Hi and thank you for reading, please bear with me.
I am really hoping someone can help me as I am now at the end of my tether and am lost as what to do next. I have been a long term Virgin customer and have been treated absolutely terribly by Virgin am in the process of lodging a formal complaint and putting together a social media campaign. As of today, I have spent a total of 17.3 hours in 13 days on the phone to Virgin "tech support", retentions and customer service and have been pushed from pillar to post, had the phone disconnected numerous times, people promising to call me back if I get cut off but never doing so. And still I am here with the same issues. Im sick of it.
Here is my story and some background.
We live in an area where Virgin have the absolute monopoly on HSB. BT will not supply here and I assume it is because of this. I have lived her for 11 years and brought BT broadband with me as I was getting 15mb at the place where I moved from, that was fast then. But I could only get 0.8 -1 mb here as we are so far from the exchange. At this point, BT hadn't started offering fibre so the only option was Virgin. It's clear BT wont invest in putting in fibre when Virgin have a stranglehold on the area.
For as long as I can remember we have had issues with drop outs, but nothing enough for me to start throwing my toys out of the pram. However last year it started happening a lot and initially I put it down to the pandemic and everyone working from home but it just got worse and eventually I called and they replaced my router. This seemed to work, for a few months.
At the same time, I had a purpose built office installed about 15 meters from my house (18m or so from the router). Obviously it was too far to pick up the signal so I asked for some of the Wifi Boosters and they worked so well, much better than I expected. I was getting 50-60mb solid no issues at all, that is until the beginning of Jan.
Almost overnight they stopped working. They would connect and then look for the signal, find it, cut out then just point blank not connect I thought maybe I had fried the booster as I had an oil filled radiator plugged into it. I rung and they sent me some new wifi boosters... (which I had to pay delivery for!) Same! Just connecting, dropping, repeat repeat. The worst of this was I had a huge presentation for a company in the US that I was pitching my business to. I had to reconnect 5 times in an hour and in the end they ended the presentation early! I did not win the business and who knows if it was just my pitch or the fact that it was just not acceptable to be kept waiting whilst I reconnected time and time again. I suspect the latter...
Anyhow, I went back to Virgin once again. And they advised me that there were definitely no issues they could see. I pushed for an engineer who came, did some tests at the cabinet and the entry point and agreed that there were significant drops while he was there but nothing was sticking out as to the reason why, he said I didn't have a lot of devices connected etc but he also couldn't explain the Wifi Booster issue and why all of a sudden they stopped working after being so solid. He did say that it could be the router (he could not come in as we are shielding) or could be something to do with the new Plumes or Virgin Pod rollout!?!!! Which makes sense if they want people to upgrade to the new Pods! He advised me to push for some of the new pods which I did and I received 1 yesterday. ( I was also charged for delivery of these too!).. ONE POD!!! And that one does not even find the router unless its in the same room... What is the point??? My router is not tucked away.
So I get back on the phone (Only 2 hours 56 minutes total call time this time round)... Where I finally get through to the "2nd line" team and the lady knows absolutely nothing about how the pods should work!!! Not a thing... She does discover that although it looks on the face of it that the pod is connected, she can see that they are actually not connected to the router!!! She tells me she needs to do some investigation's and will call me today at 9:30am with a solution.
At this point it's worth mentioning that every single call I start with a plea... "Because I hold for nearly an hour if we get disconnected could you please call me back". This is also because numerous times the call just mysteriously hangs up!!!
10:20 this morning the tech lady rings, tells me to reset the router, something I have done dozens of times the last few weeks. And then tells me the best she can do is send an engineer to check the router! The router! They cant send any more pods, they cant send a new router as I had a new one last year!! And then just as I am about to start my plea to escalate this further, the phone goes dead! So I wait... And wait... No call back!
So I call again, wait nearly an hour and have to battle with the first person who keeps trying to get me to reset the router etc. They agree to forward me to 2nd line team, please hold.... Nothing... Phone goes dead! By this time I am furious... I start the process all again but this time on 2 phones, my partner calls on hers, we get through on one and start the same process, but this time they point blank refuse to put me through to 2nd line, saying they need to read the notes and speak with a supervisor... Then Nothing, the phone goes dead! Same again on my partners phone!!! I am speechless. Not one rings me back and I have to say, even though I am furious, I have still been courteous.
I go again... This time I went through to retentions, I explain the whole story and then he realises I am out of contract and try's to get me to sign up again for 18 months and he will cut our bill!!! Are you serious??? We pay nearly £50 a month for just 100mb broadband, we got rid of the TV, Phone etc ages ago because of the terrible customer services. but had no choice to keep the BB. This coupled with fact that they have the monopoly on fibre where I am means they completely take us to the cleaners and rob us blind!
Anyway the crux of it is he said he couldn't help as its a technical issue and we are welcome to cancel our services if we want. 😮
So at the end of this, it's clear I am getting no help. I have to find a solution for work. I have an office that I cant use.
So I have some questions.
Is it worth me investing in a 3rd party router AND some 3rd party Wifi boosters or Mesh Wifi systems.
If so what ones would be recommended to play nicely with Hub 3? Both routers and Boosters. I want to point out although its 18 meters to my office, its a straight line and the virgin boosters worked better than fine until they "switched them off".
Also is it easy to do? I can not wait to be able to get away from Virgin so if someone from Virgin is reading please, you have a chance to redeem your companies terrible reputation. Step up and help out please. We are all in a pandemic and working from home is a necessity. Its what you do now that serves you in the future...
Many Thanks in advance for reading, I look forward to your help.
