At the end of August Area 22 suffered a total loss of all services when a contractor severed the fibre optic cable to the area. It took 7 days to reconnect the service. I initially registered a complaint and was almost immediately told that Virgin had no record of the incident and that I should contact an engineer and report the fault. I rejected this response and asked for my complaint to be escalated but received exactly the same response.
In desperation I put a message on the forum and was extremely fortunate that Sofia-B looked into the matter and was able to resolve my complaint and apply the correct compensation to my account for which I am extremely grateful. I was very happy at the way in which the complaint was resolved without any further fuss. It was extremely frustrating when you know that something has happened but the other party denies that it did.
Through out the 7 days my neighbour kept me informed of the, as it turns out, unrealistic times given for the resumption of service and the reports of his conversation with a Virgin agent. I informed him of how helpful Sofia-B had been in my case and he decided to wait until his next bill arrived assuming that the Automatic compensation scheme would kick in. Upon arrival of his bill he discovered that this had not happened and on contacting Virgin got a very similar response that I got when I initially contacted Virgin.
Everybody in Area 22 was effected by the loss of service and it appears that if the Customer Care team deny that there was a loss of service that it will make it true and all the complaints will go away. I believe that the Senior Management Team at Virgin should get a grip and take positive action before they do any more damage to the reputation of Virgin and before members of the press start to investigate the matter or the contractor who cut the cable jumps on the band waggon and denies that it happened and uses it as an excuse not to pay Virgin compensation.
