Forum Discussion

Eamon66's avatar
Eamon66
Joining in
5 months ago

Home Response Alarm

We booked to switch to Virgin for phone and broadband. We organised a technician to set it up as my elderly mother's home response alarm was involved. There were significant issues over getting a date but we eventually got someone a week ago last Tuesday. Unfortunately the technician left us with a situation whereby my mam can either have a landline or a response alarm and never warned us before leaving that this was the case. She also can now only access her answer phone with great difficulty.

There have been multiple calls over a number of issues about the installation and porting the home phone number in the handover but the earliest Virgin can get someone here to look at this is Monday 23rd. They also want to charge is for the callout to fix the unacceptable situation they left on the first visit. I asked for this to be waived and was told on Thursday that someone would get back to me within 24 hours and they would contact on my mobile. They text my mothers mobile on Friday to say the matter was closed even though nobody has been in touch and I have repeatedly been assured that my mother would get no more texts.

A complaint will take up to 6 days to answer by which time we will have a technician here who I presume we will be expected to pay for. Suppose we can only hope that the original guy isn't sent back - contacted him direct but he didn't want to know.

Has anyone had this issue and how have you resolved it as it feels at this stage that Virgin are simply not interested in an elderly person not having two things that are a vital lifeline to them and simply want more money to fix a problem they created?

As I haven't cancelled Eir due to the number of issues which have arisen am I better off going back to them? 

  • Client62's avatar
    Client62
    Alessandro Volta
    5 months ago

    " I haven't cancelled Eir "  ...this forum covers the VM UK Residential customers.

    Is there some reason why a telephone double adaptor can not be used to enable
    the Care Alarm and the Phone to both be connected at the same time ?

  • Eamon66's avatar
    Eamon66
    Joining in
    5 months ago

    Thanks for the suggestion. If that did work it still leaves the answer machine in an inaccessible position.

  • Eamon66's avatar
    Eamon66
    Joining in
    5 months ago

    In my view the engineer should have talked us through the likely outcome before he started work and offered alternatives rather than just put in the set up he did and then leave without comment.

    • Akua_A's avatar
      Akua_A
      Forum Team
      5 months ago

      Hi Eamon66 

      Welcome to our community forums and thank you for your first post. Sorry to hear your mum is having issues with here landline since the Emergency backup line was installed. We can understand your concern and want to do our best to help. The emergency backup line is set to work as seen here It is used when the landline is down to be able to make emergency calls. Are you able to further expand on the landline issues she has been having? What happens when she tries to access the answering machine?

      • Eamon66's avatar
        Eamon66
        Joining in
        5 months ago

        we have had various versions of what we need to do to port the number from Eir. The phone itself is left where she can't get to the answering machine. we should never have been left in this mess.

    • newapollo's avatar
      newapollo
      Very Insightful Person
      5 months ago

      Hi Eamon66 

      Sorry to see the position that VirginMedia Ireland have placed your mother in.  We can't do much to help here as these forums are for Virgin UK which is a separate company using different unlinked systems.

      There is a live messenger chat you could use with VM Ireland (along with other contact methods) on the following page.  https://www.virginmedia.ie/contact/ 

      I've had a quick look through their help pages but found very, very little in regards support 

      /virginmedia.ie/customer-support/support-by-products/home-phone

      Will your monitored house alarm still work?

      Our phones are not compatible with monitored alarms. If you rely on one, you'll need to contact your alarm provider to install an extra piece of equipment to your alarm to make it work.

      Please contact your alarm provider for further details.