Who do I speak to about continuous poor customer service?

[mikeh99]

It is quite simple over the past 2 months I have had to make numerous calls due to issues with my broadband predominately to do with 

1) Upgrading of cabling, (5 to 11) very shoddy installation, after calls promised repull promised 4/5/22 did not turned up at all - chased in afternoon was advised still pending and been done by 7pm NOTHING and no contact, message or email to explain (a) why didnt turn up and (b) had been rescheduled to 19/5/22.  I have four inches of unburied fibre cabling at the border of my property currently cover over by a brick so no passer-by sees it and could pull it out / up.  I was not present at property when cable upgrade complete as I was not advised of date or work they just turned up and if it wasn't for checking my ring front door device on returning home I wouldn't even of know they had been.  No note through letter box - text message or email. 

2) Account deal promises not being kept or put through until chased and checked three times

3) Promised engineer to look at Post RS Errors - still don't know if or when this will happen

4) Numerous occasions on calls to VM just summarily CUT OFF - believe due to phone system capacity issues

5) Even after upgrading to 1GB still on average getting only 60% of promised download speed.

6) Promised three free wifi extenders now on 1gb contract - promised would be ordered and one arrive today 6/5/22 - NOPE!  Also told each one had to be ordered separately due to the ordering system and each one in turn could not be ordered until previous one received - REALLY???

To name but SIX

Asked to speak now on at least 4 separate occasions  to a manager to review my account and associated calls only to be told unavailable / busy would call later, NEVER DO!

Latest raised a complaint about no call back and above issues which has been summarily closed by email without any call or contact to discuss and closing email does not refer to what I actually asked to raise as complaint as about call back.

SO WHEN IS SOMEONE AT VIRGIN MEDIA ACTUALLY GOING TO LISTEN AND MORE IMPORTANTLY RESOLVE THESE ISSUES WHICH HAVE BEEN FESTERING ON FOR WEEKS IF NOT MONTHS.

HELP PLEASE

[mikeh99]

Well here we are again!  It is Wednesday 18/05/22 - 9:43

Have I heard from Carol about confirmed date and time of my cable sort out

NO  !!!!!!!!!!!!

Yet again PROMISE MADE - PROMISE BROKEN.  Is it really this difficult to schedule this piece of work.   It should as explained to Carol take less than 20 mins to complete.  Just need to dig up a 2ft by inch piece of tarmac that covered the first cable laid when I started with Virgin and move new cable from under grass and make good with new tarmac.   Any spare cable can be placed under driveway paving stones.   Really is this so difficult.  

Ashleigh_C

As before if this had been done properly and matched as previous original cable - THIS WOULD NOT BE AT ALL NECESSARY.

Hours and hours of my time wasted because VM cannot do their jobs right.   Will any lessons be learnt from all of this to improve VM service?   Very much doubt it!   Question how much money does VM loose / waste by such poor service?

If the cable sort out happens tomorrow as previously scheduled and as PREVIOUSLY STATED NO TO and promised this would not happen..... 

I WILL NOT BE IMPRESSED!

Will someone PLEASE get this sorted as required and then advise me ASAP!

[jem101]

@mikeh99 

Not wanting to worry you but I’d say there’s a non-zero chance that a team will turn up tomorrow, dig up your entire driveway and leave the slabs in a heap in the corner! The four inches of cable will, naturally, still be sticking out.

Having said that, your connectivity issues. Firstly, you have a Hub 5 and are on the 1 Gigabit tier, right? I assume you were already using the 5 before upgrading to Gig One as VM, for various reasons, won’t send them out to existing Gig One customers.

One of the reasons for this is that currently the VM ‘pods’ which they now use instead of the old legacy WiFi extenders, don’t work with the Hub 5. If you have been promised these then you won’t get them as the ordering system will see that you are on a 5 and put a block on it. Now VM may well have a couple of the old power line based extenders which they have dug out of a pile of random equipment, give them a quick dust down and send them off to you, if this is what they meant then fine, but I suspect not and no extenders will arrive for you.

Secondly, the stats and log you posted earlier, a couple of things jump out. Firstly the pre and post RS error counts on the DOCSIS 3 D/S channels, although it is reporting many Post RS errors on all the channels, it is claiming very low or zero Pre RS errors across all of the them. This just isn’t realistic and it has been mooted that there is a bug in the web page and the two columns should be swopped around - which is much more like it. Secondly the repeated error 16 and 24 in the logs are OFDM (DOCSIS 3.1) failures on one of the channels (16 is the failure and 24 is the recovery). I didn’t see you post any stats on the single DOCSIS 3.1 channel you should have, without that working, then realistically 700-750 Mb/s or so is about the most you will get.

As you may well know the Hub 5 is currently not being made generally available, it is still being sent out on a trial/soft launch basis, as I said it doesn’t work with the pods, nor does it work with the Connect App, only recently did it start working with the 21CV telephony provision and there have been quite a few posting from users complaining of a bug in the web interface throwing an exception error. The latter does seem to have died down recently so maybe a firmware update has fixed it or possibly the small minority of users you ever log in to the hubs to change anything have found a work around.

There is, therefore, the possibility that your Hub 5 is faulty - not an unheard of situation - but could you check and see if you do have the 3.1 channel and also post up the stats for the upstream connection which can often give more clues as to what is going on.

Lastly as regard to the configuration file, the Hub 5 uses an entirely different chipset than the 3 or 4, so I’m not too surprised to find that the configuration files aren’t interchangeable. Annoying yes, but understandable and I wouldn’t hold that against VM.

Best wishes

[mikeh99]

FURTHER UPDATE 08:05 19/05/22

Well here we are again

Did I get a call from Carol yesterday?          NO

Did I get an update of when cable issue be resolve from anyone?      NO

SO YET AGAIN PROMISES MADE - PROMISES BROKEN

CAN ANYONE AT VM GET THIS RESOLVED?

[mikeh99]

FURTHER UPDATE 08:48 19/05/22

After leaving a message on Carol's contact number Carol has just called me back and confirmed even though the job is still listed / dated for today it will be changed my cable issue will be resolved by a visit tomorrow 20/05/22 between 8am and 1pm and a field manager will be coming out to see the issue and work completed.

Fingers crossed this will all be successful then I can move on to getting

1) Why WIFI extenders delivered 

2) My growing Post RS Errors resolved

[Reece_MH]

Hi Mike,

I'm glad to hear Carol has got back in touch with you regarding this. I'm also happy to see the visit has been brought forward and will be completed tomorrow by the Area Field Manager. If you mention the Post RS errors to the Technician tomorrow, they should be able to take a look into this for you.

In regards to the boosters, we wouldn't be able to process these through as you would have an outstanding work order on the account (the construction work). Let us know once this has all been finished, and we can take a further look for you.

Thanks,

[mikeh99]

FURTHER UPDATE FRIDAY 20/05/22 09:48

A two man team arrived here 8.45am and we discussed exactly what was required.  The immediately set to work and it was obvious from the get go Tony and Jake (father and son) knew what they were doing and going to do a quality job.   They reported what they had found to their manager Adam who I believe has now recorded this as a formal complaint and will be discussing with the previous team who did such a shoddy job.   Tony and Jake have do a first class job and even checked the connection box at side of house and reconnected me "properly" as this was found wanting as well.

By the way the old cable 5 was STILL connected and may even still have been connected in the white box.  This has now been disconnected in the brown box.  Question is this why I was seeing Post RS Errors????  Or even causing slower download speeds???

Overall first class job by a first class team.  Did say to Tony and Jake why couldn't I have had them do the job first time round and all of this would have been totally unnecessary.

Some further feedback
It would appear the communication of what was actually required on this job today from VM was inadequate as when first arrived was asked if I had no service and thought here to do a re-pull which as we all know from above was not at all the case.
VM you seriously need to improve your communication of jobs / work details to your construction team (third party company) as the impression I have if this was improved you would significantly and actually save time and more importantly money / costs and even more importantly have improved customer service / less complaints and less time wasted.

So what next
Now for Lavinia to process my first order for the first of my three free wifi extenders please.

Now for an engineer to be arranged to check about my Post RS errors which I will again continue to monitor.

One down - few more to go.
 

[Paul_DN]

Hi mikeh99,

Thank you for reaching back out, we appreciate your feedback and will make sure this id fed back, please keep us updated and let us know if you need any further help Via our community.

Regards

Paul.

[mikeh99]

Interesting Update

yesterday whilst finally being able to cut the front piece of grass now the cable has been properly buried, I struck up a conversation with a passer-by.

As part of this mentioned about my virgin cable only to be quickly responded with likewise their cable had been poor buried under grass when adding a cable to the next door neighbour so much so that when recently the council had come along and cut it they had also severed their Virgin Fibre Cable.

So it would appear the construction team that had done my cable recently had done this as well and as mentioned by neighbour opposite had their new cable buried right up the centre their front lawn over 20 or more feet!!

Is someone going to do something about this repeated poor service from the construction team.  It must be costing VM at least double every time this poor team goes to work!!

hope someone picks this up and ensures the above is not repeated!!!!

[Carley_S]

Hi @mikeh99

If you're neighbour has a complaint against their installation work also, please advise they will need to get in contact with us themselves so we can work to investigate this for them. They can post on the community or contact us directly on 0345 454 1111 / 150 or via SMS 0753 305 1809 to raise the issue/complaint. 

[mikeh99]

Too late.  Their cable has been replaced.  Forgot to ask if had be buried again under grass. 
They are not close neighbours or know to me.  
The key thing here is same issue, poor service, poor quality installation  pure laziness.