Forum Discussion

Ahrwynne's avatar
Ahrwynne
Just joined
4 days ago

Old NTL installed cable damaged years ago

Hi all - I'm not a Virgin Media customer at the moment but I'm looking to potentially move as we live in a rural village and whilst we have BT fibre to the local box we only have copper to the house and its limiting the speeds we can get, with no chance of full fibre upgrades.

When looking into options it seems that NTL installed cable to our street and house as the then owners had the service over 20 years ago. Unfortunately it sounds like they did a poor job of installing it as they had to go across a shared driveway and only dug a shallow groove in the tarmac, laid the cable and poured bitumen over the top.  When the previous owners had their end of the driveway parqueted, the builder cut through the cable and removed a big section to be able to lay the bricks. 

My question is how do we go about contacting Virgin to potentially look at getting the cable reinstated?

Cheers

Damaged cable

6 Replies

  • Adduxi's avatar
    Adduxi
    Very Insightful Person
    4 days ago

    The problem is how are you proposing to get a new cable pulled to your house?  Does it still have to cross the now newly laid brick driveway? 

    • Ahrwynne's avatar
      Ahrwynne
      Just joined
      4 days ago

      Hi, yes, unfortunately there is no way around it other than running the cable the whole length of the driveway, around the separate garage, that was added when the property front was remodelled, and then back to the house frontage somehow!

  • sunnyhoney's avatar
    sunnyhoney
    Settling in
    4 days ago

    Virgin Media have been unable to rerun a cable after damage due to poor install in over 22 days now so I wouldn't hold your breathe. I would not recommend you have anything to do with them. Their customer support is incompetent at the best of times and any dates or information are subject to change often to vague terms as I just encountered of "it's complicated"

    • Ahrwynne's avatar
      Ahrwynne
      Just joined
      4 days ago

      Oh dear. TBH, the noise you hear online regarding the customer service experiences people have is one of the things playing on my mind when thinking about exploring this particular option.

      Thanks for your comment though, I hope you get things sorted asap.

  • goslow's avatar
    goslow
    Alessandro Volta
    4 days ago

    If you have no contract / minimum term obligations to BT, you could place your order with VM and see what happens while keeping BT running as normal.

    If VM is installed smoothly, and it works in the way you expect, then you can cancel BT.

    If the VM installation turns into a pantomime, you can wait out the fiasco while still having your BT connection.

    Once VM is activated, you have 14 days cooling off with VM to evaluate the new service. If it is no use, cancel VM and continue with BT.

    This approach gives you some options while keeping a connection running but the disadvantage is paying two subscriptions for an overlapping period of a few weeks.

    This doesn't resolve the driveway issue though. You may only find out if that is a problem by placing an order.

    We sometimes hear mentions of 'pre-installation surveys' on here. Whether they are any use or not is debateable as the cabling sub-contractors may just turn up and smash in their own cable route in the easiest/quickest way rather than what you might have agreed with VM.

  • Roger_Gooner's avatar
    Roger_Gooner
    Alessandro Volta
    4 days ago

    VM has a lot of experience in these matters, e.g. going around a driveway or moling under it. Just place your order and discuss it with the installers. A new cable will also have to be pulled from the cabinet.