Sky Customers Unable to Call Virgin Media VOIP

[OverAndOut]

Fellow VM customers,

Since November friends and family with Sky mobiles (or landlines) have been unable to call my VM VOIP line. (The telephone is connected to our VM hub).

Making calls is no problem. It appears that numbers from other phone providers can get through, so it seems to affect only Sky numbers. When they call they hear an error message: "Sorry, that number does not exist." VM sent an engineer out and he confirmed all our internal equipment (hub, phone and line) is fine, so suggested it must be an external issue. Sure enough, he consulted his issue-checker, and noted that there was an outage in the area. 

I see from Sky forums that Sky customers are reporting problems between the two networks. I even spoke to a Sky technician who seemed knowledgeable and friendly, but Sky place the issue firmly in Virgin Media's corner. 

Virgin Media telephone support (stop laughing) acknowledge there's an outage in the area, but that's all they know and that's all they ever say. The field technicians have set 4 dates to fix it and failed 4 times. Each time they set themselves a new date and try again. They have a set a 5th resolution date of 3rd Jan. 

There may be an outage, but in over 2 months VM can't actually confirm if that outage is responsible for this specific issue. So, we may be waiting for VM to fix a problem, not the problem.

Faulty hardware and wiring can account for degradation of service across the board, but this isn't across the board, it's specific to Sky numbers, so it seems more of a config issue. 

So, if you're experiencing the issue, please comment. If you have insights that may help, please also feel free to comment.

(VM Mods, if all you can do is confirm there's an outage and repeat the next resolution date, please save your energy.)

Thanks all.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @OverAndOut,

Apologies for this inconvenience, however, Data Protections needs to be passed in order for us to assist further. 

Thank you.

[Martin_N]

Hi Roger_Gooner,

The first 2 questions you have listed aren't security questions. 

Those are questions to locate an account and confirm the name on the account. 

The other 3 are security questions. 

^Martin

[cc1970]

Hi

I too had this problem very recently with people on sky network.  My mother in law and brother in law both had sky landlines on the same exchange and when they called received the same message as you but when someone on a BT landline called they got through no issues so in my mind it was sky netwrk at fault as they have their own equipment at the exchange.  Though Sky and VM both blamed each other but I think Sky looked into it as I explained the scenario above

[Molly_T]

Hi cc1970 👋, welcome back to the community! Thank you for joining this thread. 

Sorry to hear that you are also having issues with your landline service receiving calls from Sky network landlines. 

Is this issue still ongoing for you at the moment? If you can please let us know!

I will also send you a PM to confirm a few details so we can investigate further if needed. 

Thank you for your patience in the meantime. 

All the best! 

[Anonymous]

Ongoing thread on their forum on this too https://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Talk/Sky-to-virgin-landline-connection-problem/m-p/4187789

[OverAndOut]

Thank you @CardiffMan. I've added our case to that forum and we'll watch it closely. I also just spoke to Sky again. They acknowledge that there was a problem on their side 3 weeks ago i.e. first week of Jan 2023, but that has now been resolved. There are now two posts on that forum which are current e.g. 28th Jan and 3rd Feb by Sky customers who have reported this issue to Sky and Virgin. Sky say they investigate if three customers report the same issue to them by phone. So, if you know a Sky customer who cannot call a Virgin number, please have them report the issue to Sky. Thank you.

[OverAndOut · Accepted solution]

Update: I called Sky for the 3rd time today (03.02.2023). Like Sky user Caro77 on the Sky forum here I asked the issue to be escalated. For some reason they asked us to provide examples of numbers that weren't able to get through to the VM landline. I found this baffling and stressed that we couldn't provide an exhaustive list explaining that anyone with a Sky number (landline or mobile) should be able to get through. They resolved the issue within 2 hrs. Friends confirmed they can now get through. Hurrah.

So, it turns out it's wasn't a problem on the Virgin Media end after all. The "outage" that Virgin Media keep referring to has absolutely nothing to do with it. Had we kept listening to Virgin Media, we'd have been waiting for indefinitely. 

Virgin Media take note. If customers raise issues, resist the habit of consulting the service status and automatically concluding it's connected to the outage. Try helping customers by doing some investigation first.

[v23474]

Is anyone else having issues with VoIP? When I call local (Sale), without the area code, I get a message to say this phone is not working. Both people I am calling are with Virgin Media. If I call them with the area code (0161) the calls go through with no issues. 

[Ayisha_B]

Hi @v23474,

Thanks for your post. 

Is this happening on all or just certain local numbers you call?

[goslow]

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@v23474 wrote:

Is anyone else having issues with VoIP? When I call local (Sale), without the area code, I get a message to say this phone is not working. Both people I am calling are with Virgin Media. If I call them with the area code (0161) the calls go through with no issues. 

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The area code issue was mentioned recently, below with a possible explanation from Roger_Gooner

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/Having-to-put-area-code-for-local-calls/td-p/5449239

In the case of VM though, there seems to be an ever-growing list of unusual issues with its phone connections via the hub so you may not be able to find out if your problem is by accident or design.