Neighbours cable broken

[rmebden]

Our neighbour has Virgin media phone, tv and internet.  When rotivating our front garden earlier her cable was snapped by accident as it goes through our garden.

We’ve called Virgin Media to be told it’ll be nearly three weeks before it’ll be fixed.  This seems ridiculous, our neighbour is 80 and on her own.  It’s not her fault, not ours (I never consented to you running a cable on my property).

What can you do to help?

[japitts]

There's 2 separate issues here - one is the wayleave/permissions of the cable across your ground, the other is your neighbour's loss of service.

1: Neighbour being off-service... has your neighbour reported their loss of service to VM? They need to. The cause of the loss is immaterial here - but reporting it is crucial. 0345 4541111 is a landline-rate call from any working phone, for this purpose.

2: Cabling running across your property - have you raised this with VM previously? Do you have any photos - that'll help.

[rmebden]

Yes she reported it and was told there will be a three week wait and it will cost £25.

I’ve not raised the cable being in our garden with VM before; I used to have a large hedge there (we just removed it).  They had run it through the a wall, along it a little and then into the neighbours garden.

The main issue is really the length of time it’s taking for them to send someone to fix it. I’ve called too and asked them to escalate the issue.  Will see what happens but the advisor didn’t seem fussed.

[japitts]

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@rmebden wrote:

Yes she reported it and was told there will be a three week wait and it will cost £25.

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Call back. That's a CS agent getting confused with a non-fault callout and giving duff advice as a result. I'm presuming of course, that your neighbour didn't confuse the agent with trying to explain the cause? Just report "I am off-service" and let the call be a means-to-an-end of getting a tech visit. Let that tech worry about the fix.

There's not much point in my escalating this post for expedited attention by forum staff at the moment, if it's not yourself that's off-service.

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@rmebden wrote:

The main issue is really the length of time it’s taking for them to send someone to fix it. I’ve called too and asked them to escalate the issue.  Will see what happens but the advisor didn’t seem fussed.

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I'm not surprised. Forget your CS call as being a way of reporting the full story here. The CS call needs to be the customer who is off-service, and this is not you, but your neighbour.

That CS call is a means-to-an-end as I mentioned above. I suspect you and your neighbour may - with the best of intentions - be overcomplicating this with phone-CS, and therefore inadvertently making it worse. With this scenario, go with the "KISS" scenario - "Keep it simple....."

Your neighbour simply needs to call CS and report "I have no service", not mention anything about gardens, cables or anything else. If this simple attempt at reporting loss of service still gets nowhere, then we have another problem.

[Ayisha_B]

Hi @rmebden,

Welcome to our Community Forums and thanks for your post.

I am sorry to hear your neighbour is without service after the cable was accidently damaged. 

The team will have booked the first available appointment for this and if you've  asked for it to be escalated to the field team, hopefully things can be moved forward. 

Keep us posted.