I'm a long-term Virgin Media fan and have never had anything other than teething issues with my service, but was surprised to find out just how tedious it is to get hold of a replacement router (Hub 3.0) after mine died.
I'm curious if anyone else has experienced this and has any tricks / ideas on how to speed up the process?
A bit of context: upon returning home at the weekend I found the box to be completely dead with no lights & no WiFi. Checked the obvious stuff, wires and cabling, did a full reset sequence even though there was no visual feedback coming from the unit. The PSU and cable are fine - checked with a multimeter and getting the expected voltage from the socket. Wall socket checked with a different appliance and also fine. There has been no environmental changes to the box or its location, it has been sitting quietly on a shelf in my lounge for the last 2.5 years.
I called up VM, expecting them to go through some generic troubleshooting steps after agree to post out a replacement after those failed:
1st call to CS (Sunday) - Upon completion of the troubleshooting attempts, which confirmed the box was invisible to the network: "we must insist on sending an engineer to your home for further diagnosis - can't book one in for 9 days, but instead we'll give you a call tomorrow from a 'virtual engineer who might be able to do something'"
This virtual engineer call never came.
2nd call to CS (Monday afternoon) - "Sorry you haven't had a call yet, the virtual engineer will give you a call back later today within 4 hours"
This virtual engineer call never came.
3rd call to CS (Tuesday - today) - "let's skip the virtual engineer, and go with the original insistence on sending an engineer to your home for diagnosis - can't book one in for 8 days. There is no alternative and we can't expedite it." I went ahead and booked this out of desperation.
It's booked for the 15 June, which will be 10 days since the problem was first reported.
It just seems a bit ridiculous to require an engineer (at some quite considerable cost to the company no doubt) to come for a home visit to confirm that the unit is genuinely dead, vs. the cost of just posting a replacement (having completed the troubleshooting). I assume they are almost always in stock, are cheap enough to not need to agonize over, and can be posted out same day.
Any suggestions from staff or other customers on getting this solved quicker would be much appreciated. I am convinced the only resolution to the problem is a new box and it's frustrating to have to wait so long to go through the motions.
I work from home, am approaching my data limit on my non-VM mobile phone (for tethering) so am probably going to have to fork out for a bolt on. VM mentioned some compensation scheme but I am willing to bet it won't cover this. I'm on the 100Mbps package so not immediately eligible for a Hub 5 upgrade unfortunately.
Many thanks!
