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RobKelly's avatar
RobKelly
Joining in
19 days ago

No Service for 11 Days Now

I registered a fault with my broadband 11 days ago. BT Openreach were doing work outside my property and cut through the cable.

I made Virgin aware of this right away, but they told me the first available appointment would be 16th January. When that day came and went I called back and was told that the appointment was actually for 21 January. Well, an engineer came out that morning but said that a specialist team would have to attend as they needed a rod to fix the cabling. The engineer told me that someone would be out later that day. An engineer did turn up, but didn't knock my door and left shortly afterwards, without fixing the issue. I hoped we would return, but when I spoke to customer service late on 21st January they assured me that a complete loss of service would mean that an engineer would be with me soon.

I've logged onto my account this morning and the date of the appointment has changed to today, between 1pm and 6pm. Again, no email or text message to advise.

However, it's now 5pm and dark outside, so I'm not optimistic of a solution today.

I work from home and I have to use mobile data, which has almost run out.

My question is, how do I complain about this without going through the online chat or the call center, who are obviously outsourced?

3 Replies

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  • goslow's avatar
    goslow
    Alessandro Volta
    19 days ago

    Read through the many similar past topics on here and you will see this is a common problem.

    Unfortunately, you will get no answers from VM which you can truly rely upon. This is because much of the cabling work is outsourced to sub-contractors and the relationship between them and VM is fairly shambolic (as evidenced by so many similar past topics on here).

    Once you have phoned in the fault to VM to report a total loss of service, VM gets 2 clear working days to fix the fault before any compo is applied. After that you get an initial payment of £9.98 for the first few days of the outage and the present compo rate after that is £9.98 per full calendar day until your service is restored

    https://www.virginmedia.com/help/billing-and-payments/automatic-compensation

    Keep detailed notes of your experience to date and beyond. This is best done in a timeline format with evidence (such as emails, texts, screenshots, phone logs etc.) linked to each event on the timeline.

    Your own records are important because we have seen many past topics on here where VM has tried to reduce or avoid compensation payments and the customer has had to go to the ombudsman to get paid what was due.

    In the meantime, you would probably do best to look into other forms of connectivity while you wait (such as a mobile data connection) and try to run that on a rolling monthly basis.

    • RobKelly's avatar
      RobKelly
      Joining in
      19 days ago

      Great advice, so thank you. I'll keep extensive notes. 

      It's not about the compensation though, I just want my broadband back on. I work from home and I'm just about out of mobile data. 

      I wouldn't mind as much of they gave an accurate date, even if it's in the future, but the engineer just not turning up is soul destroying. 

      One thing is guaranteed. When my contract is up I'll be moving elsewhere. 

  • Rebecca_CI's avatar
    Rebecca_CI
    Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
    15 days ago

    Hi RobKelly,

     

    Thank you for taking the time to explain what’s been happening with your broadband service. We are really sorry about the length of time you’ve been without service and the disruption this has caused, especially as you rely on your connection for working from home.

     

    We absolutely take a total loss of service seriously, and we’d like the opportunity to help get this sorted for you as quickly as possible. If you’re happy for us to do so, we will send you a private message and we’ll look into this straight away and keep you updated.

     

    Thank you for patience