Loss of service

[mikeh99]

• YET AGAIN VIRGIN MEDIA FAILS THEIR CUSTOMERS.  

THIS MORNING 9.40sm ish COMPLETE LOSS OF SERVICE. PROMISE IS TO BE BACK BY 3pm

WHY?

VM DOING UPGRADE IN MY POSTCODE. 

THANKS VM NOT

IS VM TOTALLY INCAPABLE OF NOTIFYING AT LEAST 10 DAYS BEFORE INTERRUPTIVE UPGRADE WORK WILL TAKE PLACE TO WARN ITS CUSTOMERS SO IF THEY ARE WORKING FROM HOME THEY CAN ADJUST/ CHANGE THEIR SCHEDULE.  
NOW UNABLE TO WORK UNTIL SERVICE RESUMES!!!!

COMPLETE INCOMPETENCE.  WHY DO THIS ON A WEEKDAY / BUSINESS DAY???????

YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF POOR POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE. 

TOTALLY UNIMPRESSIVE. 

[mikeh99]

WHY COULD THIS WORK NOT BE DONE OVERNIGHT 9PM TO 3 AM??

[jpeg1]

Well that's the downside of relying on a residential broadband service for work, and not having a backup service. You do it at your own risk.

Your suggestion to start this work at 9pm would not go down well with the many residential customers who watch TV and play online games after 9pm.

Virgin Business would give you notice of a planned disconnection, and provide 4g fallback. 

PS  The fault seems to have affected your caps lock key. 

[mikeh99]

Thank you jpeg1 for your "positive" comments

1) If I have VM business I get no TV and have to buy both home and business at double the cost

2) I have mentioned several times VM are missing a massive trick.  If they sold a hybrid package i.e. work mixed with personal TV and Personal Home phone they would have a best seller.  Why?  Because the world of work has paradigm shifted in last two years.  Hybrid working at home is now here to stay.  So such a package is needed.  VM sales and marketing please listen.   As above if I had business package and still want VM TV etc would have to buy separate.

3) Considering 90+% of VM customers are Home and provide the vast majority of VM income why cannot they send out an email to home customers when their service is going to be disrupted by "scheduled upgrade work".  It is scheduled they know when it will be and therefore can let customers know.  If water, gas and electricity can do it why not VM?

PS MY CAPS LOCK WAS ON BECAUSE I WAS MAKING A POINT.  Fixed now 😎

[jpeg1]

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@mikeh99 wrote:

Thank you jpeg1 for your "positive" comments

1) If I have VM business I get no TV and have to buy both home and business at double the cost

Why would you need a second broadband connection to watch TV?  You can get any TV programme over a broadband-only service.  e.g. Sky TV sell TV-only.

2) I have mentioned several times VM are missing a massive trick.  If they sold a hybrid package i.e. work mixed with personal TV and Personal Home phone they would have a best seller.  Why?  Because the world of work has paradigm shifted in last two years.  Hybrid working at home is now here to stay.  So such a package is needed.  VM sales and marketing please listen.   As above if I had business package and still want VM TV etc would have to buy separate.

No. See 1)

3) Considering 90+% of VM customers are Home and provide the vast majority of VM income why cannot they send out an email to home customers when their service is going to be disrupted by "scheduled upgrade work".  It is scheduled they know when it will be and therefore can let customers know.  If water, gas and electricity can do it why not VM?

You're assuming that Virginmedia care about their customers. They don't.  The business is run at minimum cost to its owners - that's the only consideration.

PS MY CAPS LOCK WAS ON BECAUSE I WAS MAKING A POINT.  Fixed now 😎

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[Kath_F]

Hi mikeh99, 

Thanks for your post and apologies to hear that recent work was disrupting your connection. 

Where possible we do alert account holders of any works that may be taking place however most of these works are scheduled off the back of a fault so we're left with no time I'm afraid. 

I have fed your comments back to the relevant teams for them to take these onboard. 

If you have any further issues, please pop back and let us know so we can help further. 

Thanks, 

[mikeh99]

Hi Kath_F
So much for the upgrade work done recently - today uploading files despite speed on Ookla saying crawled.  When phone VM first call didnt get through even though passed security as at 7 mins my calls was just cut-off.

Second call as with first was told there was problems with my services and if I wanted update to press 3 spoke to someone who tested my line this took over 3 mins plus asked for extra min.  Advised my could not find any problems.  Explained I used Ookla speed test and only getting 33% to 44% of 1gb line speed I pay for.   VM person then wanted me to change speed test which I know from the past is just a waste of time.   So got no where.

At 17.40pm rebooted my router as my Alex said it was experiencing problems.  18.01 some 20mins after reboot did another ookla speed test hoping to see an improvement.   Not so download 229 and upload 52.53

Just run another 18.15 - download started at just over 700 and then plummeted to 406 - upload steady at 52.55 

So as started - SO MUCH for recent upgrade!

Whilst typing this message I have been holding on a call to VM and so far been waiting over 18mins and STILL NOT GOT THROUGH now given up!

Would welcome if anyone can get this looked into / resolved.

PS I am on HUB 5 is that anything to do with this

[Steven_L]

Thanks for coming back to us with your update @mikeh99.

I'm really sorry to hear of the ongoing issues that you're facing at the moment. How has your service been running since you last posted?

Any improvement at all with your connection speeds or are you still having issues with your connection?

If you're still having issues, is this happening at any particular time of day or all throughout the day since the works that were carried out in your area?

Regards,

Steven_L

[mikeh99]

Steve_L

After waiting over a week or more things now seemed to have settled down and am hesitant to say marginally improved.

Will monitor over the coming weeks to see if improve is consistent.

Going back to my original post still don't not understand why VM cannot notify it's customers by email when such "scheduled" work is going to be done?  Surely doing so would save numerous help desk calls?

[Ilyas_Y]

Hey @mikeh99, thanks for reaching out to us.

I'm glad to see the improvements happen with the broadband service, though it may be a bit slower than usual, it's good to see the connection stabilize slowly.
With any planned maintenance, if it planned in advance by a while, then yes we do give notification about this, via email, text, letters etc.
However, if the outage is last minute, i.e. a fault, or last minute maintenance work then the notification may not be sent as fast as we wish.

However, I will feed this back to the team due to the problems it can cause and has caused, i.e. numerous help desk calls.

Kind regards.