It's too complicated

[Deiniol]

I've been with virigin broadband since moving into my house 6 years ago (10 years befor that at a previous address).  Wi-fi has worked fine for those 6 years.  Over the last few months, it has been dropping out intermittently but frequently, a few times a day.

I have re-set the hub multiple times.  I have accessed online test that found a fault which then told me to come back in 24 hours to redo the test to see if the fault was still there and if it was then an engineer would be booked.  I came back in 72 hours and did the test and it then told me to come back in 24 hours.

I have accessed a bot via the chat function who told me to rest the hub.

I phoned a premium number help line and spoke to a bot who ran a test and found a fault then told me to come back in 24 hours and if the fault was found an engineer would be booked but I am away from home in 24 hours.

I went to the forum for help but it was technical and jargony.

I do not want to know how my broadband works.  I do not want to be an expert.  I just want it to work.  I pay £60 a month (the most expensive utility to bill I have) and I just want Virign to fix it.

Virign media has become too big.  It's cutomer services is overly complicated and lacks a human interface.  Richard Branson (the great British entrepreneur who does not pay tax in the UK and who's only virtue is that he is not Rupert Murdock) sort it out!

I want to book an engineer now!

[lotharmat]

I'm not sure Branson will be able to do anything - Virgin Media isn't owned by him any more!

Liberty Global bought it in 2013!

[Deiniol]

Ok,  Branson only has 10% stake but I don't care who owns Virgin I just want my service to work as advertised.  I put in a compliant and the response I recieved (see below) indicates that Virgin will not fix my service.

We’ve looked into it – here’s our findings:
We understand that you are facing issues with the service. We are sincerely explanatory for the inconvenience. Upon investigation, we would like to inform you that there are so many reasons your Internet connection might appear slow. It could be a problem with your modem or router, Wi-Fi signal, signal strength on your cable line, devices on your network saturating your bandwidth, or even a slow DNS server. Only after the troubleshooting is done it will help us pin down the cause. We request you to do basic troubleshoot for intermittent issue following this link https://www.virginmedia.com/help/virgin-media-intermittent-connection. We would request you to follow the link below and have a basic troubleshoot to rectify your broadband issue https://www.virginmedia.com/help/broadband/no-slow-connection/in-home. We would also suggest a quick reboot. It might seem a little obvious, but you would be amazed at how many issues turning the hub off and on again will solve. Sign in to my virgin media or download the my virgin media connect app to check for any known network issues in your area. After the troubleshooting if the issue still persists, we would request you to call our Technical Team on the below given number. They will help you to resolve the issue.

In regards to the compensation, we would like to inform you that Virgin Media provides compensation when it is Total loss of service or Missed appointments or Delayed activations. To know more about our Auto Compensation policy please visit https://www.virginmedia.com/help/automatic-compensation . As you have mentioned the engineer visit, we would like to inform you that currently the engineer slot is not available. We cannot send any technician at any property as per the Government restrictions. We would request you for your cooperation. However, we would request you to call our Technical Team on the below given number. They will try to book an engineer based on the availability. Thank you for your understanding. For any further help you can check out our help and support site virginmedia.com/help . 

And here’s our resolution to your complaint:

here is my response

Dear resolution team,

This is not acceptable.

You say "Upon investigation, we would like to inform you that there are so many reasons your Internet connection might appear slow. It could be a problem with your modem or router, Wi-Fi signal, signal strength on your cable line, devices on your network saturating your bandwidth, or even a slow DNS server".

However, this is technical jargon and I have ran thorugh the trouble shooting below several times and clearly and expert is needed to resolve.

I have gone through this trouble shooting several time. https://www.virginmedia.com/help/virgin-media-intermittent-connection

I have gone through this trouble shooting several times.  https://www.virginmedia.com/help/broadband/no-slow-connection/in-home

I have done a quick reset mutiple time (once a day).

I have spent hours of my time on this already and do not wish to wait on the phone to speak to someone who will no doubt ask me to go thorught the trouble shooting links above.

With regard to compensation,  the page says "We’re proud of our award winning service, including our free service and repairs".  I point out that you claim "free service and repair". However,  trying to fix my problem has cost me many hours of my time.  My time is money so the repair on my service is not free!

You also say that "We cannot send any technician at any property as per the Government restrictions."  However, there are no governemnt restriction for external agents to make repairs and maintance at private property so long as social distancing guidlines are maintiained.  I would be happy to vacate the property to alow an engineer to repair the service.

My service is till not working as advertised.  Virgin have not made efforts to repair my service.  Virign has not adequatly dealt with my complaint and I will be contacting the regulater OFCOM.

[jbrennand]

Shall we do a reset here.

This is a technical help forum, post up more details of the issue and let us see if we can spot the likely cause and see if we can find a solution - which may or may not require a Tech visit.

Lets start by looking at the quality of the Hub/Connection - there are dozens of examples ofthis on this forum (just browse a few posts) - can you do this....
____________________________________________________________

Post up your Hub/network connection details and someone will check to see if there is a problem there.  In your browser’s URL box type in http://192.168.0.1  (or http://192.168.100.1 - if in modem mode) and hit return. On the first page up [there should be no need to login if you have done so before unless you have the New Hub4 when you do] click on the “router status” icon/text at bottom-middle of first page up (or top right on a SH1/2) and then copy/paste as “Formatted Text” (not images) 3 FULL sets of data onto here – 2 pages from the Downstream, 2 from the Upstream, & the Network Logs page. Don't worry too much about the formatting it can be easily read & DON’T include personal data or MAC addresses - blank them out - if you copy/paste the data, the board software will do this for you (you may need to click the "submit" button again.

Also, in the meantime... If you haven’t already, set up a free and secure “Broadband Quality Monitor” to continually monitor the state of your connection and record any true network dropouts , latency issues, packet drops, etc - it will thus allow you to differentiate between those and simple wifi dropouts. It does it 24/7/365 and it keeps a visual record of any/all of your network disconnections, useful data to have to match to the Network logs (in your Hub settings) and also in discussions with VM - note it will take a few hours to start seeing a sensible picture - post up the “link” to the “share live graph” (as per instructions on the TB website) when it starts to develop.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality

[Deiniol]

Thanks for the help.  There was only 1 table/page for each downstream, upstream and network log

Downstream  DS-1 DS-2 DS-3 DS-4 DS-5 DS-6 DS-7 DS-8

Frequency (Hz)	139000000	147000000	155000000	163000000	171000000	179000000	187000000	195000000
Lock Status(QAM Lock/FEC Sync/MPEG Lock)	Locked	Locked	Locked	Locked	Locked	Locked	Locked	Locked
Channel ID	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Modulation	256QAM	256QAM	256QAM	256QAM	256QAM	256QAM	256QAM	256QAM
Symbol Rate (Msym/sec)	6.952000	6.952000	6.952000	6.952000	6.952000	6.952000	6.952000	6.952000
Interleave Depth	I=12 J=17	I=12 J=17	I=12 J=17	I=12 J=17	I=12 J=17	I=12 J=17	I=12 J=17	I=12 J=17
Power Level (dBmV)	0.12	0.18	0.08	-0.01	-0.00	0.09	-0.07	0.07
RxMER (dB)	37.64	37.94	37.94	37.94	38.26	38.26	37.94	38.26
Pre RS Errors

3524	2377	2347	2192	1205	1135	1193	1130
Post RS Errors

1406

800

1435

1374

584

570

655

551

Upstream
US-1 US-2 US-3 US-4

570	655	551
Channel Type	2.0	2.0	2.0	2.0
Channel ID	6	8	7	9
Frequency (Hz)	60300000	46200000	53700000	39400000
Ranging Status	Success	Success	Success	Success
Modulation	64QAM	64QAM	64QAM	64QAM
Symbol Rate (Sym/sec)	5120000	5120000	5120000	5120000
Mini-Slot Size	2	2	2	2
Power Level (dBmV)	44.50	43.50	44.00	43.25
T1 Timeouts	0	0	0	0
T2 Timeouts	0	0	0	0
T3 Timeouts	2	0	0	0
T4 Timeouts	0	0	0	0

Network Log

First Time	Last Time	Priority	Error Number	Description
05/07/2021 08:24:11 GMT	05/07/2021 08:24:11 GMT	Warning (5)	66050300	Auth Fail - Web login failed.
05/07/2021 08:23:56 GMT	05/07/2021 08:23:56 GMT	Warning (5)	66050300	Auth Fail - Web login failed.
05/07/2021 08:23:47 GMT	05/07/2021 08:23:47 GMT	Warning (5)	66050300	Auth Fail - Web login failed.
05/07/2021 08:23:39 GMT	05/07/2021 08:23:39 GMT	Warning (5)	66050300	Auth Fail - Web login failed.
04/07/2021 19:36:55 GMT	04/07/2021 19:36:55 GMT	Error (4)	68010302	DHCP WAN IP - [MOD EDIT: REMOVED]
04/07/2021 19:35:50 GMT	04/07/2021 19:35:50 GMT	Error (4)	68000407	TOD established
Time Not Established	Time Not Established	Critical (3)	82000200	No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established	Time Not Established	Critical (3)	82000200	No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established	Time Not Established	Notice (6)	84000510	Downstream Locked Successfully
04/07/2021 19:03:19 GMT	04/07/2021 19:03:19 GMT	Error (4)	68010302	DHCP WAN IP - [MOD EDIT: REMOVED]
04/07/2021 19:02:16 GMT	04/07/2021 19:02:16 GMT	Error (4)	68000407	TOD established
Time Not Established	Time Not Established	Critical (3)	82000200	No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established	Time Not Established	Notice (6)	84000510	Downstream Locked Successfully
04/07/2021 09:29:59 GMT	04/07/2021 09:29:59 GMT	Error (4)	68000411	TOD error 19187 msec
03/07/2021 09:01:00 GMT	03/07/2021 09:01:00 GMT	Error (4)	68000411	TOD error 17546 msec
02/07/2021 08:34:00 GMT	02/07/2021 08:34:00 GMT	Error (4)	68010302	DHCP WAN IP - [MOD EDIT: REMOVED]
02/07/2021 08:32:58 GMT	02/07/2021 08:32:58 GMT	Error (4)	68000407	TOD established
Time Not Established	Time Not Established	Notice (6)	84000510	Downstream Locked Successfully
Time Not Established	Time Not Established	Notice (6)	84000510	Downstream Locked Successfully
01/07/2021 13:50:31 GMT	01/07/2021 13:50:31 GMT	Error (4)	68010302	DHCP WAN IP - [MOD EDIT: REMOVED]

[MOD EDIT: Personal and private information has been removed from this post. Please do not post personal or private information in your public posts. Please review the Forum Guidelines]

[sophist]

So, i can't see anything obviously wrong in the data you've posted - the log is interesting as it looks like it's rebooting (trying to establish time-of-day) - might be you rebooting it - hard to say.

Next step is to set up a BQM - once set up, find the Live Graph and click "Create Sharing Link" - post that (as a link) back here.

[g0akc]

The post RS errors suggest an issue with the broadband connection - try resetting the counter and see if they go up again - if they do you need a technician visit to resolve (but check cable connections are all tight beforehand).

[sophist]

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@g0akc wrote:

The post RS errors suggest an issue with the broadband connection - try resetting the counter and see if they go up again - if they do you need a technician visit to resolve (but check cable connections are all tight beforehand).

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possibly, though my understanding is that the hub2 always has some on boot due to teh way it negotiates the connection (i don't know why technically - i'm just regurgitating what i've seen others say on the topic)

It's worth checking whether or not these incremement over time though - i have a hub2 which also has a similar number of post-rs errors but they don't increment much once the hub is booted and operational..

[Lee_R]

Hi @Deiniol thanks for posting and welcome to our community.

I have had a look at your services from here.  I can see that you've mentioned yourself, that you have a hub 2, can I ask if that is a personal choice, or would you consider changing to a hub 3?

Regards

Lee_R

[g0akc]

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@sophist wrote:

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@g0akc wrote:

The post RS errors suggest an issue with the broadband connection - try resetting the counter and see if they go up again - if they do you need a technician visit to resolve (but check cable connections are all tight beforehand).

---

possibly, though my understanding is that the hub2 always has some on boot due to teh way it negotiates the connection (i don't know why technically - i'm just regurgitating what i've seen others say on the topic)

It's worth checking whether or not these incremement over time though - i have a hub2 which also has a similar number of post-rs errors but they don't increment much once the hub is booted and operational..

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Noted - I’m really saying see if they continue to rise