Area 30 Outage
I'm not sure of the extent of the "area" that is currently suffering this issue, but since sometime in the mid afternoon yesterday, I have had no broadband, voice or interactive TV services.
Apparently, their engineers are currently working on the issue, so I guess the services will be back when they're back, but my main concern has been the timing and content of the update SMS messages and the general dismissive nature of my contact with "Customer Services".
So far, I have had three update messages, each giving an estimated time for a fix, each of which has expired by at least two hours before the next message arrives. The latest estimate was for 31/1/2025 06:40:00, which I'd taken as this morning, but the chat agent I've just spoken to appears to have misread it as 6:40PM. They do appear to struggle a bit with times and there doesn't appear to be any consistency on the format used, with AM/PM sometimes creeping in. It might give the impression that they're being deliberately obtuse.
On the subject of my brief interaction with the agent, she basically ignored the 12 hour difference between the time in the text and her reading of their system and then just copy/pasted a script about it being an area fault and that their engineers were working on it and then just left the chat. For some reason, I didn't get a feedback request, which I think you'd guess, wouldn't have been overly positive.
It'd be really nice to know more about the issue and particularly exactly when it is going to be fixed.
Both BT and another fibre broadband provider have recently installed infrastructure in my street, so VM no longer have a monopoly on superfast broadband. Some interesting decisions ahead for when my contract nears expiry. Surely the competitors' customer service can't be as bad as this, or can it?