Intermittent Broadband - Ethernet and wifi - 4 days and no FIX!!!!

[dirtyharry73]

Virgin Media are really really poor.
4 months ago I had a 30 hour period of intermittent broadband, with loss of service, poor bandwidth, wifi working on and off and the same with fixed ethernet connections.
I reset the Superhub 3, Powered off and on more than once.  I even reset the router and re-configured.
I called 'technical support' - joke.   Was told to just monitor the situation as it was a problem caused by 'upgrading' their network.    Suddenly started working after 30 hours.  Obviously fixed the issue at their backend.
I wrote a letter of complaint detailing how poor they were.
Got two letters in the post 3 weeks later saying they were investigating.
I rang to follow up and was told they were definitely looking into it.

A week later they just closed the issue off.

Rang to complain about how poor this was, 45 mins later offered £20. Agreed just to put an end to the matter and never saw the money.

Weds 10th August - 4 DAYS ago - in the evening exact same type of technical fault re-occurred.
Their website the next morning said that there were no issues but a little information box said there was maintenance on Thursday 11th August 00.01 to 06.01!

Later that day their automated call system said there were technical problems in my postcode.
Rang technical support, terrible waste of time. Just told problems they were fixing with no ETA

Next day the Friday rang again, on hold for 20 mins, spoke to the offshore call centre and got told it was a major problem and to be fixed by Friday 19th August - 10 days off issues.  INCREDIBLE.

I then rang retentions out of desperation, spoke to a UK based very helpful agent who used to work in faults.   Evidently a SNR - Signal to Noise ratio problem.   Possibly broken fibre cable in area but not definite.

Anyway in this day and age where I work from home as do millions of others, considering the amount of money I pay VM this is not acceptable in any way.  
The Superhub 3 is a pile of junk and often needs a daily reboot when wifi drops out and wont come back.   I asked about getting a hub 4 or 5 but of course VM want more money for this when they should be providing decent equipment in the first place.   Never mind all my time calling them and resetting my router to no avail.  My time now travelling to work and back for several days plus petrol money. No that doesn't matter.

I want this fixed, I want someone to contact me and keep me updated with the problem and I want a decent (NOT Superhub 3) router supplied by VM.  My contract finishes in 3 months and if this doesn't happen I will leave VM and find someone else because I am not prepared to put up with this EVER again.

[jbrennand]

BQM building up OK now...lets see what its like tomorrow. They are repeating the fix time as that is all they know/have been told. They willl never know actual details. Try again and insist they give you the fault reference number.

Best info will usually be given on the “free & automated” Service Status number - 0800 561 0061 - which usually gives the most up to date info. and tells you of more local issues down to street cab/ postcode level. See what that reports. If nothing shows on there I would be sceptical that it is still a known fault.

[dirtyharry73]

Thanks for the Service Status number which I called and which just stated that there were known intermittent Broadband and TV issues in my postcode.

The intermittent TV issues are also there, i,e. Slow guide, deleting a recording can take a while and graphics missing in programme info.  All relatively minor and not bothering me. 

However as such maybe the status is accurate, who knows.  I will call tomorrow and attempt to get a fault reference number.

Was hoping that VM might actually trawl through their own forums and attempt to communicate and help their customers.  They just aren't interested.

[jbrennand]

Its not that the Forum staff arent interested - its just that they dont know any more than is on the status line. They can look and get the reference number but the estimated fix date will be the same.

It will remain so until the VM folks working in the hole on the street or working on the street cabinet or other more central places.... have used their communication systems to update the info.

[dirtyharry73]

Utterly, utterly fed up to the back teeth now. Day 9.

Evidently the issue is no more according to Virgin Media's automated system and service status checker.

So I rebooted the Tivo box and turned power off on Garbage Hub 3 for 5 mins later.

Over 30 mins later TV issues seem all OK.
Wifi is possibly OK for now but no ethernet conmectivity.

At 16.00 when I have finished work via moble hotspot, I shall have to make the dreaded call to them.
Unacceptable.

[jbrennand]

Often worth a full Hub reset (as below) after an outage like this

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Do a Hub “pinhole reset” - first make sure the 2 passwords on the Hub sticker are still there and legible first ! Disconnect any ethernet cables from the Hub (leave the coax connected), and then with the Hub still "switched on" throughout, press pin in firmly with paper clip/SIM tray tool or similar "thin thing" and hold it firmly for at least 60 (a timed sixty) seconds, release the pin, leave for 5’ to stabilise - dont manually switch it off at any time. Passwords and SSID’s will reset to those on the sticker. See if that sorts it.

[dirtyharry73]

I have the default wifi SSID and wifi password.

Can't see anything else. I did a 'restore default' the other day from the gui of the hub which gave me default login password.

[dirtyharry73]

Found the GarbageHub 3 default login. Pin hole reset it for 60 secs, reconfigured passwords and wifi ssid. Still as $h1t and unreliable as ever. Engineer coming Sunday, hopefully to resolve. Thanks VM for wasting 9 days of my time before sending an engineer 3 further days later. Your systems are dire. You do no diagnostics or troubleshooting until the computer says no. Really really pathetic. You have wasted a lot of my time when you could have sent an engineer days ago.

[dirtyharry73]

Did a reset, waste of time.

Same as before.

Just got to wait for an engineer on Sunday, day 12.   Utterly apalling.

[dirtyharry73]

Mainly been using mobile data today as Broadband so totally shocking.

11th day of this.  12 when the engineer comes tomorrow.

So Virgin Media tech support (what a joke) call this afternoon and 'investigate'. They run some remote diagnostics for a couple of minutes and then tell me they are having some problem with 'onboarding' or at least that is what I think was said as it was difficult to make out.   He then said I had an issue.   No, you don't say I thought to myself.     Maybe if you had investigated properly in the first place instead of everyone passing the buck as a wider system issue this would have been fixed days ago.

Praying the engineer can resolve tomorrow.

4 extra hours commuting to an office, 16 extra quid in fuel, 9 extra quid on extra mobile data plus hours of grief calling VM and resetting router, rebooting etc etc.

Very poor in every facet.

[Matthew_ML]

Hey dirtyharry73, thank you for reaching out and a warm welcome to the community, I am sorry to see you have been having various issues with your connection recently. 

I can see there has been a few outages and also that you had a engineer out too recently, how did that go?

How has the connection been since this visit? Thanks