Lies about the Service Status

[GlenMeehan]

My broadband and TV went down on Tuesday 24th Feb at around 5am. When I called 150 I got an automated message saying that my services work was underway in my postcode area to improve services and broadband and TV services would be unavailable but the matter would be resolved by 9am. I checked the service status on my account and it reports no problems.

9am came and went and service had not resumed. Calling 150 again the new deadline was 1:15 pm. This deadline came an went and a new deadline was set of 9am 25th Feb. I hung on (for 40 minutes) to speak to someone. Unfortunately they repeated the same information, when I pressed I the guy said that was the message they had been told to give to customers. I was not convinced I was getting the full story. I asked to be put through to somebody who could help. After another 10 minute wait while I could hear tapping and chatting in the background, I was put through to another advisor. I questioned the revised resolution timescale of 9am 25th Feb, it was now past 8pm and I queried if the engineers would be working through the night. The advisor did not know. I asked about compensation and was told it would only be triggered after 48 hours of continuous interruption to service. I expressed my dissatisfaction and suggested that I would look to other providers. The response could not have been delivered with great lack of interest or enthusiasm. I could raise a ticket which would prompt text updates and may or may not result in compensation. I was left feeling my custom was unimportant and they were doing me a favour talking to me.

9am 25th came and went and no resolution and what's more the deadline for resolution remained at 9am. Clearly at this point Virgin Media have given up pretending they are updating. 

By mid morning of 25th February I managed to arrange an appointment for an engineer to pay a site visit. I had several texts throughout the day confirming, checking, questioning whether anybody in the household had covid 19 or symptoms. All was OK and so the arrangements finalised and agreed. I cleared access to the broadband and TV connections which are normally behind furniture and thoroughly cleaned and disinfected the whole area. This took a lot of effort. Then at 8pm a text saying they had put the site visit on hold -basically cancelled at short notice.

I called to complain and explained I felt I was not being fully kept in the picture. It was at this point I was informed that service would not be resumed until 2nd of March at the earliest. At this point I realised the other two advisors I had spoken to were not telling me the truth. Let's be clear here it is Virgin Media who are lying. Clearly somebody in the organisation new what was going on but chose to keep quiet about it.

I have been told compensation will be triggered but Virgin Media don't get the negative impact and don't try to resolve the immediate problem with any other solution. The impact on us is severe.

My two children are home schooling. One is in GCSE year and so every day is critical. The other is doing a games development course and has assignments to hand in. This is stressful and damaging to them both in terms of impact on the educational attainment and the social and mental well being. Had we been kept more informed we would perhaps have been able to make other arrangements. Instead we were kept hanging with false promises of early resolution. Shame on yo Virgin Media.

We also have other services that rely on the internet which is not being provided. So e of these are paid services and we are unable to use them. All this means is that the catastrophic failure of service and inept customer care mean we are wasting more money than just the service we pay for with Virgin Media.

On top of all of this we will need to make other provisions to cover the gaps in service that Virgin Media are incapable of or unwilling to deal with. We will at least get our TV up and running and I feel in the process will have removed the need for the TV package we currently pay for. Virgin Media should be trying to do this for us if they are not able to sort out their own are of expertise in a timely fashion.

My whole experience with this has been below poor. The regulator has set a floor below which providers should not dip, Virgin Media are sitting on that floor with no intention of moving their backsides anywhere soon. A complete shambles and Virgin Media should feel ashamed.

[John_GS]

Hi @GlenMeehan

This should have been sent as a public message as PM no longer needed.

The SNR is still scheduled to be fixed with the estimated fix date as today. 

Please monitor it after 6pm today and let me know

Kind regards,

[GlenMeehan]

It turns out the intermittent fault that VM kept spouting on about was a SNR issue and absolutely nothing to do with my issue which was a complete lack of internet and TV into my house. The actual issue I have had been continuous since Feb 23 at 4:30 am. I had arranged for an engineer but that appointment was cancelled because VM assumed my problem was the SNR issue despite me saying it was not the same thing on multiple occasions.

Eventually after multiple calls which amount to probably about 12 hours of my life - including one which cut me off after one hour, an engineer is on his way this morning. That was arranged on Monday 1st if March so another delay before getting a potential solution in place, but I don't hold out much hope, and yet again it is me who is inconvenienced and have to wait around for four hours, and no guarantee of success. 

In total 9 days of no internet or TV from VM and counting. This has impacted on a number of areas and VM seem completely disinterested in that. They are clearly think there are no consequences for them and therefore just put in place awkward processes and poor customer service. Imagine a major Technology service provider's customer service agents not having access to e-mails. The reality is that is VM. I have asked for confirmatory e-mails of the outage and they were unable to do so, instead suggesting

1. Do an online chat and screenshot the response - clearly the nature of my fault, that I have no internet connection, evades them

2. Record the phone conversations, but unfortunately that is neither evidence I am speaking to VM nor am I a Tech giant with the infrastructure and set up to record phone calls

In all an appalling display of ineptitude from the start and it isn't finished yet so I may yet be surprised how bad this can get.

[John_GS]

Thanks for coming back to me, GlenMeehan

I am sorry to hear of this outcome to the outage. All the checks did point to an SNR issue as we did state and I am glad everything has been fixed. 

I will PM you now regarding the complaint

Kind regards,