Be Excellent To Each Other

Is there any way to get these wankers to stop sending me advertising? I get at least three things a week - which is a good half of my post. They do really irritating things as well, like put it in envelopes that don't say Virgin anywhere, but just have "Your Sky upgrade pack is here!" - woo, sounds exciting, right? No - the 'upgrade' is just 'switch to Virgin'. Massively irritating.

I would also like this to stop. Their massively disguised ad campaigns just makes me hate them all the more.

Considering I still get them, you're probably out of luck.

I get a twice yearly phone call insisting that I take on their TV service. I don't think they can quite understand how someone would want near top whack internet and not want the TV. So every time they ring I explain that I'm not interested and if the could just fuck right off and stop offering me it, I would be most pleased, but still they come.


Dun dun, dunnnnnnnnnnnnn. Doodle do, doodle, do.

Why don't you take the TV service?

Don't you start

It's saving me about £30 a month.

I wouldn't feel the benefit of a package deal. Their main selling point has always been that it's 'free' because I have the XL internet package. I just don't want it. I don't need it. I don't want them to drill another hole and run another cable and give me another box.

I pay £30 for the bundle of the three basic packages at the moment, but don't use the phone or TV at all. I should probably give Virgin a call to see if I can downgrade some of it, although Virgin are one company I never look forward to dealing with.

I had to speak to a woman from Virgin last night, and (aside from her Geordie accent combined with her super-fast speech) everything was alright.

There's a bit of robohooker Hell before you get a real person, though.

I had to phone them a couple of months back as my internet was playing up - I could connect wirelessly to the router just fine, but the net connection would just drop. So the advice the techy gave me was to try a different wireless channel. He then asked if I had software firewalls on my computers and when I said yes, he said that I should disable the router firewall. While yes, Windows firewall would offer me some protection, it didn't seem like great advice to disable the router's firewall as a workaround.

Was it their router? If so, they should fix the fucking thing.

Yup. Although the problem seems to have sorted itself out so I suspect it was just some internet issues at the time.

Virgin's DNS servers are so fragile they're apparently made of wishes and dandelion fluff.

Good TV though...

I've been with Virgin since forever, and never had any issues other than minor, and I think they offer excellent packages overall.

Anyway, TiVo status: Installed.

As hoped and expected, it appears to be made of awesome.

Virgin gets F1 but only standard def. Also requires the sky sports uber package or something. BBC coverage it is.

Is the tivo worth an extra £5 a month?

Yes.

Slightly longer answer - yes, because it does more magic stuff than a regular record-o-box (and which I believe was touched upon earlier in this thread).

Also, they won't necessarily charge you that extra amount, depending on whatever other package etc you have with them (this is my experience, anyhow).

I'm paying an extra £1.50 per month and that icludes keeping my old v+ and having it moved to another room.

I got Tivo fitted ended paying £8 a month less..

Well as it was year since had Tivo fitted.

Rang virgin to see if there is an offer. They have reduced our package by £5 a month, getting multi room and broadband increased from 10 to 60..

Quite chuffed.

Shit, knew there was something on my to-do list. I want to wrangle free Spotify out of them.

Free spotify?

And the Birmingham Six

Your account been hacked too?

Some funny fucker had hacked mine..

OK peeps how do you normally go about getting your free Tivo box and new kit for less monies.. We've been with Virgin for 2 years and have't changed anything.

Do you go in guns blazing and say your cancelling for Sky+ or do you just ask them nicely if they can improve your service?

Ring up, go to the cancellation part (option 4 I think), and say what can you do for me.

I rang and said as there is no I am out of contract and give me a deal option, what can they do?

Do that, and also, ask them if there is a way of locking the buttons on the front of the box for when your child starts playing with the fucking thing. Then tell me what it is.

put child in mittens or boxing gloves. That will stop with nose picking too.

OKOK I'll just use unshielded copper cable from the mains! That tech her.

As for Virgin I've never had the pleasure of trying to get more out of them. I'll take on-board the advice. Cheeerrrs!

I get 60meg from Wed.... come on wed!!

Are you trying to turn her into a Borg?

Ohh yeahhh I'd have never though of that! I'll integrate her with the TV and fridge!

Woot nearly 60 meg

You should sign up to onlive.

Thats a bit slow. I went up to 100mb last week.

Can't they do anything more for the upload speeds?

Cool kids went up to 120mb.

We double up in October

What is the premium for that bump now? I'm not getting it, and I'm also pissed off that they're charging me more for sky sports again. However, I'd hope you get free spotify.

You had to start off on 100MB, I think.

Hmmmm, I'm paying through the nose (£80pm for TV, broadband, phone) and all I get is 'up to 16Mb', which seems to be about 7Mb in real terms.

How heart-achingly painful would it be to switch to Virgin? The only thing I stand to lose is F1 in HD that I can see.

Either way, I had 10 this morning, I now have 50. It is costing me -£5 a month.


So a happy Kov.

It is quite easy as long as you have cable into your house now.

Not very - overall the hardware is better (although the fast forward / rewind isn't as good) and the service is practically the same.

Assuming you can get Virgin that is. I'm stuck on 5mbit via phoneline here, it's like living in the third world or something.

The painful bits are:

1) Arranging Virgin Engineer appointment
2) Phoning to ask where Virgin engineer is
3) Virgin Engineer leaving telling you that he's logged the installation as complete, and it will 'activate in 15 minutes'
4) Calling Virgin and spending 30 minutes going through tests that you know won't make any difference
5) Logging an issue
6) Arranging Virgin engineer appointment
7) Phoning to ask where Virgin Engineer is
Asking why Virgin man has now correctly activated your broadband and TV, but not installed phone line still
9) Calling Virgin and telling you can't test the phone line, as IT ISN'T PHYSICALLY FUCKING INSTALLED
10) Calling Virgin and apologising to supervisor for swearing at nice Indian Call centre man
11) Arranging Virgin Engineer Appointment for some time 3 weeks hence
12) Phoning to ask where Virgin Engineer is
13) Realising that now the phone is installed you never use it, but you have to pay for it anyway.

Oh God

Depends if it goes smoothly or not. It took me 4 weeks to get connected. For 3 of those weeks I was without broadband but had phone & telly.

On the first visit, the installation guy found the cable in the street was damaged and assured me it would be 7-10 days to fix it. BT cut off my broadband the next day. He installed my phone & telly which worked fine. However, when I called Virgin to get a date for fixing the cable and installing the broadband, my order was reset and they cut my phone off. It took me 24 hours and several phone calls to get someone to believe that my phone line had been installed in the first place and get it reconnected. Then my installation date was mysteriously cancelled and couldn't get another appointment until 2 weeks later. Virgin customer service like BT is pretty useless and really hard work.

I also had a faulty router and had loads of connection problems at first, but a new one was quickly dispatched and all has been fine since.

So the answer is, in my experience, somewhat painful.