I come back from holiday and have no dial tone

[mlgibbons]

I got back from an extended holiday this week only to find that the phone line is not working.

The phone itself is fine as I've tested it on my backup ADSL line with no problem.

On checking the Virgin line there appears to be an active line of some type: the phone thinks there is as it does not display "Check Phone Line"and I can hear some low noise on the line but there is no dialtone.

I had assumed that I had been switched over to IP telephony with no notification but a test of the phone ports on the Hub4 also does not work and the Hib's web page shows telephone as "disabled".

Suggestions?

[John_GS]

Hi @mlgibbons 

Thanks for posting and welcome back to the community.

I am sorry to hear of the phone line issues. Will send you a PM now to help.

Best wishes.

[mlgibbons]

Turns out that Virgin cut my landline off without me asking them to.

After getting them to reinstate the line, I've now lost my landline number (which I had for 30 years) and have been trying to get them to reassign it to me as BT (the original provider of the number) tell me that Virgin still have it.

This has been like something out of a Kafka novel i.e. a nightmare.

I have raised multiple complaints, repeated the story of my pain multiple times, spoken to innumerable people in the contact centre none of whom seem to understand or be able to do the very simple task of taking my number out of stock and assigning it to my line and so getting me back to the point I was at before they made their mistake.

I'm now going to document my "journey" / "ordeal" here from this point on.

Current situation: awaiting contact from complaints after I talked to them last week and, once again, explained the situation. The Complaints person promised to raise it with her manager see if they could discuss the situation with Level 2 Support and get back to me this week (Tuesday) with an update.

As of today I have heard nothing.

[Joseph_B]

Hey @mlgibbons,

Sorry to hear this is ongoing for you, I am happy to look into this for you, for me to do so I am going to need to invite you in for a quick private message so I can clear some information with you.

Joe

[mlgibbons]

I spent the best part of an hour on web chat trying to get an update on this.

The guy seemed quite helpful and said that he had filled in a form to get the number reassigned to the line.

After the chat ended I got a text message telling me that the porting request had failed as the number was disconnected from the current provider so that was another waste of an hour.

It's hard to believe that despite Virgin Media staff being told many times that a port request would not work (as it is an inactive number which BT tells me they still have) that people just continue to raise them. It's like all they have is a screwdriver and, despite telling them that it will not work because we have a nail, they insist on continuing to try to screw the nail in.

I've had a response from the support in this forum so let's see if that is any better as in the past it was more successful when the broadband connection went crazy as they actually managed to get a [technical person / one of the cable engineers ] to talk to me about the issues.

I shall chase the complaint again tomorrow and ask for it to me escalated to a senior manager.

Stay tuned for updates.

[mlgibbons]

It appears that there may still be hope as someone else has had a similar problem.

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/Lost-landline-number-after-fibre-switchover/td-p/533...

Let's hope that the support in this forum can perform what I have been told is "impossible" a second time!

[mlgibbons]

The update from Complaints on my escalation to second line support is now more than a week overdue.

However, Joe from the Community support pinged me on Friday and told me that he was looking into it so all hope is not lost.

[Carley_S]

Hi @mlgibbons 

Sorry to hear that your issue has not been fully sorted yet. I can assure you the team are working to have this resolved as soon as possible for you. 

Once they have any updates, the agent will come back to you directly via your open private message to advise and support further. 

My apologies again for any inconvenience caused by this delay. 

[mlgibbons]

15/6

Another week goes by and no update received other than a letter through the post last week telling me that my complaint had been closed and hoping that I was satisfied with the result - "Outcome: Number port failed as line deactivated Result: Account info updated". Well, surprise, surprise, I am not satisfied with that result.

The community support apologised and told me that he is tracking the complaint and that letter should not have been sent and that he is still waiting for his contact to get back.

It is now two months (!) since I raised this on the forum, four complaints have been raised and yet I have still seen no progress despite expending hours of my time trying to sort out the problem caused by Virgin.

I'm [ beginning to / about to ] lose hope, give up on this and raise the issue with the Omsbudsman although I'm considering pinging a message to one of the BBC or Guardian journalists who usually have a good "hit rate" at cutting through the corporate "stuff" and getting something resolved; worst case them highlight how bad some companies are.

I've pinged Community Support again so will wait to see what they come back with and then decide what to do next.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @mlgibbons,

Thank you for coming back to us about this issue and I'm very sorry to hear that you're unsatisfied with your complaint resolution.

I can see that you've sent our colleague a Private Message about this issue asking for an update. They will come back to you as soon as they can and assist further.

Thank you for your patience.