Virgin Engineers

[Mups]

I am with Virgin, and have been for donkeys years
.    
Does anyone happen to know whether it costs to get one of their engineers out to check a possible fault please?

[klondike]

No. Just call them and complain. They may drive you nutty with silly requests. Turn it off. Turn it on. Stand on your head.....

If they do give you the run around try asking them to put you through to cancellations (it's actually called retentions internally) as you are sick of the poor performance. Chances are you'll still be in contract though - that is their business model. When renewal comes around they'll ask for some stupid new price. You complain and they either make a small reduction or give some trivial upgrade in return for a contract extension.

[Scrumpy]

I too am with Virgin.. Been with them donkey years..
If you have a fault they will send an engineer to check.. 
NO CHARGE..
They usual do a 'run through' to check any faults.. As Klondike says they will ask you many questions..
Just play the ' stupid' card and tell them that you do not understand all this technology stuff.. Don't let anyone bully you.. You are a customer.. You pay THEM..
If you are unhappy tell them that you are thinking of leaving.. finding another....
They need you.. and WILL offer you a reduction in the package that you have with them..
 You must learn to stick up for yourself  Mumps
You are a soft touch..  You don't need to be rude.. 
Just be firm.. 
You are far too nice.. But it doesn't put food on the table..

[Mups]

Thank you Scrumps and Klondy.   You're very kind.  

[Mups]

The Virgin engineer has been,  well there were two of them actually,  which surprised me.

Anyway, they seemed pleasant chaps,  and he put the  new router on for me and took the old one away, which pleased me. 
He said there is nothing wrong with the wiring or any virgin equipment.  His young mate then fiddled about doing some tests and came up with a conclusion. 

One one test it showed big 'spikes'  and he explained it should be be a smooth line, not spikey like that,  so told me that indicated it needs a new Sata SSD - whatever that is?

I got him to write it down for me because I knew I wouldn't  remember what it was.    He reckoned they cost around £30 to buy,  but then of course,  I will have to pay to have it fitted too.    

He also checked my laptop,  and little tablet and connected them to the new router as well.

I am now trying to get hold of my computer man to see if he can get this SSD thing.

[klondike]

Is it only the laptop that is slow then?

You wont get a new SSD fitted for £30. It's the disk drive. It will require time cloning the existing system to the new drive then fitting it plus the cost of the drive which will depend on how big is needed.

You said your speed test was showing 1Mbps which is unusable. What is it showing now on each of your devices.

[Mups]

Is it only the laptop that is slow then?

You wont get a new SSD fitted for £30. It's the disk drive. It will require time cloning the existing system to the new drive then fitting it plus the cost of the drive which will depend on how big is needed.

You said your speed test was showing 1Mbps which is unusable. What is it showing now on each of your devices.

No, Klondy,  I said to expect to pay around £30 just to buy,    but that doesn't include the fitting.  No idea what that would cost yet.

And No, its not only the laptop that's slow.  The trouble all started with the desktop,  that's the worse one.

I will do a speed test in a mo, and let you know the results in a little while.                          

[klondike]

If they are all slow then it's pointless spending money on the laptop. I used to have a 500Mbps package because it was very little more expensive than the slower ones. I downgraded when they started charging high prices for the faster ones and now only have a 150Mbps one.

All of my devices had no problem hitting 500Mbps on speedtests even the phone. If all of yours are showing lower than your package speed it is a lot more likely to be a problem with the available speed than it is with the device. Depending on your WiFi some devices may be slower than you'd hope - try them near to the router to see it they improve.

[Mups]

It's a nightmare this morning, freezing all the time.  Can hardly use my emails now.
Fed up to the teeth with it.

Did the speed test this morning for you, and these were the results.

Download:  
Router = 137
Device = 137


Upload: = 20.9
Latency = 12.2
Jitter     = 1.50

(Hope I did it right)?

[klondike]

Speeds should give decent performance. Is that on the device that is playing up? If so then it looks like the fault is with that and not your internet connection but it begs the question how did it also give what I assume is a reasonable speed. What speed package did they sell you?

[Mups]

Speeds should give decent performance. Is that on the device that is playing up? If so then it looks like the fault is with that and not your internet connection but it begs the question how did it also give what I assume is a reasonable speed. What speed package did they sell you?

All devices are playing up,  Desk top, lap top and tablet.
But as I said before, the two engineers checked and said it is not Virgin's equipment, but that SSD thing needs replacing.
If they were right,  would that affect all 3 things or not?    
It is mostly the desk top and lap top,   I hardly ever use the little tablet.

I have forgotten the package I was on,  but this new one is  called  M125 Fibre Broadband.

It's most odd,  because while I have been posting tonight,  it has behaved normally!
Yet lthis morning I had problems with Chrome and  Firefox,  and Thunderbird hardly worked at all.

[klondike]

If all 3 play up then changing the SSD in one will make zero difference. You may as well put a new battery in your TV remote. It wont make any difference but it will only cost coppers rather than a probable £100 which a PC shop may charge to put in a new SSD. They are good upgrades but should not be essential for browsing. Most modern PCs and laptops already use an SSD anyway.

I'm guessing they all use WiFi and that could be an issue but I'd expect it to have shown in the speed test. 

It could also be malware especially as you have sometimes said rather odd things occur such as the links I posted leading you into some sort of questionnaire but if you run Windows I'd expect that to protect you these days and Macs and Linux are a lot less prone to it.

You did say it wasn't playing up. I'd suggest that you run a speed test immediately it does on the device you were using.

M125 seems to be their lowest package so if it was an upgrade you must have been on a legacy package. I'm still unsure if it is fibre or their usual coax provided broadband. As i said I didnt know they provided real fibre. The coax broadband is succeptible to very local overload issues. The technology can't provide high capacity upstream and if that gets saturated (usually by somebody running torrents - dodgy downloads) that can really mess things up.

[Mups]

Its all too complicated for me, Klondy.    
But as you mentioned,  I did suspect malware from the start of it all,  because it seemed to coincide with a sudden glut of spam emails.    
I would very occasionally get the odd one or two,  but these ones I am getting now are constant every day.

I thought every area had to be fitted with fibre by the end of 2025?   Can't remember who told me that.

I don't know what to do next now.   It's been freexing all day again,  which was especially worrying when I was doing my online banking.    I think you're going to have to come and fix it.  

[klondike]

I wouldn't recommend using the traditional anti virus packages these days as Windows improved it's inbuilt Defender AV a lot so assuming you are on a a current release you should be ok.  I think it is worth downloading and running Malwarebytes Free to scan if anything is found

https://www.malwarebytes.com/solutions/free-antivirus

It doesn't set itself up to replace Defender you can just run it when you think something maybe wrong. I don't think it's likely there is but it should give you peace of mind at least.

The Openreach copper telephone network is being replaced replaced but that is nothing to do with VM. They call their service fibre but their fibre stops at a big street cabinet which then share everything out to other cabinets by coax and they in turn have coax running to each property they serve.

This is how VM provide internet over coax cables...

They maybe introduced speeds that are directly comparable  with the Openreach and umpteen other providers fibre networks.

[Mups]

I have had to ask my computer man to come back and try and put this right.   I can't go on like this, its driving me nuts.   I will have a look at Malwarebytes too.  Not sure if I've already got it or not?  Where do I look to check?

Virgin came to me over a year ago to change to what I understood to be fibre.   He fiddled about altering my wiring inside and out, and put a new little interior box on the wall next to my computer.   

He got on my wick because he kept trying to insist I let him move my landline into the computer room and have it next to the desktop,  but I refused as I wanted it left in the kitchen where it's always been.  I hear it better in there. 
  He didn't like it,  because it meant he had to put  a bit of extra wiring in to  let me keep it in the kitchen,  but he grudgingly did it in the end.