Forum Discussion

orgazoid's avatar
orgazoid
Settling in
4 days ago

Struggling to have our router moved location.

We recently signed back up for virgin after a switch to sky 5 years ago.

My parents were in when they came to install it and they do not have much tech knowledge, it was assumed the router would be in the same place it used to be with virgin (and also with sky) which is right by the front door. There is still a virgin box there the exact same as the one by the television in the living room. They were told it was 'easier' to have it installed next to the tv in the living room. Interestingly the technician also mentioned how the people who came previous day to him to do something outside 'cut the the cable really short'. 

The issue with that is my ethernet cable which is running all the way from upstairs to downstairs nice and neatly tacked down along the stairs skirting does not reach the router. It can not be routed in to the living room and we not want it to be. Obviously I want to be using a wired connection to make the most of a gig1 service (otherwise there is no point paying the extra money because wi-fi is not going to get the most out of gig1).

We called and after ridiculous long full of misunderstanding conversations with more than one person we managed to get them to agree to someone coming out and moving the routers location to where it used to be for £25. (I understand the charge, technically the new location was agreed upon even if it was due to my parents lack of understanding the ethernet cable situation).

They came today and did not move it (again my parents were in and I was not) and rather than moving the router they just replaced the coax box by the tv with a new one (?? no idea why) gave my parents a wifi booster pod because I guess they are assuming the issue we were having was that the wifi was not strong enough upstairs due to miscommunication with whoever we spoke to at the call centre.

Wi-fi is not the issue here, the issue is wanting the router to be be somewhere else and I do not know where the misunderstanding is with that and why it is so difficult to have this arranged. We paid £25 for a router location change only for it to not be changed so what did we even pay for? It makes no sense and neither does anyone we try to talk to on the phone.

It is hard to not assume that the engineers don't want to do the extra work of actually moving the router to the location we want it to be in.. the first engineer for example told my parents he would have to drill a "MASSIVE" hole in the wall to have it installed in the location it used to be before when we was with virgin and that they would have to fill the hole in themselves after (I can't imagine why this would be the case and it sounds like he was just trying to put them off the idea). There is literally the same same virgin coax box right by where we want the router to be as the one it is currently connected to by the tv.

My parents are not tech savvy and I have not been able to be around the 2 times an engineer has come out.

Can someone please contact me on here from virgin as I am seeing is a possibility based on other peoples posts. 

1 Reply

  • Molly_T's avatar
    Molly_T
    Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
    2 days ago

    Hi Orgazoid 👋 Welcome to the community forum! Thanks for posting. 

    Sorry to hear these concerns about the location of the router currently and it not being optimised for your setup. 

    Glad to hear that we booked in an appointment as requested when first contacting us - this kind of appointment does have a one off call out charge of £25.  

    Based on your account, it sounds like the engineer discussed the options with your parents during the appointment and then followed their decision. (If they requested it was re-located during the appointment, then it would have been moved following their guidance.) As we can't be privy to the conversation that took place during the appointment, we can check the appointment notes and if needed request feedback from the engineer who attended to get further detail about what happened. It would also be helpful to also get a direct account from your parents about what happened! As we can't see the layout of your home and furniture, we trust our engineers to discuss the available options when attending and then to implement the decision made during the appointment. 

    It may be worth us mentioning that you can set up with an Ethernet connection into one of the Wi-Fi POD boosters - this is likely why one was provided during the appointment. You may see a small degradation in terms of speeds vs the router itself, but it's still likely to get you the high speed connection you are looking for via Ethernet! 

    I will send you a PM to take a few account details and further investigate. Please keep an eye on your Inbox 📩 in the top right corner of the page. We can then return to this public thread with an update. Thanks for your patience and co-operation in the meantime! 🌞