Hub had red light and not working

[mfurseman]

My Hub 3 started showing a solid red light a couple of days ago, now it intermittently fails entirely: the wifi light stays solid green, no other lights, the SSID is not broadcast, an ethernet attached device either doesn't recognise there is a connection, or gets a rubbish IP from DHCP. It seems to do this for a few hours at the middle of the day making me believe that it really may be an overheating issue as indicated by the light. In the evenings it recovers, works as expected but with the solid red light remaining, there is still the occasional drop out of local networking. I tried hard resetting for 60s but this didn't fix anything.

I called VM about this, but was told that it was due to a fault on the line, not the hub. After insisting for 20 minutes I was told they would send an engineer to check the hub with a £25 charge, with a little more instance the charge was dropped. I now have to wait 48 hours, assuming the engineer does actually come, and make sure I'm at home (while I can't work from there due to unstable internet) just to get a replacement hub.

Is this typical? The customer service representative refused to believe that my fault could exist given there was also a reported line fault (I can see from the logs when this seperate issue happens), and eventually gave in just to get rid of me. Why could they not dispatch a replacement hub instead of unnecessarily sending a technician?

[jbrennand]

Ok I have flagged for VM to come here and comment. Usually be here today but may be the morning - depending on their workloads.

They will probably send a Tech out to replace the Hub as that has become standard practice recently - rather than sending them out in the mail - so they can check the connection at the same time

Its very rarely a fire hazard it's generally thought to be due to either duff LED''s or some local high temp near the sensor. (it is from "Poundland" after all)   But switching it off when out or in bed - is a sensible precaution.

[Corey_C]

Thanks for your post and for reaching out to the Community Forums, mfurseman,

Just to clarify, is the hub overheating or is the light just red? If it is just being red then it would be best to wait for the tech visit for tomorrow. As it is the hub that is malfunctioning there would not be a charge for the house visit.

Cheers,

Corey C

[mfurseman]

The hub does not feel hot to touch, but during the hottest parts of the day it will not turn on (Green wifi light comes on solid, no wifi SSID available for connection, wired connection does not provide an IP, can't ping 192.168.0.1), otherwise during the evenings, and mornings it has the constant red 'overheated' light but otherwise will work.

There is no tech coming tomorrow, as far as I can tell, the customer service rep lied about booking one to get me off the phone.

[jbrennand]

@Corey_C 

Please see the response - there is no Tech visit !!

[Hayley_S]

Hello @mfurseman,

I am sorry for the confusion with the engineer appointment.

I can see that there is one on your account, please can you log into your account and check this again for me? It should show up for you now. However it is not for today.

Many thanks,

[mfurseman]

Hi Hayley, would you be able to confirm this appointment is to my property (and not to fix an external fault)? I cannot login to my account at the moment, the login portal claims it is undergoing maintenance.

[mfurseman]

I can now log into my account, but can see no appointments booked. 50 minutes after you posted I received an SMS stating a technician visit is booked for the 13th September. Hopefully this will go ahead the router will be replaced.

[Akua_A]

Thank you for the update @mfurseman.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this. Please keep us updated on how the appointment goes and if you need any further help.

Thanks,

[mfurseman]

Hi, the technician came this morning, they swapped the router and tightened all coax connections back to and including the cabinet (they were all apparently loose). The internet worked for 30 minutes and then suddenly stopped completely. The router lists no upstream and only one downstream channel. Another technician is booked for Thursday, a call to 150 cutoff where the CS rep said they would try and expedite this.

I highly doubt VM's systems have managed to keep track of these failures for the auto-compensation scheme, and surely not the tech appointment that was confirmed over the phone and never canceled, but apparently never even booked in the first place...

[Lee_R]

Hi @mfurseman thanks for getting back and updating us.

Any appointments where a customer wishes to be sped up, our agents can set the account to notify our dispatch team if and when an earlier appointment becomes available, then the customer would be contacted to check if they could take the earlier appointment.  I am going to send you a quick private message.

Regards

Lee_R