No Phone for 6 weeks and counting

[Sun72]

Hi 

I intailly phoned VM 2 months ago about crackling on my phone line, 1st Engineer couldn't find our connection at cabinet so rebooked for another engineer to call. 2nd Engineer couldn't fix it either. Then came along the 3rd Engineer who said it requires a repull. I asked if we could just switch to VOIP, but he advised that our BB connection was really bad and repull was the best option. At this point phone line was still working but crackling, so agreed. A day or two later realised the phoneline was completely dead. 

It's now been 6 weeks with a dead phoneline. VM came last week to do a repull but it's still not working and rebooked another appointment in 3 weeks time!

I've spent endless hours calling and getting passed around to various persons and no one seems to know whats going on. I've even asked them to switch me over to the VOIP (BB works fine) but they can't even manage that. 

It's absolutely ridiculous that we will be without a phoneline for 9 weeks. 

Does anyone know how to escalate this further with VM? Or what my options are in getting this fixed? 

[goslow]

Virgin's inability to install cables for new customers, or re-pull cables for existing customers, seems to be causing much misery for many people at the moment, as evidenced by the large number of posts on the subject in the 'Quick Start' forum.

Once VM have worked themselves into a circular pattern of not actually doing anything to progress the work, their default move seems to be just to keep automatically moving the job into the future in 3-week increments.

Firstly, read the information regarding compensation at the two links below.

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/automatic-compensation

https://store.virginmedia.com/the-legal-stuff/terms-and-conditions-for-fibre-optic-services/automati...

It is not quite so 'automatic' as the name suggests as the customer needs to log the fault by one of the approved means (phoning in or via the online tests) and the fault needs to result in a total loss of service for one of the services (so a crackling phone which works won't count until it stops working altogether).

Next log a formal complaint regarding the issue (you can do this via 'My Virgin Media'). Unfortunately, VM's complaints-handling process is no better than its cable-installing abilities so don't expect anything to come of that. It is a formality you have to go through before registering your complaint with the arbitration service CISAS but to do that you need to wait until 8 weeks after your VM complaint or get a deadlock letter from VM.

https://www.cedr.com/consumer/cisas/complainnow/

Despite the large numbers of complaints about failures in installing cables, there doesn't seem to be any pattern as to how the issues are eventually resolved and it seems impossible for customers to get any reliable and accurate timescales as to how long they will have to wait for the work to be completed.

In the meantime, get together a clear and detailed record of all the dates/times and events in the sorry story and then put together your complaint to VM and work out how much compensation you should be due as a result of the phone outage.

The VM forum team will pick this up in a day or two and may possibly be able to look into it but often don't seem to be able to influence the timescales.

[Alex_RM]

Hi Sun72,

Thanks for posting and welcome to our community 🙂

I'm sorry to hear you've been without the phoneline, and there's been a lack of communication surrounding this.

I've been able to locate your account using your forum information, I've popped the area manager over a mail to see if this is something we can bring forward.

As soon as I have an update I'll let you know.

Alex_Rm

[Sun72]

Hi

Thanks but haven't received any update at all! 

I just cant believe VM still haven't been able to resolve this, its now 7 weeks without a working phoneline. 

I still can't understand why VM can't just flip a switch to migrate me onto VOIP as my broadband works perfectly fine, instead of rebooking a re-pull and waiting another month!!

[John_GS]

Hi Sun72

Thanks for coming back to us. I am sorry you've not heard anything. I'll drop my colleague a mail who's contacted the AFM, they're in from tomorrow so will be updating you asap.

Best,