On-going Complaint - IP different location

[Lette]

Early February, I noticed after trying to log into a few online accounts and TV services was showing an incorrect location.  After wasting my time, spending all day, speaking to Virgin Media customer services & technical support I was unable to get the problem fixed, reason being, most of the people I had spoken too had no clue of what I was talking about, half of them did not even know what a WAN was. The very last person I spoke too, did understand what I was talking about but was unable to fix the problem and told me the only way to get the issue fixed was to make a complaint, so below is what I first wrote, through the complaints system.

I noticed that our WAN IP had changed to Edinburgh, which is 400 miles from our location. I logged into the HUB 5 and checked the Default gateway and it was 92.238.80.1 which is Scotland.  I call customer service and ended up speaking all day to about 11 people in different departments most did not have a clue of what I was talking about, others tried to tell me the issue was mine, not VM. I have had computers over 30 years and cable broadband over 20 years, so I know what I'm talking about. This is affecting my TV and many other online accounts because of the current WAN IP assigned. I was told by the last person I spoke to that the only way to get this fixed is to make a complaint, when really all I need to do is speak to someone in the UK network team tech department, which you cannot do. This must be a one off because I couldn't find anyone who has had this problem before and I have searched online for hours. Please can you pass this problem onto the network team, so that they can change my Default gateway in the HUB 5 back to a local one, so I can obtain a local WAN IP or provide me with a telephone number to call the UK Networking team.

I received a reply from Virgin Media Complaints, see below the two important paragraphs from Virgin Media Com : 

We have thoroughly investigated your complaint and confirmed that your concerns are legitimate. We identified an error in our network configuration that resulted in your WAN IP being assigned to Edinburgh instead of your local area. Rest assured, we can take immediate action to rectify this issue. Your HUB 5's default gateway is supposed to be reconfigured to a local one, ensuring you receive a localized WAN IP address aligned with your geographical location. This change should resolve the issues you were experiencing with your TV and other online accounts, so to make any technical changes we suggest you call us or even chat with us.

We have implemented additional measures to prevent similar occurrences in the future. We acknowledge your extensive experience with computers and cable broadband and apologize for any suggestion that the issue originated from your end. We value your expertise and appreciate you bringing this matter forward. We understand your frustration with reaching the appropriate support team. We are continuously working to improve our customer service structure and ensure efficient resolution of inquiries.

Well the problem was not resolved, as they stated, I reset the HUB 5 back to factory default and switched off for 10 minutes, but still it had the default gateway for Scotland.  So of course I wrote back to them again, this is my response to them, below : 

Dear Virgin Media Team,

With reference to my email below and your reply, I am very disappointed that this issue have not been resolved by yourselves and that the problem still remains with my WAN IP location.

You replied to my email below and mentioned that you acknowledge the problem is legit (highlighted below for your ref below) and that you identified the error was in your configurations and that you (can take immediate action to rectify this issue) .  This issue is still not fixed.  I have reset the HUB back to default, turned it off for about 5 minutes and it is still saying location Edinburgh, Scotland.  So the default gateway have not been changed.  Is this issue just isolated to me or is it for the whole of Devon?

In my original complaint below, I asked you to provide me with a contact number for the Virgin Media UK Networking Team, however, you only provided the usual customer service number in your reply.  I called this number and spoke to them, asking them to put me through to complaints, which they did, but this was in a foreign call centre who had no idea of what the technical issue was or how to help and was totally unhelpful and a waste of my time, again.

My complaint have not been resolved and the fact that you stated that it was fixed immediately is untrue, as the issue remains for me.

I received the following response from Virgin Media complaints, as follows : 

We have a little update on your complaint with us. We didn’t want to delay things, so we’ve gone ahead and looked into a resolution for you.

Here’s a quick recap

We’ve looked into it and here’s what we found:
We are writing to let you know that we have received your complaint regarding the recent problems you have been experiencing. We are sorry that you are not happy with the service you have received from us. You can be confident that we will do everything we can to ensure that it is put right. It is a pleasure to assist a loyal customer of your stature. I understand that your concern was in regards to the fault you have been experiencing while using our services and its impact on your day to day activities. I do understand your apprehension on this and I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. I have checked your account and there are no area faults or issues with your account at the moment. I would be more than happy to assist you with the same, but unfortunately, I would not be able to do that over the email. Therefore, I would request you to get in touch with our Technical team, who would be able to go ahead and help you with the same. Kindly give us a call to the given number so that we can do the needful and assist you better. Also, we are working on our interfaces to make it customer friendly.

Well, I don't know what all that waffle was about, it certainly wasn't anything to do with my WAN IP being fixed and this why Virgin Media needs to sort out their Customer Services issues.  It is obvious that these call centres abroad that Virgin use are simply following a scripts and they cannot fix the problem from there, as they are limited to only being able to reboot the HUB.  I am seriously frustrated with the back and forth, and the issue not getting to the right people.

The last couple of years now Virgin Media have really gone downhill, their customer services is total sham, which is a shame.

[MOD EDIT: Subject title changed for clarity]

[Roger_Gooner]

I'm confused by your post as CGNAT has nothing to do with a router's built-in NAT which is used to translate the private IP addresses of LAN devices to a single public IP address.

[ravenstar68]

I was responding to Alf's comment that he wondered if Virgin do NAT.  I was wondering if he was referring to CGNAT instead.

[ALF28]

IP address hop check using the  tracert command showing just 1 hop which is correct.

1 239 ms <1 ms <1 ms mars-04-b2-v4wan-xxxxxx-custxxxx.vm5.cable.virginm.net (customer number removed)

I managed to check the tracert  command in windows Powershell by altering my own router setting, turning off the advance security and switching on ping for a short while to do the test. This showed just one hop, confirming VM are not using NAT. It is not used in the UK but is used in some countries such as India and USA.

So VM are not using NAT in the UK, proved by the tacert result showing just one hop.

So the multiple locations for MY IP address  may all belong to virgin media?, it does seem unusual for so many locations, and that the Microsoft location map In account activity is Northampton which is 200 miles from me. (Microsoft database may be incorrect or out of date?, but google has the IP address location as  the UK, so perhaps geo-location of an IP address is approximate.  Something has changed because in the past  I have always had the correct location showing for my town in modem mode or router mode, This did  happened in modem mode, If I switch back to hub 3 router mode it would probably have the correct town location which it did last time.

I presume reading the posts that having the wrong location is normal, however I had some issues with facebook, instagram and gmail which thought I was getting hacked possibly due to IP address location changing indicating suspicious activity, so facebook and instagram security locked and restricted my accounts, I eventually had the account deleted as they would not lift the restrictions.

As the location is useful when checking account activity and IP address, as long as the IP address is correct then the location may not be of any significance unless the wrong IP address is displayed, I did recently have 3  login attempts form a German IP address which was a VPN with failed password 3 times  in the early hours on my wife's outlook.com email.

It is worth noting that VM have no system to check account activity in the same way google and Microsoft do showing last login/devices connected.

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