Virgin on the Ridiculous (virgin.net/chat/)

Member Name: jennystevenson

Product:	virgin.net/chat/
Date:	17/02/01 (1219 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Friendly, UK based.

Disadvantages: Slow, lack of users.

Warning : Virgin chat may seriously damage your patience.

Around the end of January, Virgin revamped their chat service to provide a new and improved service. As a regular of the old service, I found this new one disappointing. Firstly, the default software that you use to log-in to the new service kept shutting down the internet on my PC. If you experience this problem, you have three other options of software to choose from (Mac compatible, HTML or older versions of Internet Explorer).

So where are the improvements?

You tell me! Using the old Virgin chat service, you had to download software which made the service quick and reliable. Now, you have to refresh the screen yourself which can be slow and also makes having conversations with people hard as there's such a delay.

There is a good choice of chat rooms, catering for all interests. The problem is finding any people in them. Before the changes, you could find 20, 50 or even 100 people in one room at evenings and weekends. Now, you're lucky to find more than 10 people in one room. I've visited the site a few times, at various times of the day and have found a majority of the rooms to be empty. Not so good if you want to chat and meet people!

Have I got anything good to say about it?

Well, so far users have been friendly, which was a challenge on the old service as I found a lot of people sarcastic and rude.

Many of the rooms are moderated and their are strict rules of what you can and can't say in a room (eg. swearing, being abusive). So if you don't abide by the rules you can be banned from using the service. I can't comment on the moderators on the new service, but previously people were being booted out of rooms like it was going out of fashion! There was also a strong sense of favouritism, with regular users being able to get away with swearing/ being rude to other users without even a warning. I doubt th
is has changed much, as I'm sure moderators on the old service are still there.

I hope this situation improves, as it's becoming an increasingly unpopular chat service, with many users going elsewhere. This is mainly because a lot of people used to use mIRC or PIRCH (software that gives you access to thousands of chat rooms worldwide) to access Virgin Chat which you can't do anymore.

It would be nice if Virgin would listen to the users who have complained about the new service otherwise there'll be no-one left to use the service!

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