Virgin Media customers suffer YET MORE YouTube buffering blues An unknown number of Virgin Media customers are once again complaining about YouTube buffering glitches with the cable network. El Reg understands that some subscribers have been griping about the poor service for days. And moany tweets aimed at Virgin Media are stacking up on Twitter. This is the latest in a series of …
...if the internet we connect to is real any more, or just an elaborate simulation by a cartel of the big ISPs, Google and the NSA. We know all our web traffic is proxied, email is proxied, DNS is proxied. I wonder if every packet we send is going to a server at the local ISP and triggering some emulation that may or may not make a real connection to the outside world to get the date we seek.
[Nurse! The medication! Stat!]
On the verge of leaving VM, but wondering if they're all as bad as eachother. Yesterday morning's call with a VM support bod:
Me: "Hello, my modem won't sync, I have a single flashing green light, no blue light."
VM: "Are you connecting wirelessly or wired?"
Me: "Both, but it won't matter, the modem won't sync."
VM: "Ah I see, all the modems in your area are offline."
Me: "OK, so you're on the case already then?"
VM: "No, you're the first to call about it, so let's book you an engineer visit. Are you around on Monday?"
Me: "Why does an engineer need to come to my house if everyone in the area is affected?"
VM: "Not enough people have called in yet, so we're not yet treating it as an area issue."
Me: "But you could update your fault page, send out an engineer now and save yourselves dozens of calls."
VM: "That's not how it works I'm afraid."
TL;DR: "What's that, you can't get into Outlook? Ah yes, I see the server is down. I'll reboot it when a few more people have called in."
I had a 96% uptime with VM broadband when I lived in an ex-Telewest area. Longest downtime was 6 days. 6 fucking days. I must have rang the fuckers 20 times.
It was incredibly unreliable and I was stuck with the fuckers for a year. Much like the post above, their Indian support were terrible. Truly shit. I gave up calling because I would spend 30 minutes waiting for them to slowly winding their way through the scripted crap they call a decision tree before they realised it was not my equipment but it was their unlocked, wide open to the weather, street cabinet (held together with insulation tape on a few occasions).
I have not had a single second of unscheduled downtime with BT after > 2 years on Infinity 2. Yes, it goes down after midnight now and again for maintenance, but never during the day. Yeah there will be people who have no problems with VM and people who have had a bad time with BT ... but VM just suck balls at support.
...in areas of Southampton. When I asked why the status page still shows everything is fine, she said it's because the account info can't be pulled from the routers, and the status page will only updates in the mornings. I guess their web devs haven't heard of AJAX. Apparently I was the 4th caller she'd had from the same area as of 0650.
"Oh bloody hell :( Looking to move soon and was going to go for Virgin :/"
They're all as bad as each other - VM, BT, Sky, all the same. Once they have a nice supply of your money coming in under contract they don't give a toss. Notice how the sales lines are never staffed by minimum wagers in a foreign call centre and calls to them are usually answered in seconds because those calls really ARE important to them. Unlike the support calls where they just pretend to give a damn.
I dumped VM many years ago when they indiscriminately started throttling web services (I couldn't even load a web-page) and I noticed price increases on my bills without any accompanying documentation to explain why.
I went to TalkTalk, and then went to Sky when my TalkTalk contract expired. The only issue I have experienced with Sky was when my modem died, so a couple of days without 'net connection. Sky also diagnosed an issue with my girlfriend's connection at her family's home within 5 minutes that TalkTalk took 6 weeks to fail to rectify (fixed within 3 days by Sky - required an Open-Reach engineer).
That said, YouTube - like BBC iPlayer - is hit and miss in terms of buffering. I am a fully signed-up member of the Jobsian cult (iPhone, iPad and MacBook) and both have always had issues on iPad. The oddity is that I can stream Yumi Kamaza's 'Slave Wife' (definitely NSFW for me to Google confirm) but I do experience periodic buffering issues with YouTube.
I'm going to get hung for saying this but my last 2 issues with VM have been sorted pretty quick.
UK stall with a tad more than 1/2 a clue were on the case.
I used to say it was great as long as it was working, as soon as you have an issue you were screwed and all bets were off. they do seemed to have changed things around the last couple of years.
All this comes a few days after I receive a polite letter telling me that my monthly fee is going up by over 5%. I pay them over £100 a month as it is!
Given the shower they air on my "hundreds" of channels and the cheaper alternatives out there, I think a move might be in order!
Value For Money (or Virgin %$@#ing Media) - take your pick
I got that too. It's apparently so they can keep providing us with the great things that we don't even fucking want. I've got a phone, a tablet and several computers. And I don't want to watch TV on them. I have a TV for that.
It's not even that long since they last raised their prices. I think I might actually write to Ofcom about this, although they're probably on the payroll for the providers. Why should they be able to get away from telling you you're getting all this great "free" new stuff, then charging for it?
Recently joined and more recently left (in the 28 day trial period). Thought i'd try Virgin as Openreach can't be bothered to upgrade my cab to fibre. Found the buffering worse than my 5mb ADSL connection (which I kept running). Switched back and ripped all the cable/boxs out.
Handy now I have around 15 metres of green trunking!
Here in Leamington Spa, we have had problems with Virgin since September across all our devices, no specific app or service. Broadband just stops working, or is very very slow. So slow that Gmail will fail, whilst YouTube, Netflix etc is a no no. I called them last night and was told the problem will be sorted by December 11. I was told something similar by Three after losing service at home - IE, a date by which the problem would be sorted - it wasn't, so I switched to Vodafone, who are just as bad, but in different locations.
The whole wireless and fixed line broadband business is a load of crock. Ongoing problems, poor coverage make life hell - a few years ago, I spent over 24 hours in a two day period on the phone to BT when my mother's connection failed because the outsourced technician installed the wrong line.
We need a whole new network funded and maintained by the state, as per the roads. It's vital for our economy and fair to consumers and businesses who are fedup.
Let's see how that state-funded road network's doing... ah yes, it's way over capacity and riddled with potholes.
I suspect that the answer to many people's broadband woes (including my own) is to pony up for a business service with proper support.
I also suspect that, if the government were involved in provision of the nation's broadband services, we'd all still be on 512k ADSL.
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