Whirlpool

I'm in the process of buying my very first property (WOO!), but I'm scared I won't be able to get good Virgin wireless reception once we move (in September).

I'm on the Gold Coast, and right now I'm in Mermaid Beach and my modem box sits on a window in the far south corner of the apartment facing one of the towers, (we're on the upper floor) with nothing much in the way, and I get 3 bars and around -79 to -81. It took a LOT of moving around to get this though. Every other area of the apartment had absolutely no reception or only 1 bar.

I'm moving to a ground floor apartment in the middle of a 15 apartment complex (the apartment is surrounded on all sides by other apartments on 3 sides, and the ground on the bottom side obviously), there is a large window/balcony at one end (facing north), no windows down the sides, and then windows in each bedroom (facing south) on Chevron Island...it's less than 5 mins west of Surfers Paradise.

I'm scared I won't have any reception!

Does anyone live here and/or know the location of the towers.

For anyone who is in an apartment on the ground floor, do you find it sucks to get decent reception??

Very hard to say for your exact location unless someone else lives there now and uses these forums - Unlikely!

Take/borrow a laptop and take/borrow a USB Optus card and go to the building :)

There are many Optus towers around Surfers Paradise so impossible to say without going there

graceslick writes...

I'm in the process of buying my very first property

If its important to you I would take the box with you for an inspection and plug it in for a quick try. If you don't want to risk having your service cancelled I'd let Virgin know what you're doing first.
An Optus mobile will give you rough info as to signal strength without violating the SFOA, maybe a friend of yours has one?

PS remember to do a pre-settlement inspection to make sure the previous owner hasn't damaged the unit when they moved out.

Thank you!

We signed all the contracts today, so very exciting. Settlement is in 90 days.

Anyway, my Optus mobile isn't an accurate reflection of my Virgin broadband strength, as I always get full reception on my phone here at home wherever I am, but my modem box only gets good reception in one particular spot, facing directly over to the nearest tower. (my mobile isn't Optus 3G though, and the broadband is)

Anyway, we shall see.

The only comfort I am able to offer is that Optus is upgrading the network and this is discussed on other threads

BUT

December 09 is the finish date …

Best wishes with the move …

Green Shopping Bags are good for books BTW

Do yourself a favour and check out other ISP's Grace, Virgin is not worth signing up to, it's utter rubbish.

*Ps. Loved you at Monterey BTW, "Today" was perfect...

fatbeetle writes...

Do yourself a favour and check out other ISP's Grace, Virgin is not worth signing up to, it's utter rubbish.

Too late. Grace has been on Whirlpool complaining about her service with the rest of us for months now

Grace: congrats on the mortgage!

Hey Grace, congrats on the new place.

Who knows, maybe your service will actually improve.

You don't know anyone that has an Optus wireless broadband modem do you, that would give you a reasonably good indication, maybe get a laptop and sit in the foyer of the new place.

Otherwise, I think if you move and the service won't work, you can get out of the contract.

Also, have you checked with their coverage checker?

there is always the external antenna option, if you get really stuck! but once you move in you can try it in various locations. best of luck!

Thanks Fatbeetle! Monterey was great. lol

Thanks everyone, for your input. I think I'll just have to see how it goes once we move and hope for the best.

I would assume if we move and can't get service, then yeah, we would be able to get out of the contract.

(And yep, I've been with Virgin BB since last October I think. I have definitely had my fair share of complaints, though recently things have settled down again)