Automatic Compensation query

[Stubacca]

Hello, I'll keep this short and thank you all for any responses.

From 24th Feb to about 6th March there was a consistent outage of the broadband, for my and multiple others. I registered it wasn't working, informed customer service via phone and twitter, was told the automatic compensation scheme applied, it never got put on the account so my next bill was generated, I then messaged on WhatsApp and was fobbed off with a measly £5 which doesn't even cover a day of the scheme, I then contacted again via phone and was told it was going to be looked into by a manager, that was on the 15th March and again, my bill has been generated with no compensation.

Do area outages qualify for the scheme and how should I proceed after informing multiple times and getting nowhere?

Thank you 

[goslow · Accepted solution]

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@Stubacca wrote:

Hello, I'll keep this short and thank you all for any responses.

<snip>

Do area outages qualify for the scheme and how should I proceed after informing multiple times and getting nowhere?

Thank you 

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Yes any 'total loss of service' counts (phone or broadband). Knowing the exact dates/times of when things happened is important to work out the correct amount due. See para 23 below for TLS definition

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0026/216962/Industry-Code-of-Practice-for-Automatic-...

VM will argue over payment if they claim there was intermittent service or slow service and not a TLS.

VM gets 2 clear working days to fix a fault. If you reported by phone on Fri 24 Feb, then VM would get up to and including all of Tues 28 Feb to fix the fault. If they failed to do that, you get a payment of £8.40 for the initial period of the outage (the payment trigger time). You then get £8.40 per full calendar day for the TLS. If you were restored on 6/3/23 the calculation would be

24/2/23 to 28/2/23 inc = £8.40 (payment trigger time)
1/3/23 to 5/3/23 inc = 5 days @ £8.40 per day
6/3/23 service restored

So x6 payments at £8.40 = £50.40

VM has 30 days to credit your account from when the service was restored.

You'll need to work out the correct amount yourself based on the exact dates you had the outage, when you reported etc.. If your account hasn't been credited with the correct amount by 5/4/23, next steps would be a formal complaint to VM (a required formality but will probably result in no useful outcome) and then on to Ombudsman Services for arbitration.

https://www.ombudsman-services.org/

One of the VM forum team will reply here within a few days and give you the official VM response.

[Zach_R]

Hi @Stubacca,

Thank you for your post and welcome to our community forums. We're here to help.

I am so sorry to hear that you faced some downtime recently, and there's a dispute with the credit received for the downtime. I can see that @goslow has offered some details on how our credit policy works, but you can also find more details here.

Via that link it'll explain the circumstances in which you'd be eligible, and the amount if so. It would need to be a constant loss of service, so any intermittent loss would not be valid I'm afraid.

What have the team advised when you've discussed it with them?

Thanks,
 

[Stubacca]

Thank you for your response.

The team stated that because the TV, phone and broadband didn't ALL go down at the same time then nothing is covered, broadband going down alone doesn't get any coverage, everything has to go down at the same time.

[nodrogd]

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@Stubacca wrote:

Thank you for your response.

The team stated that because the TV, phone and broadband didn't ALL go down at the same time then nothing is covered, broadband going down alone doesn't get any coverage, everything has to go down at the same time.

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TV is not covered by the compensation scheme so does not enter the equation. So if landline phone AND/OR Broadband were out of action continually for more than 48 hours then compensation DOES apply to this outage.

[goslow]

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@Stubacca wrote:

Thank you for your response.

The team stated that because the TV, phone and broadband didn't ALL go down at the same time then nothing is covered, broadband going down alone doesn't get any coverage, everything has to go down at the same time.

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That is incorrect and that incorrect information, given out by VM staff on the phone, has been reported on here before.

The compensation applies to a total loss of service of phone or broadband.

Day rate is £8.40 as explained with T&Cs at #2 above.

If both phone and broadband have a total loss of service together, it is still the same day rate of £8.40