Firstly, this isn't a call for assistance. This is a message to record what fault I had and how I resolved it in case someone else in future has the same issue. This is also a message to the telephone operators in the Virgin Media call centre.
On Sunday, I was unable to make or receive calls on my landline. I was hearing a broken dial tone like I had a voicemail message and dialling numbers just returned a tone like I had dialled an number not in use. Every number behaved like this, even 150, which should always work if everything is working.
In times like this when I have phone issues, I remove my DECT phone from the connection and replace it with my Binatone B100 (or Argos-branded clone). In this case my old Binatone B100 needed replacement as the contacts was dry and crackly so I was using a brand new one purchased that day. I was as sure as I could be that the equipment I was using and not Virgin provided was good. (This is an important point later)
Over multiple phone calls to support, I had restarted the Hub 4 many times without success. (I will mention the phone calls later)
Fast forward a couple of days and I was noticing that my Hub 4 was dropping the Internet every few hours. I started to wonder if my phone fault and dropping internet was related so this morning I unplugged everything that was plugged in to the Hub 4, took my Hub 4 to the kitchen to get some space. I turned the Hub 4 upside down and noticed the fan holes at the bottom of the Hub 4 was covered in dust. Being an old PC Techie, I knew how to remove dust from fan holes. There was quite a bit of dust there.
I then re-attached everything to the Hub 4 and started the Hub 4, whereupon my phone issues disappeared. I was able to make and receive calls again. I was able to fix the broken dial tone by clearing the voicemail messages. Quite a few of those voicemail messages was a brief and very loud buzz. I don't know there this comes from.
Now, I don't know exactly what fixed my issue. It could be unplugging *everything* from the Hub 4, waiting a couple of minutes and then plugging everything back in. It could be removing the dust from the router and allowing the cooling fan to work better. It has been warm lately so an overheating Hub 4 could be the culprit. Either way, I've now solved my issue.
Now, to my complaint. The Virgin Support available by ringing 150 (or local rate variation) is so bad as to give misleading and plainly incorrect information to customers. During my many phone calls to Virgin about this problem, I was told that my equipment was to blame. This was not true. Firstly, the Hub 4 is Virgin's equipment as I have to return the equipment if I leave Virgin. Secondly, the support told me my phone wasn't compatible with Virgin. This was not true as well. The Binatone B100 I used is a well known decent cheap troubleshooting phone because it's so basic. I keep one for such eventualities. It works perfectly fine as I now know for certain. I was told on a couple of calls to "Buy a phone with a REN greater than 1". I knew when this was said that this wasn't correct and asked the support person to provide a make and model of such a phone. They eventually gave me a model of DECT phone that was mentioned on this forum in another post. I already had a similar model of DECT phone and in any case, such DECT phones have low REN values because they use the mains for electrical power for the ringer. On another call, I was told just to wait 48 hours. At this point, I had already waited 48 hours and knew that *doing nothing* was not going to fix my issue. It was at this point I complained and asked for an engineer. I have now cancelled the engineer as I've fixed my own issue.
Recommendations:
1) "Buy a phone with a REN greater than 1" is not and never should be advice to a customer and if this is in a Virgin support script, should be removed immediately. Trying alternative corded handsets can be good advice for a DECT user but asking a customer to buy a phone that doesn't exist is terrible support advice.
2) Telling a customer to simply wait 48 is simply fobbing them off as the support person doesn't have a script for this issue. Unless there is known maintenance work happening on the person's line, this shouldn't be advice to a customer.
3) When telling customers to switch off their hub and restart it. It is worth adding that unplugging all connections to the Hub may help if the customer feels comfortable doing so as this may also solve the issue. (This assumes that simply unplugging everything and plugging it all back in would have solved my issue)
4) Asking customers to check their Hub for dust should be added to the support script. Brushing off dust or hoovering out dust from the Hub might be the solution to problems as it would solve overheating Hub issues. This could be added to the script after trying unplugging and restarting the Hub.
Thanks for reading.
