Virgin misselling 152Mb Broadband

A question about : Virgin misselling 152Mb Broadband

Am wondering whether to call in m'learned friends. Was persuaded to upgrade to 152Mb Boradband in December. Internet experience instantly became worse - websites wouldn't load or took seconds to do so, constantly. After four or five calls was told that the 152Mb service had component faults that no one could say when a fix would be available. So, they downgraded (not sure what to).
Then from 25 Jan to 30 Jan inclusive, no TV service at all. For the whole week they had a 24 hour rolling estimation on their website of when it would be fixed, which made the estimate meaningless.
Now, since Sunday no TV or Broadband at all. The rolling 24 hour estimation of when it will be fixed is back (ergo. I have no faith in any estimate).
Customer service are hopeless. Every time you call you get put through to someone in a different country do you have to start explaining the problem from scratch.
To make matters worse, my wife and I both work from home, but can't at all at the moment so have to go round to friends and beg time on their broadband.
I think - bar Vodafone, who are still worse imho - this is the worst rip off I've ever been victim of.
Anyone else have this issue?
I have written demanding they release me from the contract as they've never provided the service I paid for.Next steps? Ofcom?

Best answers:

• When I was with Virgin about a year ago every time the broadband went down they had to refund me Ј10, but I had to phone up and ask for the refund - do they still do that?
• I was Virgin client for almost 2 years. Each few weeks I was experiencing network issues lasting 2-3 days, resulting huge (70-90%) packet loss rendering service unusable. It always was the same scenario - internet becoming unusable, usually on Thursday or Friday morning. Then usual 40-minutes call to technical support (when I'm lucky) with usual tests (turn modem off then on, then technicial is trying to connect remotely), then information about the fault on my line (they NEVER cofirmed it was on their network, always my line blamed), and engineer booked - next working day when I was lucky, two working days usually.
  Then always between 24-48 hours it started working automatically (apparently my equipment was self-healing) and engineer visit was cancelled automatically (how they knew my equipment fixed itself?) and then was working for.. any period between one to six weeks.
  Average time between faults was about 3 weeks, with two faults within one week as worst case scenario.
  Obviously I was receiving some discounts for that, but it was not worthy the hassle. Finally cancelled my contract and using fibre happily.
• Am going to cancel mine and go to somewhere else that works!