 1 gig left but its taking da micky in downloading, im not even being capped to 5mb its like 1mb/2mb
so screw a virgin
@John.. re: downloading very big torrents.. hmm well tbth.. most of us are talking about legal downloading and not piracy.. it is people like you who are the reason why there are caps put in the first place..
[hr]
Going back to the caps and the varying speeds.. I understand
that the government has set a ruling that ISPs have to give
an honest record of what speeds their customers are really
likely to get.
24Meg truely unlimited. Obviously this depends on the distance between you and your local exchange, but I regularly find that I'm getting 1.3Mbps. Only downside was the need to change back to a BT line