No landline since Wednesday

[rozzer1971]

Hi,

We've had no working landline since at least Wednesday. The fault may have existed before then but we know for sure it's been down since 07/09/2022

It may be a coincidence but we did receive a warning of network improvements in our area on Tuesday 06/09/2022 and we did lose our broadband but that returned after a couple of hours. We didn't think to check the phone until we received word from a relative that they had tried to call.

We've ruled out the phone itself by using another handset but no joy. When we first checked we had varying crackles, the next day that changed to another set of noises and now we have nothing but silence.

We aren't due to be moved to Fibre phone until November but it seems like you may have already turned off our service. 

Please don't ask us to call as we have no phone !! I cannot see any way of chatting to you online either, it's madness and infuriating. Please help !

[Ilyas_Y]

Hey there @rozzer1971, thanks for reaching out to us and a warm welcome to the Virgin Media forums.

I'm sorry to hear about the issues with the landline.
I can happily assist you on this.
Just before we go any further, have you checked here for any outages under the landline services?
Let us know and we can continue.

Kind regards.

[rozzer1971]

Yes. All checked several times and no issues reported.

[Ilyas_Y]

Thank you for the reply @rozzer1971 and for the update.

I will send you a private message to sort this out
Watch out for the purple envelope inviting you in.

Kind regards.

[rozzer1971]

Received and replied, thank you.

[Ilyas_Y]

Thank you for speaking with us today @rozzer1971.

I'm glad we have been able to take the next steps to get this fault resolved.
Let us know how the engineers appointment goes.

Kind regards.

[rozzer1971]

Well, on the positive side, the engineer has just left and we now have a telephone line again. We cannot fault his work at all. But that's where the positivity ends I'm afraid. He diagnosed the issue as being something you had suggested to me in our private messages but you then confirmed it wasn't due to it. But it turns out it was after all !

VirginMedia in their wisdom decided to turn OFF our landline service in favour of the Fibre Telephone service which wasn't to be activated until November ! Whilst we had received notice of this change we had not had the required physical adaptor to be able to use the service even if wanted to try ! But it seems VirginMedia decided to turn off our old service regardless leaving two Pensioners aged 70+ cut off from the outside world !

I shudder to think what would have happened if there had been an emergency with either of them as they would have no way of calling for the emergency services. They only noticed the service was down on Wednesday because my niece had mentioned she called but we've no actual idea how long they were disconnected from the world for ! 

How can this be right ? How many other customers have Virgin decided to disconnect from one service without reconnecting them to it's replacement - all whilst continuing to charge them for a service they didn't have ?! I'm shocked and appalled that a major telecommunications company can allow this to happen given the potential repercussions that lack of communication could have had.

Change happens, we know, but that shouldn't be at the expense of providing the basic service.

Disgusted and I want something done about this.

[John_GS]

Hi rozzer1971 

Thanks for coming back to us and confirming what has happened.

OK so in relation to us restricting the service, this is only done as a last resort as we've sent multiple messages to the account holder notifying them of the pending change and received no reply. The restriction therefore would prompt people to contact us in relation to this and get it booked in. The migration can happen at anytime even if we put a provisional date in for it, we can bring it forward.

Best,

[rozzer1971]

I'm sorry, that's rubbish. We were well aware of the change and we had been given the confirmation of the date - November 1st. Your colleague Ilyas_Y  contacted me by private message over the weekend and after suggesting the issue was down the change, reconfirmed that:

"So I have checked and the landline is set to take over to the new network on November 1st. It is not because of the switchover that the line has gone down, it is a fault."

They then booked the engineer visit for us today and it was that engineer that confirmed you had switched off the old service leaving my parents cut off from the world. Where is the sense in providing a changeover date, not providing the physical adapter to be able to use the service and then disconnecting them over a month early !!

I also note that my sister, who lives a stones throw away from us has received her adaptor but has had no word on when her service will change. Are you waiting until her house catches fire and she needs to call the fire brigade perhaps ? Is that your method of "prompting" ? 

You do not give a date and then unilaterally decide to disconnect the service weeks early. Not if you are a responsible company that is.

[John_GS]

Thanks for coming back to me. 

I can confirm from the system check this was not the case. When there is a restriction, there would be a code there - there's not. That's why my colleague booked the tech in, as if the code was there for the restriction, this would have been solved via the method of removing it and within 24 hours with no need for the tech visit.

There was an upcoming restriction but as I say above, that was not in play when you contacted us before today

Best