Intermittent high ping, dropped connections etc

[WilliamB]

Since sometime last December, I 1st noticed very high pings. Normally in the range 30-50ms then upto as much as 500ms. When I rang to complain I was informed that since the pandemic VM had taken on alot more customers in the area and the local infrastructure wasn't up to the job. And would take a little over a week to fix. Since then I've noticed exactly the same issues almost one a month.

The last time this happened was on 20th July and I was told the fix was complicated and would be resolved by the 27th. Last night everything was working fine. This morning, high pings again so I rang back up to be told another area issue ( looks exactly the same to me) and it would be fixed by 18:00. So come 18:45 I rang back up AGAIN, Apparently that issue was fixed and now there's a new area issue affecting 25% of households.

I get the impression fixes aren't being properly planned out. Any idea when I'll get a reliable connection?

[Andrew-G]

An area fault will be different to an over-utilisation problem.  A fault can and will be fixed easily.  Over-utilisation is not strictly speaking a fault, but equipment working exactly as expected if VM stupidly sell more contracts than they can support in a given area, and the way the company respond to these is often very poor.

There is (mostly) nothing you can do to improve matters.  In some areas VM do indeed undertake work to rejig the local networks to balance loads and eliminate over-utilisation, and they spend millions each year doing this.  But sometimes that's either not possible, or judged uneconomic if there's a need to spend money on more equipment.  And critically, VM won't ever admit the truth, so even where there is a fault reference and a "fix date", there's no way of knowing if that fix date is backed by an actual plan of action and programme of works. Quite often it seems not, and as the fix date approaches it is simply moved a month or two ahead. Your options:

1) Sit it out, and hope that VM do carry out improvement works. There's little or nothing you can do to force VM to upgrade the network, nor to be honest about the fix dates.  This has been a festering issue in some areas for a long time.

2) Get yourself a new ISP. If you're in a fixed term contract you may have to use the VM complaints process (and possibly escalate for arbitration at CISAS ) to be released from contract without penalty. If you need to do this, the grounds of your complaint is the poor performance, and your request for release from contract without penalty is twofold: First the Consumer Rights Act 2015 that requires any consumer service to be provided with "reasonable skill and care", and second, the Ofcom Fairness Commitments that VM have signed up to, that states "Customers’ services work as promised, reliably over time. If things go wrong providers give a prompt response to fix problems and take appropriate action to help their customers, which may include providing compensation where relevant. If providers can’t fix problems with core services they have promised to deliver within a reasonable period, customers can walk away from their contract with no penalty."