Forum Discussion

SOUK's avatar
SOUK
On our wavelength
3 months ago

No internet. Network access : Blocked

Virgin media currently charge my family £57.93 a month for M125 broadband service (133mb down / 20mb up), which includes no phone service, no tv package service, poor customer service, regular reliability issues and now no Internet connection at all at this point.

Its bad enough we're already financially penalised by Virgin Media for nothing more than simply not-wanting to enter a long term contract during a period that our country is on its knees and other uncertainties with work. Why not offer short term contracts to existing customers with everything in place already?

Anyway, as a result of that Virgin Media has taken it upon themselves to slam our family with a ridiculously high premium for their m125 broadband package which would usually be just £25 a month, instead we're charged £57.93 because we simply didn't submit to an additional contract.

God knows why they'd want to financially impact our family like that, especially considering we've been committed to them for the last 20+ years, most of which has always been out of contract and never incurred aggressive hyperinflated prices like we're currently experiencing out of contract right now.  

For example we use to pay around £27 a month for this exact same package out of contract on the run up to covid, but now they've ramped it up to £57.93 a month and they believe that's totally reasonable. Forgive me, but I don't.

Keep in mind other ISP / Broadband competitors such as London's Community Fibre and others only ever charge an additional £4 a month out of contract increase to their customers, why is Virgin charging us over double the price? 

The M125 Broadband package Virgin currently charge £25 on their website right now but then they'll skyrocket the price the second your contract expires. 

Now if we were with Community Fibre and our £25 a month contract expired, they would only increase  our monthly charge by just an additional £4 more a month for not being in contract.  Why does virgin choose to financially hurt its customers?

Also to make matters worst, even though Virgin Media ramp up your prices, what have we got at the end of the day?

I'll tell you......'NO INTERNET'.

We haven't had internet for nearly a whole week now because someone at Virgin Media team has chosen to mess about with their network.  They claim it may have been some unplanned unforeseen fault. 

I'm not buying it, as when you google the similar fault you can see others have experienced it and it was a result of Virgin medias staff tampering, which for a professional business would be a foreseeable issue.

When I login to the Virgin Media Home Hub 3 I can see that Virgin Media have made changes which has resulted in the router reporting:

No internet. Network access : Blocked

So we're basically paying stupid prices and physically getting zero service and to make matters worst every time we attempt to call Virgin Media their automated answering machine service recognises our phone number, has us jump a bunch of automated hoops, only to tell us they're having service issues in our area and they simply disconnect our call.

So we login to their website and they report they are having issues in the area and suggest a time and a date that it will be resolved, but the only problem is that the time and date keeps changing and getting further away every date, continually failing to meet their own suggested targets.

Mean while the kids can't play their video games or log in to their schools portal to do their home work. We don't have a TV licence (so no live broadcast) but do 100% rely on virgins broadband to operate properly and for us to be able to watch non live content on our smart devices which now none of us can do, but you still charge us hyper inflated prices.

 

What gives?

contracts
green flashing light
internet blocked
  • jbrennand's avatar
    jbrennand
    Very Insightful Person
    3 months ago

    What is being reported on

    the “check service,”Area status webpage (https://www.virginmedia.com/help/service-status)

    If nothing there.... Then also Try the “free & automated” Service Status number - 0800 561 0061 - which usually gives the most up to date info. and tells you of more local issues and fix estimates, down to street cab/ postcode level.

  • SOUK's avatar
    SOUK
    On our wavelength
    2 months ago

    17 going on 18 days later and Virgin Media still hasn't restored our broadband service to our property since their actual team caused disruption to our service.

    Meanwhile, Virgin Media complaints procedure staff have continued to mark all of our raised complaints via their website complaints procedure form as case closed and this is before anything in those complaints has actually been addressed, resolved or services restored. 

    You couldn't make it up....

    With regards to the service status page @JBRENNAND, I'm fully familiar with the types of procedures one should carry out mate. I literally use to be one of their service engineers who repaired their exchanges and CATV stuff for years, equally I'm fully aware of their bad practices and failures too.

    We just want our internet back online.  It worked perfectly fine, then they sent out an SMS to say theirs an 'Area Fault', even then it was still working completely fine, then minutes later everything goes down.

    A while later we get an SMS to say they've completed their works and everything has been restored when it hadn't.

    We contacted their customer service minutes after that last SMS to have them make aware whoever it was within their company who was working on our area has interfered with their network further caused a bunch of outages.

    17 going on 18 days later they've still resolved absolutely nothing.

    We've called, emailed, completed complaints, contacted them on social media and still no service has been restores. 

    We've requested multiple times that all correspondence with us be carried out via email so we have record and even that hasn't even worked out for us, specifically because they keep closing our raised complaints before anything is fixed.

    Also the complaints page is showing a bunch of coding errors.

    • Vikki_M's avatar
      Vikki_M
      Forum Team
      2 months ago

      Hi SOUK,

      Thank you for your post and welcome to our community.

      We're sorry to hear about the service issues you're having. 

      We've taken a look at things from our side, and there are no known area outages showing. 

      Have you done a factory reset of the hub and checked all connections are secure?

      If not, please follow the steps here to re set the hub and pop back to us. 

  • SOUK's avatar
    SOUK
    On our wavelength
    6 days ago

    We left virgin media because they left our family without internet for over a month, they completely physically disconnected our line to our property.   

    Prior to leaving we telephone recorded all conversation with the Virgin Media's representatives that we spoke with (because that's what you have to do with this company), all of which clarified that we would NOT be charged for the month of down service.

    They then charged us, even though they knew their own staff and disconnected the line:

    They also informed us (on recording) that they would forward me a cheque for a hundred and something pound (will have to go back through my recording for the exact figure) for the inconvenience caused as a form of compensation for the month of down service and hours and hours of telephone calls and emails.

    They also accepted that the had made a major mess of everything, knew we were out of contract, knew our line had no connection so they accepted a notice to quit their horrendous over priced under delivering service.

    Not only have they NOT issued our compensation as promised and agreed (which evidence of that is on both their telephone recording system as well as our own), they've also since continued to raised bills against an account which was supposedly already closed.

    I've literally just received a bill this morning for another £57.93 for 100Mbps broadband only a month for a service which we no longer have with virgin media, we don't even have a working line to our property, and yet the scammers have continued to raise bills against us and this is while they're still yet to pay out compensation money.

    Check our line, its not been working for months, we don't even have a connection.

    Can your company actually get anything right?

    We have already left your company and are with a completely different reliale provider which supplies us 1150Mbps download for a mere £17 a month, whereas you "VIRGIN MEDIA" was charging our family £57.93 a month for a pathetic 100Mbps broadband only.

    Not only was Virgin Media financially hammering our family, causing us financial difficulties for a pathetic ultra slow broadband package, taking food away from our kids mouths. 

    Not only did they over charge us, they also didn't even supply a connection to our property.

    You over charged us a rubbish internet speed, took money from our accounts whilst knowing your staff add already completely disconnected our line when they went out to fix a network fault months ago.

    This is your notice, if you attempt to take any more money out of our account and put our family in the we will do a gofundme or find the money somehow and sue you.

    If you don't provide us the agreed compensation, we were owned, again, we're going to sue you.

    If you don't return any funds that was agreed wouldn't be removed from our account; again, we're going to sue you and we're going to go to the press.

    I've screen recorded this, as evidence of notice.