Extremely Poor Customer Service - Quite Miffed Actually

[itsmartin]

Before I start my Rant.........
I DO realise that this pandemic has flipped everything on its head, and that the demand caused by Home Working has made a huge difference to everything, and I Know we (I) have not got a business contract - so I have not really got a leg to stand on when complaining.
I Do realise that the social distancing has caused routine work to halt for a while, and I know that the engineers are doing their best.

BUT.........
I first reported my issues last year somewhen. I was getting dropouts, disconnections galore.
I had all my cables changed. Then "they" discovered a problem in the "box up the road" and fixed it.
This caused my Land line to stop ringing. There WAS a dial tone but there was no ringing when a call came in. I missed several important calls - as i didn't know that it was ringing.
They Fixed that and then the Broadband went back on the fritz.

The last few months have been a lot better, up until the last two weeks that is!

I wasn't informed in advance that there were to be "Works carried out" to improve service.
So I got up each day unsure if I should travel to work ( stay home if you can - go in if you cant get online)
My Sone is just about to start college, and had a taster day. which he had to use up all of his Mobile data straming Live meetings on his phone as a personal hotspot - just so he didn't miss out.

I have been having to travel into work - with intermittent connection stopping me from doing my work at home.
Today has been the last straw.
There is a Virgin Van.
There is No service.
I am Completely fed up.

This "So Called Remedial work" better be worth the pain it has caused.
I am on a 100M tarrif , and am lucky if i get 20, but I put that down to sharing the cables with the neighbourhood.

Please can SOMEONE do SOMETHING.
BECAUSE IT DOESN'T STAY OFF FOR 48 HRS - there is a clause that says no compensation.
The only compensation I want is a GOOD Quality Service, and perhaps a reduced bill for the months that have been affected.

Please advise me what to do. ( And I Have turned it off and on again )

[g0akc]

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@itsmartin wrote:

Please advise me what to do. ( And I Have turned it off and on again )

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Look at raising a formal complaint using the VM process.  If no joy raise with CISAS.

Bear in mind that one of the issues arising from Covid, with may people working from home, has been contention/congestion on broadband networks in many residential areas - with people working from home.

The VM residential service is meant to be just that - for household/leisure use and appropriate uptime/reliability etc.

If there is an issue, VM may well have to carry out remedial work, which will have some impact.  To be fair when they did so here recently we received a paper letter through the post giving advanced warning.

[goslow]

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@itsmartin wrote:

<snip>

Please advise me what to do. ( And I Have turned it off and on again )

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From your post(s) going back into 2020, there seems to be lots of possibilities for your issues (a local problem with your connection, over-utilisation, use of a VPN, wider issues/upgrades in your area, all have been mentioned).

If you have an issue with over-utilisation, then that can take months to resolve. I have experienced it in the distant past and the whole process took 15 months until it was fully fixed by VM.

Are you looking to stick with VM or are wanting to leave? The VM compensation scheme only deals with outages (not intermittent poor service over a long time).

The VM speed policy

https://www.virginmedia.com/shop/the-legal-stuff/virgin-media-speed-policy

may apply to your situation but I can't recall topics on here mentioning it, so not sure how easy it would be for a customer to implement it. I am sure VM will make it as difficult as possible for a customer to use it as a reason to leave!

[Ashleigh_C]

Hi there @itsmartin

Thank you so much for your post and I am so sorry to hear this has been you experience, it does sound incredibly frustrating and I am so sorry that these connection issues have caused so many other issues in your day to day life.

I'd love to be able to help with this, I've had a look on your account and I can see that everything appears to be in spec with the Hub on our side. Can I ask if you are currently experiencing a loss of connection? I cannot see any reported outages on your account to suggest so. 

Thank you very much.