Virgin Media Community

[cazpac]

Can anyone give me any pointers as to how to start the investigation into getting a street cabinet moved?  

It's right outside my house where I'd like to drop the curb and widen my drive.  Where do I start? Who do I contact? Can I get a quote?  I do know it's definitely a Virgin cabinet.

Any suggestions gratefully received.  Thank you.

[dannylau]

It's very difficult to get a cabinet moved and very very expensive, you are probably looking at 20k, you have to ask virgin to do a survey (they will charge you for this) and they will give you a quote or say it is impossible to do. 

[cazpac]

Thank you for your swift response.  I feared it would be expensive.  Do you know who or how I ask Virgin to even do a survey?

[goslow]

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@cazpac wrote:

Can anyone give me any pointers as to how to start the investigation into getting a street cabinet moved?  

<snip>

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Often asked on here and the general outline is to pay for a survey from VM (£250-ish is often quoted) and then VM produce a quote for you if they are willing/able to do the work.

However, just by way of an example, have a look at this 'dropped kerb' topic below (no cabinet move, just the kerb dropping) for an idea of costs just for that and some of the issues in involving VM in the process

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Managing-Your-Account-Cable/VM-manhole-cover-in-new-drop-kerb/t...

5-figure sums are regularly mentioned for such cabinet work but I don't recall anyone ever feeding back to the forum with actual figures for a cabinet move quote. Based on the above link though, the 5-figure sums mentioned seem quite feasible.

[cazpac]

Oh Dear.

Thank you for the link to that sorry saga.  As you say, that was just a manhole cover and not an entire cabinet which is looking increasingly cost prohibitive.  Some useful contact suggestions to start with though, thank you.

[MonkeySee019]

they will not.
They have a duty of care to customers. Moving something like a cabinet will take down customers of a extended period of time.

So they will go though the motions and just say no.
Why would they want to do work that will knock 100's of customers offline for hours or days.

[Richw1982]

And the compensation to all those customers, some of which may be business.  If that cab has a system amp or even worse a first out cab it could take anywhere up to 60 cabinets offline each with an average of 50 customers each.  I think compensation works out to around £5 a day

[cazpac]

Thank you.  That's really helpful, it gives me somewhere to start and It's useful to know what other people have experienced.  I'll follow it up, I just want to understand what my options are.

[nodrogd]

General rule of thumb with issues like this is as follows:

Virgins kit lies in a service strip on which they have had permission from a local authority to locate it. This will usually be the optimum position to feed all the properties it has to serve in the street.

Generally these will not be moved except on Health & Safety grounds. I have seen several cabs end up in peoples gardens after a property redevelopment.

Lastly if you are buying a property it’s pretty obvious there are visible access issues at the time of purchase, the onus is on you as to whether it is the right property to buy.

[Roger_Gooner · Accepted solution]

The procedure is to ask for an assessment report on the cabinet move which costs £240. This is not refundable. In the unlikely event that the report says that VM is willing do do the move (for a lot of money) then you can decide what to do.