I few years ago, Virgin Media sent me their "Intelligent WiFi Plus Pods". They're part of a mesh network which is meant to improve WiFi coverage around your house. They were basically fine, but they are hardcoded to your Virgin Media service so can't be used for anything else. I eventually swapped to a different router and they became useless. Virgin refuse to collect them (despite repeatedly promising to) so I decided to crack one open. I was hoping there would be a reset pin or something in …
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Virgin Media - a UK-based fibre-optic ISP - recently sent me a survey about their potential product offerings. It was desperate to know if I wanted bundled streaming video (no), or Sky Sports (LOL no), or any other digital subscriptions (no, go away), or a landline (what, is this the 1990s?). They even wanted to know if I'd pay extra for priority support. In amongst all the other offers, they asked whether I would be interested in paying more for symmetric Internet speeds! Here are some…
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Exactly a year ago, I asked "What's the point of Gigabit broadband?" Well… I'm about to find out! Despite my well-publicised annoyance with Virgin Media, they are the only fibre provider in my area. They've also recently merged with O2 - my old employer - and are offering a free speed boost to any joint customers. I had an old pre-pay O2 SIM, so spoke to Virgin and cheekily asked for a free speed boost. They said yes! Wye, shy bairns get nowt! A few days later, Virgin sent me an upgraded VM S…
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tl;dr you have to keep complaining to Virgin for several months and then take them to the Communication & Internet Services Adjudication Scheme then complain to their Data Protection team by contacting them on LinkedIn. Background Virgin have a spammy DNS hijacking service. If you accidentally misspell a domain - for example example.coom - Virgin will pretend that the domain exists and serve you up an advertising page. Yahoo powered! Yeuch! This means my data is sent to these advertisers…
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Virgin Media have provided me with a test unit of their new Intelligent WiFi pods to review. They're useful, but come with some annoying limitations. If you have a big home, put a pod in every room and you'll have fast WiFi broadcast everywhere. Well, that's the theory. Limitations The big limitation is that both your 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi SSIDs need to have the same name and password. I usually split the names so that I always know which network I'm connected to. Virgin will remotely log…
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If you have Virgin Media's cable service, you may have been forcibly opted-in to their WiFi Hotspot Sharing service. This allows anyone with a Virgin Media account to connect to your WiFi! Virgin have been moderately sensible with their design of this - users get a separate IP address, so their activity cannot be commingled with yours. But what about your bandwidth? Here, Virgin have been clever / annoying. If you're paying for the 350Mbps service (as I am) your cable modem is actually…
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Long time readers will know I used to work in the mobile industry. I used to blog about all the crappy things that customers experienced. Well, I'm back, with a doozey! I decided to sign a new contract with Virgin Mobile. After a brief chat with customer services, I agreed a contract for two new pay monthly SIMs and negotiated a handy discount. I was told the SIMs would be sent out, and I could expect them in 3-5 days! That's the first mistake. We live in a world where people can buy the…
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that the WiFi router supplied by your ISP is crap. It will be slow, buggy, and have an atrocious user interface. This is especially true of Virgin Media. The Arris manufactured router is so bad that they've released a supplemental app to help you manage your Internet connection. The app mostly reflects the options in the web UI - but adds one piece of new functionality. Pause Connection It lets you, the admin, temporarily suspend the Internet access…
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Welcome to another edition of "Middle Class Whinging!" The exciting blog where I chronicle disappointing experiences with admired brands. Virgin Wines loudly and repeatedly promise "next day delivery" on their wine cases. What they don't tell you is that this excludes orders made on Friday. And Saturday. And Sunday too. Basically, they only consider an order valid if it was placed on Monday - Thursday. I believed their lies and ordered my wine on Friday morning - so it would arrive in time…
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Virgin Media are trying to resell your internet access. Worse still, they appear to be doing it without users' permission. A brief recap: Back in 2015, Virgin Media announced plans for a WiFi sharing network. A user's router would broadcast a separate WiFi network and other Virgin customers could roam on to it via an app. By default, all customers were opted-in to this service. Like most of Virgin's plans, it was marred by delays and technical problems. I was on the trial for their new…
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Virgin Media, the UK's semi-national cable broadband provider, is rolling out a WiFi sharing service - although it's not quite as altruistic as it may seem. Here's the email being sent to subscribers - followed by some commentary on what this means and whether it's a good idea for you to opt-out. Let's ignore them mispelling my name - and concentrate on the technical details. From September, you'll be able to connect to any domestic Virgin Media SuperHub in the country. You'll be able to…
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Earlier this week, I noticed that Virgin Media had upgraded my 152Mbps service to a whopping 322Mbps. Sadly, it was fairly short-lived - but here's what I can tell you about it. Using my SamKnows monitoring box, I'm able to see regular snapshots of my broadband performance. My 152Mbps service is usually rock solid - there's very little variation in its performance. Last week, however, it shot through the roof. (Download Speed .csv file) Whoa! The only fly in the ointment with Virgin's…
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