As the title implies, my home has Virgin Broadband. We've been with Virgin since long before they introduced all of their current rates, so we get a slightly different deal, but suffice to say it's nigh-on identical to Unlimited Broadband (Plan Two) on that page. Note the first word in the title: "unlimited". Now, I appreciate that it may not in fact be unlimited, especially due to the little footer next to "Unlimited downloads" in the summary of the plan:


Alright, so following the link takes you, after another click to their terms and conditions page. Delving through that turfs up this:


Okaaay, so another link to follow. *clicks* Great, so that's the root FAQ page. A few clicks later turns up a hopeful looking FAQ: What is the Acceptable Use Policy? Good, good, so...where does that take us? A click or two later and I finally get a decent answer to what going over this Fair Usage Policy will do.

Why did I take this path, you ask? Quite simply, apparently I'm in the top 5% of users for pretty much every week, meaning my download speed goes down to a diminutive 60 kbps or so (yes, kilobits). So while I may have gotten myself in to the top 5% once, ever since then I've been entirely unable to download enough to get me anywhere near the top 5%. This has happened for a good few weeks now, and there is quite simply no way that a bit of internet browsing (no more than an hour a day) at 60 kbps would put me in the traffic management band. Bear in mind they only count that which happens during peak time (4pm to midnight), and I barely used it during those hours because of the dire speeds.

After a week or four of this I gave Virgin a call. They basically said exactly what my research had already turned up: I'd apparently been in the top 5% so I was still getting "throttled". Lovely. A couple more phonecalls later and they can't explain how I'm still turning up in this "heavy user" group when I'm clearly a light user at best. This strikes me as being some pretty poor customer service, and while the connection between midnight and 4pm is absolutely fine I don't particularly want to use it then. I have places to go, work to do and so on which means I don't get to use my internet when I want to.

In short, they seem utterly unwilling to do anything to help my situation. A solid 0 stars for customer service from me, and I'm looking elsewhere for a new ISP (suggestions welcome for decent UK ISP providers). Don't get me wrong, when the broadband works it works like a dream, but if it doesn't work when I want it to it's no use to me. Anyone had similar experiences with Virgin?

In India virgin is not providing broad band service, I think they are providing good service at verry low cost. Here in india the cost for internet is more, It may take some more time to go down the price. If it happens i can download movies online..

In Canada, both Rogers Communications and Bell Canada have capped their broadband services which is BS because I'm paying less service for the same price. How whacked is that?

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