Virgin Media Community

[JitteryPinger]

Hello all, I'm wondering if anybody wishes to engage in discussion on the current state of our country's operational restrictions currently.

Namely the issues with residential services now becoming so relied upon that customers are expecting a certain SLA on broadband services!

As many will know and understand, residential services such as those sold on https://www.virginmedia.com/ are 'best effort' services therefore don't really offer compensation for loss of earnings or even a swift turn around guarantee on fixing problems in timely windows.

This is why business products such as ones sold at https://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/ have basic 'service level agreements' and options depending on requirements of the business or subscriber as too avoid, minimal down time and therefore losses for the subscriber.

Now the best thing I can see  is the HomeWorks add on https://store.virginmedia.com/discover/broadband/homeworks.html which gives residential customers some added support and a next day appointment priority if things go wrong but is this enough to help customers and also the following terms still apply,

We will not be liable to you for any business loss (including but not limited to loss of profits, business, revenue, contracts or anticipated savings, wasted expenses or any other purely financial losses) even if such loss was reasonably foreseeable or we were advised of the possibility of you incurring such loss.

So what would be the way forward, specially if many businesses decide to base workers out of the home following restrictions being lifted?

I would like to note that while these people should be opting for a business service, ideally separate from an existing residential service, issue's that 'can' come up in Virgin Media's case is the problem of taking TV/Entertainment services with Business services,

Virgin's business services still connects using the existing CATV network so distinguishing priority for these connections could add 'additional' issues for capacity and also render residential services losing headroom (specially during business hours) .

Look forward to the discussion and hopefully this can be educational for many also.

[spgray]

if a business decides to base workers at home (outwith the current pandemic restrictions) then it's up that busines to ensure they give their employee the tools to be able to do so, they shouldn't be relying on something the employee has and is paying for themselves (ie their home internet connection).

of course, some businesses will see this as a great cost cutting measure as with less people requiring office space they can potentially save money.

[JitteryPinger]

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@spgray wrote:
if a business decides to base workers at home (outwith the current pandemic restrictions) then it's up that busines to ensure they give their employee the tools to be able to do so, they shouldn't be relying on something the employee has and is paying for themselves (ie their home internet connection).

of course, some businesses will see this as a great cost cutting measure as with less people requiring office space they can potentially save money.

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Very good point actually, however I've already seen employers that state part of job is having your own connection, I've actually myself had a job offer retracted because I had issues getting my broadband connected when it was supposed to be and after weeks of delays I got the call saying sorry but not sorry.

So if employers can get away with zero hours contracts (also something I've experience of) I'm sure they will get away with passing the responsibility on to employees.

[tehwolf]

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@JitteryPinger wrote:

We will not be liable to you for any business loss (including but not limited to loss of profits, business, revenue, contracts or anticipated savings, wasted expenses or any other purely financial losses) even if such loss was reasonably foreseeable or we were advised of the possibility of you incurring such loss.

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Consequential loss is unlikely to feature in any telco contract, whether for business or residential services. No way a service provider is going to open themselves up to that level of risk unless they're charging a very significant premium for their services. More likely you'll end up with service credits (a future discount) on the basis of the service not meeting any contracted SLA.. VM do this, albeit informally, with their residential customers too - credits to users' accounts when they have had a crap service.  

[tehwolf]

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@spgray wrote:
if a business decides to base workers at home (outwith the current pandemic restrictions) then it's up that busines to ensure they give their employee the tools to be able to do so, they shouldn't be relying on something the employee has and is paying for themselves (ie their home internet connection).

of course, some businesses will see this as a great cost cutting measure as with less people requiring office space they can potentially save money.

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depends on the contract.

They could require that you provide your own (in which case you'd be eligible for a tax rebate from HMRC some of the cost incurred in supplying your own BB for work use) but they don't *have* to provide it - they can make it a stipulation of employment - you can choose if you want the job or not based on the requirements.

[JitteryPinger]

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@tehwolf wrote:

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Consequential loss is unlikely to feature in any telco contract, whether for business or residential services. No way a service provider is going to open themselves up to that level of risk unless they're charging a very significant premium for their services.

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So really the question is will telco's develop home office services with some sort of PI insurance integration or most importantly develop the work force to better identify and resolve problems and introduce better fail safes.

[spgray]

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@tehwolf wrote:

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@spgray wrote:
if a business decides to base workers at home (outwith the current pandemic restrictions) then it's up that busines to ensure they give their employee the tools to be able to do so, they shouldn't be relying on something the employee has and is paying for themselves (ie their home internet connection).

of course, some businesses will see this as a great cost cutting measure as with less people requiring office space they can potentially save money.

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depends on the contract.

They could require that you provide your own (in which case you'd be eligible for a tax rebate from HMRC some of the cost incurred in supplying your own BB for work use) but they don't *have* to provide it - they can make it a stipulation of employment - you can choose if you want the job or not based on the requirements.

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only for a "new" job though, it's not something they could enforce on existing employees, unless the employee agreed to new terms of employment.

[tehwolf]

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@JitteryPinger wrote:

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@tehwolf wrote:

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Consequential loss is unlikely to feature in any telco contract, whether for business or residential services. No way a service provider is going to open themselves up to that level of risk unless they're charging a very significant premium for their services.

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So really the question is will telco's develop home office services with some sort of PI insurance integration or most importantly develop the work force to better identify and resolve problems and introduce better fail safes.

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If they do, it will almost certainly be cheaper to buy a 4G backup service than pay the insurance premium the service provider would charge you.

[JitteryPinger]

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@spgray wrote:

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only for a "new" job though, it's not something they could enforce on existing employees, unless the employee agreed to new terms of employment.

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So then the employer makes somebody redundant and hires somebody else who will play ball and probably accept less pay ....

[spgray]

you can't make someone redudant and replace them with someone else doing the same job - that's a breach of employment law.
assuming someone has been employed for more than 2 years it's actually quite difficult to get rid of them - and not agreeing to a change of terms is not one of the reasons you can be gotten rid of.