2 Months of T3 Errors - Virgin refusing to investigate.

[WorstISP]

Like many others in this forum, I've been getting disconnected from the internet several times a day, and looking at the logs on the Hub there's T3 errors logged around the time of each disconnection.

I complained about this 2 months ago, and Virgin are refusing to investigate the source of the issue.

1st engineer showed up and replaced the hub & attenuator. Told me if the issue continued they'd send a more senior engineer.

2nd engineer showed up and checked the signal strength, couldn't see the issue, and told me they'd send out a more senior engineer.

3rd engineer showed up and was decent enough, said that the issue was obviously in the cabinet, but we couldn't get access that day (building manager was out sick). Rescheduled the visit.

4th engineer showed up completely oblivious to any of the previous visits or notes about the fact that this issue was affecting the entire building and that everything inside my apartment had already been checked & tested, and that the issue was in the cabinet.

Now virgin are refusing to reply to my emails and ignoring this complaint. So from day 1 I've told them "you need to look at the cabinet", and the one engineer who was there to look at the cabinet was the unlucky sod who came around when there was no access available. I should mention that the 1st engineer told me that Virgin had the details to organise a visit with the building management without me needing to organise it, but apparently not.

So what do I do from here? The issue is affecting the entire apartment block, anyone on Virgin is planning to switch to Sky, while the Sky customers are happy. It's not just the apartment block, loads of people around the area are having the same issue.

[WelshGasman]

FWIW I had the same service from BT many years ago on dial up. Lots of noise on line and disconnections.

Took 3 engineers before the last, each senior to the last engineer visit, stating issue in the cabinet, and went and replaced something.

Admittedly issue was intermittent, but the first engineer asked me ' if I was imagining it?'

I have always found Virgin broadband great, until you have an issue, then it goes all to pot. I have also worked for them in their call centres in the past, and had to fight to get them to accept a payment from a customer who was going to be cut off. So I know how bad they can be. 😞

[David_Bn]

Thanks for coming back to us @WelshGasman, can you please confirm how the connection has performed since your most recent post?

Have you set up any broadband quality monitors to present to the engineers upon arrival, or have you been running a monitor perhaps more recently?

Thanks

David_Bn

[WorstISP]

Yes, I need you to fix the bloody internet and stop wasting my time with useless visits by technicians who will be unable to resolve the issue.

We went through all of this before and it was only after the 8th visit that you escalated to the network team who were able to actually fix it.

Please review the previous complaint and actually deal with this issue at the appropriate level instead of forcing me to do all the work for you. The issue affects the entire apartment building as well as multiple buildings around the area, we went through all of this last time you guys botched up some "maintenance".

This is exactly the same situation as before, total outage for ~2 days and then this crap causing multiple disconnections every day. THIS AFFECTS THE WHOLE AREA YOU USELESS THIEVES

[WorstISP]

Any tips for getting things escalated to the appropriate level? It's funny, I was approached by a recruiter hiring for their network automation team and I half considered taking it just to see if I could get my own bloody internet fixed. But I figured that I didn't want to deal with their incompetence on a daily basis

[Ashleigh_C]

If there is an issue in the wider area @WorstISP this would need to be assessed and diagnosed via an onsite visit from an engineer. 

Do you still have your visit booked in with the engineer so they can come and diagnose the issue? If so and they find that they need to contact the Network team then they will advise of this at the visit. 

[WorstISP]

- There was maintanance in the area that caused a widespread outage for 2 days around the 10th of August. You should have this on record.

- You have not addressed my concern about how last time these issues were happening, you sent 8 engineers who were unable to find any issues in my home (or even the cab). This issue was only fixed after escalating it to the appropriate team.

Why are you forcing me to suffer through this again? You are being just as unreasonable as months ago when I had to take 8 days off work to facilitate these pointless visits to my home to solve a widespread issue affecting the entire building and the area.

If I book an engineer visit, will he actually have this context about the issue from months ago? Why do you insist on wasting my time?

The facts are:
- Issue started following a widespread outage around the 10th of August.
- Issue is the same issue as described in this thread which took months to be escalated to the correct team to be fixed.

[Steven_L]

Thanks for coming back to us WorstISP, we have looked further into this and can see that an area issue has been diagnosed under reference F011454899. The current estimated fix date and time for this issue is 17:20 on Monday 2nd September.

Kind Regards,

Steven_L

[WorstISP]

Myself and Virgin Media entered an agreement for Virgin Media to supply internet every month. The "fix date" you state will be leaving me without useable internet for several weeks, with no reasonable offer of compensation.

This is unacceptable, and once again, I have been burdened with the work of identifying and scoping network faults for Virgin Media, while you do nothing but inconvenience me and stonewall me. When I identify area-wide issues, I should be thanked rather than messed around.

When this "estimated fix date" is inevitably missed, how will I be compensated for my time, my energy, and my lack of internet?

[WorstISP]

Just to clarify, I'm offline 95% of the time now. When I restart the hub I can get maybe 30 minutes of internet before the hub starts disconnecting and it fluctuates between 1 minute with internet and 5 minutes offline.

This is not an "intermittent" issue anymore. My connection is completely unusable, this is effectively a total outage for the whole area.

[WorstISP]

To answer your question, they didn't follow through. They offered £20 credit instead when I contacted them about it.