Total Loss of Connection for 3 Weeks

[adamzki]

So we got Virgin 1GB fibre (5x router) on 5th October 2024.

Worked find for 2 weeks, then started having intermittent drop outs especially during the day. 

First technician visit Friday 1st November - changed the router, tested the cabling, latched onto a signal but kept on losing it. Router was just flashing white. He said it needed to be referred to networking team.

Didn't hear anything back within 24 hours, so called up Faults team, they said they would send another engineer out who would arrive with networking team. 

Second Engineer visit Monday 4th November - just an engineer showed up, wasn't with networking team, couldn't get it working. Said he wasn't the right person to deal with the issue - and part of the problem is that because im the only person with virgin on this particular stretch, it won't be flagging as a fault. Was out on the street for about 2 hours, said he would have to refer it to networking team and I will hear back within 24 hours. Router now flashing red. 

5 days later, still haven't heard from networking team. Have raised a complaint. Spent 3 hours on the phone on Saturday to Virgin 2nsd line support. They kept on insisting I couldn't speak to the networking team myself, there was a local outage (there isn't, I've got a friend who has a business up the road to my left, and his house down the road to my right and hes been fine on both!). They also insisted on sending another engineer out, but as I'd explained the last 2 engineers have both said they'd referred it to networking, and so what is the point in going round in circles again.

Feel like I've hit a brick wall and nothing is being done. Luckily I didn't cancel my old BT FTC so I have some broadband still. Ended up speaking to a UK based cancellations team on Sunday, to be told she is going through the same issue which I thought was a bit odd, and they would cancel if I wanted.

Truth be told I dont want to cancel, I just want it working. Here I am on the 12th November, 3 weeks after initially reporting outage, and the light is still flashing red, on the router itself it says network access denied (running the online tests it says everything is fine).

Just don't know what to do or how to speak to someone who is going to take the initiative to get this fixed.

[jbrennand]

A VM person will respond here in due course.

In the meantime can you do this..

_____________________________

Post up your Hub/network connection details in the format below and someone will check to see if there is a problem there.  In your browser’s URL type in 192.168.0.1 if in router mode or 192.168.100.1 if in modem mode. No need to log in - just click on the “Router Status” icon/text at bottom-middle (Hub3/4/5) or top/right (SH’s) - of the Login page.

Then… Navigate to these “data pages” and just copy/paste the normal “Formatted Text” (not images) 3 FULL sets of data onto here – 2 tables from the Downstream, 2 from the Upstream, & the Network Logs pages. Don't worry too much about the formatting it can be easily read & DON’T include personal data or MAC addresses - blank them out - if you copy/paste the data, the board software will do this for you (you may need to click the "submit" button again). If character limits are “exceeded” - just do two posts

Also, 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

[adamzki]

UPDATE

Spoke to someone in the technical support team today who said that the 5x router is not compatible on my network and it is a network issue, and therefore the best thing to do would just be to cancel.

It is compatible, it worked for 2 weeks just fine. It then stopped. My friend round the corner is still working just fine.

I can't help thinking they want to cancel because it's a network issue that is going to take too long to resolve and are trying to avoid the daily compensation charge of having an outage. Whoever I speak to will not take responsibility to get it fixed?

[PWH123]

Hi adamzki,

Sort of in the same situation after getting the router upgraded but we have you beaten for time taken.  We are at nearly 2 1/2 months without it being fixed.  The 3rd party company that VM use to fix these kinds of faults must be a joke as they never show up and mark the job as complete.  We will be another month from getting it fixed – if they show up that is.

VM also did not appear to think that it’s unreasonable to keep charging us for a service we cannot use.  They wanted to add credit to the account, we said no, so they are posting out a cheque!  Cutting edge Tech they have!

Honestly never come across anything like it.  I work for a much larger company than VM and deal with the customer service teams across EMEA for technical stuff and if these kinds of things happened to one of our customers, someone would be in trouble.  The customer service managers in each country deal with big problems personally, maybe we just don’t have as many big problems, or VM have so many they can’t manage them.  VM say you’ll get a call-back, but they never do.  Last night they “promised” a call-back within an hour – nothing, and nothing today either.  It's like a brick wall and makes me think their customer service team hear these kind of things day in day out.

When it works it’s good but if you have a hardware fault on their network you are in big trouble.

Good luck!

[PWH123]

Hi Again,

The problem will be with what they call the "drop" cable from your property to their network.  They just don't want to replace it.  Hearing this makes me think they are playing a game and have no intention of replacing ours and just hoping we get another provider.

[goslow]

For anyone who has experienced a total loss of service (TLS) make sure you are clued up on the auto-compensation scheme

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/billing-and-payments/automatic-compensation

which has a day-rate of £9.76 where applicable.

VM has plenty of form on here for agents offering a 'goodwill' payment instead which is far less than any compo which might be due under the scheme. 

[adamzki]

I'm aware of this, but thanks so much as I'm sure it'll be helpful for others.

Funnily enough - I think that's why they might be pushing me to cancel. I've even had to resort to calling the door to door salesman who sold me the package in the first place, his response: 'just cancel it' - he's still going round trying to sell this to residents of my village but accepts absolutely zero responsibility for helping me fix the dodgy stuff he's sold me.... appreciate he isn't in the tech team, but surely you'd think there would be an infrastructure in place to support people who have a complete outage.

[goslow]

If you are experiencing a TLS, VM has to pay you the auto-comp at the day rate of £9.76. If VM decides it can't fix the fault and is going to stop paying the auto-comp, it has to give you a 'cease notice' and continue paying you for a further 30 days beyond the cease notice.

https://www.virginmedia.com/legal/fibre-optic-services-terms-conditions/automatic-compensation

So it is in VM's interest to get you to cancel rather than VM to do the cancelling.

Needless to say the topics on here routinely describe VM failing for follow any of the correct processes nor pay the correct compensation so the customer often has to go to arbitration to get the correct payout.

Keep detailed notes, in a timneline format, of all VM's failures to fix the faults and link evidence (such as texts, screenshots, emails, phone calls etc.) to each entry on the timeline. This will help if you need to go to arbitration to get the correct payout.

[Gareth_L]

Hello adamzki.

Thanks for your first post and welcome to our community.
Sorry to hear you are having an issue with connection.
I'd like to investigate this for you.
If you don't mind, I will need to send you a private message to pass security. 
If you can check your logo at the top right of your screen that would be great. 
Gareth_L
 

[adamzki]

It’s now been 4 weeks. Total loss of connection. 
So far this week I’ve been promised a call from the network manager, by the salesman who sold me the package. That call never came. 
I was then told by the salesman that he’d spoken to the network manager, and the network team were coming out on Thursday and it would be fixed. They didn’t. 
I then spoke to level 2 technical support yesterday, who assured me it would all be sorted by today. It hasn’t been. 
I have had a message from virgin on here but it took 2 days to just answer the security questions, and I haven’t had a response since passing them last Thursday. 
This is just beyond a joke now. 4 weeks. No internet. Router flashing red. And not one person from virgin seems to be taking responsibility or knows what to do. 
turns out there’s another person in my village going through exactly the same thing and has had 8 engineer visits so far. 
do I just cancel?