Terrible comms from a communications company

[Braby]

Things go wrong - it's how the problem is dealt with that's critical and I'm afraid yet again there will be no gold stars for Virgin. Early this morning I woke to find my broadband connection was down. A check on the status page showed that there was indeed an outage with a projected fix time of 4pm. I supplied my mobile number to receive updates. Four o'clock came and went and while the service wasn't completely dead it was as good as, cutting in and out with speeds all over the place. Despite this the status page now showed no issues and none of the self-help tools were any use at all. Needless to say I never received any communication updating me on progress. It wasn't until maybe 8pm that an acceptable service was restored. This is the pattern every time I am subject to an outage. Virgin supposedly sets up all these channels of communication and they are without exception utterly useless. It's not asking a lot to keep customers  in the loop especially when all it requires is for someone, anyone at Virgin to give a fig about customer relations. As usual I will no doubt now get bombarded by emails asking "how did we do?". I really  don't think you actually care but that's another box ticked. 

[DavidJWalker]

what do you want them to say we fixed the issue they will not say what up with it you only get a text saying it is fixed its only a projected time it can roll more then it is projected online status they only update people when the issue is fixed it is the same with bt there are the same with issues you can't have it 100% prefect with any communications company this is 100% true

[Braby]

I'm still waiting for my text.....

[Serena_C]

Hi @Braby

Thank you for your post regarding our communications when services are impacted by a local outage. I'm really sorry to hear that you are disappointed with our communication and that you did not receive a text with updates. I understand how frustrating this must be. If you wish to raise a complaint about our communication standards, please visit https://virg.in/comcop

I will make sure to pass on your feedback also.

Apologies that your service did not return until 8pm. Our fix times are estimates only, and unfortunately some faults can take longer for our engineers to resolve. For the latest updates on an issue, the best thing to do is to call our automated service status line on 0800 561 0061

Kind regards,

Serena

[Braby]

Thanks for the reply Serena. The thing that mystifies me is that having put up the service outage notice, someone then made the decision to take it down again long before the problem was fixed. In fact the broadband service was intermittent until the following morning - as evidenced by the number of complaints on the local WhatsApp group. Without this 3rd party evidence I would have had no means of knowing that the issue wasn't just with my connection, since according to Virgin there was no problem, indeed no sign of there ever having been a problem. I'm not complaining that the fix took longer than originally estimated, my moan is about the lack of any meaningful information when supposedly Virgin has sophisticated systems in place to provide updates. A cynical person might conclude that pretending to have fixed the outage when clearly that wasn't the case may just possibly have been to avoid having to pay the statutory compensation. This is the pattern every time this happens and it usually happens at a weekend, often in the early hours, indicating to me that this is scheduled maintenance that customers could be pre-warned about. Down Detector also showed a huge spike in problems with Virgin's service while all the time the Virgin website was resolutely claiming there were no issues. 

[Serena_C]

Thank you for your response @Braby, I appreciate how frustrating this must be for you when Service Status reports the issue as fixed but you are still experiencing issues.

I will pass your feedback on now regarding our communication of information regarding outages and fixes. I am so sorry that you feel let down by us.

Kind regards,

Serena

[Braby]

Thanks Serena.

I had forgotten about the service status phone line which you say is the best way to get the latest information. Out of curiosity I just called it and it says that the best way to get the latest service information is to sign in to My Virgin Media! I would have thought that both the phone line and the website get their information from the same place - indeed it's probably the same people responsible for updating both. I'll report back next time it happens.

[Serena_C]

Oh gosh, I'm sorry for the mixed messages you have received regarding our Service Status line and website. I would recommend calling 0800 561 0061 for information first as this does get updated faster than the Service Status website.

Please do report back and keep us posted on how this goes the next time you experience an outage.

Kind regards,

Serena