Local network outage - entire road down for multiple weeks!

[uemo_]

Hi all,

Our road has been having intermittent issues with VM's service for the past few weeks and after being told the external box issue was fixed on Sunday 15th, we've had three total outages and three engineers fail to fix the problem since. The first engineer (a nice bloke called Yusuf) said the box had been upgraded recently with a new piece of equipment and the issue he could see was an amplitude issue that he needed to rebalance.

The problem was solved for 18 hours until 10am the next day when the whole road went down again. We were told an engineer was fixing it by 7pm, it was fixed by 2pm. The next day (today) it went down at 10am like clockwork.

Been back and forth multiple times with customer service trying to report the issue or book a capable engineer to fix the issue, but they seem to be incapable of acknowledging an external problem or getting an external engineer visit the same day. Not to mention every time we try and book a technician to the property, the system eventually auto-flags the external issue and cancels the technician appointment (sometimes informing us it's cancelled, sometimes keeping us at the house for 4 hours without notifying us of cancellation).

I've tried saying to 10+ customer service agents that we need someone more senior to fix the issue because 3x engineers have failed to do so.

I spoke to an agent called Ben who tried to forward me to a line what sounded like 'Manchester Telephony Center' to speak to the external engineer team, but got caught in their hangup trap when they said 'are you a Virgin Media customer press 1' which is their way of filtering out customers complaining I'd assume.

The whole system is rigged against the customer trying to solve the issue with the company. For 3 weeks. Does this forum have any other means of fixing the issue or contacting someone who can?

[David_Bn]

Good Afternoon @uemo_, thanks for your post and a very warm welcome to you

Sadly if there's an outage in your local area, there would be very little our agents in the call centre, or here on the Forums would be able to do, and would be left to the field team to resolve

Sorry I'm not able to offer a better answer for you

Kindest regards,

David_Bn

[uemo_]

Hi David,

Thanks for the response. Sadly I've been given the field team's number multiple times (0800 052 5738), but when I contact them asking them to acknowledge the fault, they forward me back to the regular customer service team. The number of times I've had to confirm my name/password letters...

It's absurd that I have no means as a customer of informing the field team of a problem. I understand they don't want any tom/dick/harry calling them, but I'd rather not be told to 'check my cables' or 'plug in via ethernet' every time the local service goes down, as if I don't understand the difference between WiFi interference and upstream/downstream values at zero.

Feeling a bit insulted by the service to be honest.

[jbrennand]

What is being reported on the two fault lines ?

1) the “check service,”Area status webpage" (link at top right of this forum),

and...

2) 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 postcode level.

[uemo_]

The service page says:

We can’t see any issues affecting SW17 0HY

The number is saying the same.

I know this not to be the case. Have restarted the hub multiple times to no avail. Neighbours are getting the same.

I'm sick of having the engineers put a plaster on the issue when there is clearly a deeper fault that needs troubleshooting.

[jbrennand]

Are the neighbours calling in to report the fault? If multiple customers using the same street cabinet are experiencing the same issue and report, the penny may eventually drop - unless its an intermittent issue and by the time you(s) get through its cleared and the agents cant see it

Perhaps @David_Bn  can take a look and double check your connection

In the meantime, to "prove" there is a problem and to visualise and keep a record of the issues, if you haven’t already, set up a free, secure and “offlsite” - “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”. Click the lower link (Share Live Graph) then click generate. Copy the text in the Direct Link box, beware, there may be more text than you can see. On here click the Link icon (2 links chain to the left of the camera icon) In the URL box paste the link you copied and then click OK

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

[uemo_]

Here's my graph:

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/1a3c7b5d430dbc75c4b6190f34de966f42...

Obviously showing nothing now, but I'm sure it'll paint a picture shortly. 

[jbrennand]

Its showing a vertical red line at the moment which may indicate a few things - but needs longer to be sure - check every 15'

EDIT: its appearing now .... so just see what its like after 24h

If it persists it could mean that...

Firstly there is a network issue right now.

Secondly, the i.p. address you inputted into the BQM settings is incorrect - double check by googling "whats my ip address" on your computer/laptop.

Thirdly the Hub is not responding to ICMP requests (pings!) So are you in modem mode with your own router? If so check in its settings something like this.... Advanced Settings > Advanced > Ping > Respond to ICMP echo requests sent to WAN IP - make sure that is ticked to allow.

If you are in normal router mode - look for something similar in the Hub settings (I dont use the Hub as a modem so not sure where that setting might be).

[Tom_W1]

Hi @uemo_ thanks for your post and sincere apologies.

Just so I can inspect things more for you, I'd like to send you a PM just so I can investigate things in more detail for you.

Please expect a PM from me to arrive shortly and respond directly when you can!

Many thanks

[Tom_W1]

Hi @uemo_ thanks for your confirmation of details as requested that's much appreciated.

I'm just replying publicly for the benefits of the thread - I've checked things over and it does appear there is a congestion issue on the line affecting service unfortunately, please accept my apologies for this. 

It would seem that your services are online at the moment, although I appreciate things may be intermittent.

The fault reference for this is F009841864 and the expected end date is 23rd May at approximately 09:00.

Please let us know how things are once the fault is resolved for you and we can take things from there.

Many thanks