Virgin Media customers thought they were in for a treat yesterday, when the company emailed them promising them an upgrade to a faster package. Customers on the 30Mbps tariff were told they'd get a whopping speed boost up to 120Mbps. The company said it was what was known as a Virgin Media tickle, "nice little extras we do to make you smile".
The catch? Virgin Media sent a follow-up email almost immediately, saying the 120Mbps email was meant for customers already on a faster package. Seems customers weren't quite as tickled as Virgin Media intended.
The email -- sent from Mark Davidson, executive director, customer care -- was meant for customers on the 100Mbps package, who will get an upgrade to 120Mbps. But it's not all bad news: those on the 30Mbps package will still get a boost to 60Mbps in the coming months.
Mark Wilkin, forum manager at Virgin Media posted an apology on the forum. "We understand that some of you have received an email tonight mentioning that you currently receive 100Mb broadband, when you don't," he wrote. "We're sorry but we sent this email in error to some of our customers and we apologise for the gremlins in our email system."
He went on to say the company would boost all customers' broadband speeds in the coming months, and it would be in touch with details nearer the time.
The Virgin Media forums are quiet on the issue at the moment, though the apologetic post was only put up last night. Still, quite annoying if you saw the email headline and got your hopes up.
This email blunder comes just a few days after Virgin Media announced it was doubling and tripling speeds for customers (just not quadrupling, as the email fail promised). The upgrades start next month and should be finished by the middle of next year.
Were you hoodwinked by the email? Let us know in the comments below, or over on our Facebook page.
Update 16 January: A Virgin spokesperson told us today, "We're sorry for any misunderstanding and will be writing to customers again soon to clarify how the upgrade will affect them.
"In the meantime, as part of our double speed programme we are delighted to confirm that 50Mb customers will actually be upgraded to 120Mb, meaning even more Virgin Media customers will be able to take advantage of the fastest broadband speeds in the UK."
Some customers will initially see their speeds double to 100Mbps before moving on up to 120Mbps when the hardware in their area is upgraded.
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Comments 22
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andydandy 15 January, 2012 09:15
In Virigns defence, they are still fast. and BTW who needs 100 or 120Mb/s? We have the 20Mb/s package, and it is fast enough for everything. Why do you need more, for what service?
pbryd 15 January, 2012 09:45
VM are obviously feeling the pressure as BT continue to work towards rolling out their own fibre optic network.
I'd like to see VM increase their upload speeds.
anonymous 15 January, 2012 10:13
I got the original email, and even that was clear it was meant for users currently on 100mbs... They followed up quickly and are boosting all our speeds. I'd if d it hard to critisise virgin media in any way right now... But this article tries its best!
anonymous 15 January, 2012 11:47
virgin meadia are the fastest when it comes to uk broadband, i have got the 50mb and am very happy with it, i get supper fast speeds, i have notthing bad to say bout them, and if they are going to speed us up even more, thats made my day, :)
anonymous 15 January, 2012 14:01
Virgin is an absolute shambles. Sitting at home simply trying to surf the net on a Sunday is impossible. The reason - "oh, it's busy on Sunday". So? I still want to surf the net! Rubbish service, rubbish company - will be leaving asap.
anonymous 15 January, 2012 15:28
I got the email claiming I was getting upgraded to 120mb/s, I immediately new something was not right! But when I actually get upgraded to 60mb/s, will I notice a difference at peak times? For example, on a Saturday morning the internet is practically un-usable because it is so slow, so when my speeds get doubled, will it possibly be more usable?
anonymous 15 January, 2012 16:17
I have the 50Mb service and since the beginning of October my service has been unusable of an evening and a weekend, to the point that I can't even load a webpage at times (I'm posting this from my iPhone using it's 3G connection), but all Virgin do is blame my neighbours for using too much bandwidth - strange that there was no problem up until October!
I too am counting down the days until I can change my ISP, unless VM pull their finger out and restore the service I had grown accustomed to as a long term customer.
anonymous 15 January, 2012 20:39
I had a problem with the Super Hub being super slow. I've solved this by using the Super Hub as a modem and connecting my old wireless router.
anonymous 15 January, 2012 21:06
We are are on the 100Mb package, we get about 97Mb on speedtest.net connecting to Bournemouth and on the odd occasion up to 137Mb for some reason. 5 people on the net in the house and no one ever complains that its slow, personally I cannot recommend Virgin highly enough for the internet service, or the phone or TV to be honest. Since we moved to what was Cable and Wireless from BT all those years ago we have only ever had 1 or 2 issues. Mind you when you phone up for customer service it can go a bit pear shaped.
Daedalus
anonymous 16 January, 2012 13:49
I recieve the email, i knew it was an error. no big deal. Supprised it is a story. The bigger problems are when with other companies say you will get upto 20mb when you live 2 miles from the gateway so you get less than 1mb.
Virgin have been brilliant as for as i am concerned. I have been a customer for 18 months and hardly had a problem. My only critism who be, they could have done a better deal for existing customer on the 1TB tivo box. (i suppose we have the same complaints about the phone networks)
spanburt 16 January, 2012 18:04
I feel very sorry for you all , I can only get 10 mbs on a good day!
anonymous 16 January, 2012 19:01
I saw the email, but it was obvious to anyone reading it that it was incorrect. However, increasing to 60Mb/s will be fantastic, I regularly see over 18Mb/s now with my 20Mb package and we're not troubled by any time when it is significantly slower.
Good on Virgin, sending out an apology, some companies wouldn't even bother doing that and just refer you back to the email if you complained.
anonymous 17 January, 2012 09:49
Seems I am not the only one who is disgusted with VM's performance - almost every day at every peak times (ie evenings) my broaband simply gives up the ghost. VM should be spending the money addressing their capacity issues before going for the glory MB/s headlines - which are meaningless anyway! I like many others am considering moving away from Virgin. Trouble is, the others are just as bad!
anonymous 17 January, 2012 13:07
I found that in late January I received an update for the Free Virgin Media Virus Checker since this time my computer has been really slow. and the only way to stop it being slow is to press ( control alt delete ) and close their Free Virgin Media Virus Checker, I have noticed by this time it is using nearly 300mb of my CPU usage. once closed everything speeded up and worked great?
anonymous 18 January, 2012 21:03
Oh yeah great! I live a couple of miles down the road from Virgin Cable's Nottingham HQ and whilst the package I pay for says 20mbps my download speed is nearer 750kbps. Frankly If they send me an email like that one they will be out on their ear!
anonymous 18 January, 2012 22:32
I wonder whether a number of the people complaining about their download speeds are actually in an area that isn't cabled; where VM piggy-back off the BT network. I've had VM cable broadband for many years at multiple addresses and never noticed any download issues. The other broadband providers using BT's network are far worse... "up to" phrases should be banned from the marketing blurb.
anonymous 18 January, 2012 23:12
We received the email but it was obvious it was sent in error as it said "as you are already on our highest package" when we are only on the 10Mbps package.
anonymous 18 January, 2012 23:32
120Mb and people complain? In many areas of the UK we think we're doing well to get 2Mbps and the internet is perfectly useable at that speed.
anonymous 20 January, 2012 14:14
@anonymous that said they only get 750kbps - you do realise that on the 20megaBIT service your maximum megaBYTE per second speed would be 2.5 at the maximum theoretical limit - with no contention and running 100% flat out. If you are saying you only get 750kiloBITs per second then that is bad, but 750kiloBYTES per second means you're getting about 6megaBITS per second. If you're on a copper ADSL connection rather than Cable/Fibre then you may just live a bit too far from the exchange, or your internal wiring may not be up to scratch. If you're on ADSL, look to change your ADSL filters and more importantly run your router from the Master Socket rather than a spur socket on your internal wiring.
I often find vitriol on forums which come from ignorance rather than being technically correct. That said, the Telecoms/IT industry doesn't really help by making it clear and obvious that there is a difference between their mb's i.e. a megabit is 8x larger than a megabyte because there are 8buts in a byte ... and then the hard disk manufacturers tend to list disks in GibiBytes or TebiBytes instead of Gigabytes and Terrabytes!!!!
anonymous 9 February, 2012 10:09
Virgin Media is the worst internet provider in the UK. 6 months of speeds of UP TO 0.5 MBits/second on a 20Mbit package :) Virgin Media's online fault reporting system says "Good Service". Virign Media relies on false and aggressive advertising to oversubscribe an already ageing network. The speeds they advertise only exist on paper.
The quality of the line is also poor. High jitter, high latency and dropped packets. Online gaming, steaming video etc are simply the stuff of dreams. Even lower speeds with a good quality line could handle these applications but Virgin is so incompetent they cannot even provide that.
What a shame. UK broadband will always be among the worst in the world due to companies such as Virgin Media and the annoying foolish patience of the British public.
anonymous 20 April, 2012 18:43
I got this email, and then phoned them up to suggest they try and get me my current speed before they try to double it. Even Usain Bolt had to walk before he could run.
My service was faultless until around November and ever since then its been the total opposite of all of Virgins selling points. I used to get an A* on ping test every time and exactly the speed I paid for, recently its generally a C on ping test at severely off peak times and most if not all of the speed I pay for and anything up to 6000ms+ ping, similar jitter, 70% packet loss and speeds of around 0.2mbps at peak times.
I have spent at least £150 on the phone to them (I dont have their TV or a land line) and wasted god knows how many hours without them fixing it. If you need to phone tech support, write off the entire evening, that is my advice. Don't phone at all if you don't like Coldplay, because you will spend a lot of time on hold with their song on repeat. I hate Coldplay, almost as much as I now hate Richard Branson.
I have been told all kinds of rubbish such as its down to me being capped for exceeding my download limit on a date and time when I wasnt even at home (I was phoning because it had been unusable for weeks, if I could download enough to exceed any limits I would have been happy) only to then be told by the next person that I was a very light user (it didnt work!) They also once told me that getting speeds as low as 0.2mbps at peak times and so much packet loss, ping and jitter that you cant actually do anything without it failing for several months is not a big enough problem to look into. I have been given dates of when it will be fixed, when nothing happened at all. You may think this rant is excessive but I could go on for a lot longer.
By far the worst customer service I have ever experienced, the longest hold times by an immense amount (we are talking 20mins plus) they call you back when the promise to approx 1 out of 10 times and generally make you want to drive down there and defecate on their desks. The list of failings is endless.
anonymous 21 May, 2012 14:57
I BET THESE PEOPLE WHO ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT VIRGIN MEDIA'S BROADBAND SPEED ARE USING A OLD ****** LAPTOP THAT HAS A BUILT IN G WIRELESS ADAPTER, I BET IF THEY GOT A LAPTOP THAT WORKED AND USED A WIRE THEY'D FIND THAT OH NO ITS NOT VIRGINS BROADBAND THAT'S CRAP ITS THERE EQUIPMENT, RANT OVER !