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Spyro_2's avatar
Spyro_2
Settling in
3 days ago

Mod help please…no service…broken cable

Please can a mod help resolve. When gardening yesterday, my father who doesn’t live here accidentally put a shovel through the cable and cut it in half. I’ve only live here a year and the cable was already here beforehand, it was in an unexpected place as I didn’t not expect it to run under a crazy paved driveway (it must have been installed a long time ago), only buried 1 inch under the soil, under a plant, and not in any protective sheaf. 

I called VM, got sent round in circles unable to work, call hung itself up with after sending me a link which also wouldn’t allow me to report this. I then called back, and don’t know how, but within a minute ended up our through to a human being, albeit they had such a strong foreign accent I struggled to understand all they were saying. I explained the situation to them. I was then assured that there would be no charge for the repair and that I would receive ‘automatic compensation for loss of service’ which I thought odd, considering it’s not entirely their fault, but I feel it is to an extent as the original install was poorly done. 

I was then given an appointment for a repair of “Monday 13th August” between 1pm and 6pm. I asked for a text/email to confirm and was told it would come by text within 24 hours and the call ended. I then assumed the compensation would be because they were taking a week to fix it and their policy is within 48 hours to fix a fault from point of reporting or start compensating.  

I then looked at the calendar…the 13th is a Wednesday. So now I am not confident of when this appointment actually is. So I logged into my VM online account…it shows no appointment, it also shows no faults in my services, it says an issue with the ‘hub’ and wants me to go through the process of switching it off/on etc which is clearly useless.  

The only message I have received so far from VM is a text asking me to rate the quality of the customer service which is proof as such that I did speak to someone on the phone…the text says their name was Syed. 

I have also looked at online advice on how this repair would be carried out, many people do choose to do it themselves as it is only a plastic joiner from eBay that costs £3. However, I am not confident at DIY and would rather VM do it as it is their responsibility to ensure I can receive their services and also I don’t want to risk damaging the wire more. I also think the majority the blame lies with them for laying it in a planted border without burying it to a decent depth. It was an accident waiting to happen.

 

3 Replies

  • I should mention, I have no tv, no broadband and no landline as a result of this. I normally work from home full time so this is a major inconvenience. Until this is repaired I will be incurring £6 a day travel costs and nearly 2 hours of my time wasted mon-fri as I now need to travel into an office to work. So a weeks wait is ok, but I do want to ensure it is resolved as soon as possible. I don’t have much faith in the person I spoke to on the phone actually having booked the appointment. 

  • I have made some progress this morning. I have called VM again and managed to get through to a human promptly.  The rep could see an apt booked for Wednesday 13th, but he also could see an availability for Monday 11th so moved it forward. This rep stated again that the apt may not show up immediately on my VM account etc, but he seemed clear that the apt was booked and the date of it is now much clearer. 

    As a side note, as I stated talking to the rep, he identified himself as ‘Andrew’ and sounded as if he had an American accent, which surprised me as I thought the call centre was India or somewhere with a similar accent. The difficulty in understanding the accent and having to repeat parts of the conversation is what generally stresses me out when talking to VM. However this rep spoke very clear English and was easy to understand. It was only towards the end of the call that I noticed he actually seemed to have a slight lilt in his accent as well…I think he may actually have been in the same , India or wherever call centre…but had very good English and maybe learnt his accent from watching American TV or visiting the US. Just thought I’d add this as a side note, because for me being able to easily understand the speech made the whole call process unstressful and has given me confidence that I have understood the information I was being given. 

  • I’m aware I’m talking to myself on this thread!  However, I will keep it updated on Monday for anyone reading this and having similar issues to show whether it gets resolved or not etc.