Virgin Media Community

[apix]

Recently Virgin was passing cables on our road, but they had the unfortunate idea to go the easy way, so instead of digging on the pavement, the engineers decided to run the cables through our flower bed. They removed the border and damaged most of the plants and flowers and also dumped leftover cement on the flowers. Obviously the flower bed now looks dreadful. This is utterly inconsiderate and completely unacceptable. Also I believe that throwing cement in people’s properties amounts to fly tipping… How do we go about requesting someone to come and sort this problem out please?

[jbrennand]

A VM person will respond on here in a day or so.

In the meantime post up a few photos of the issues so they can assess the damage.

Also - are you actually a current (or former?) VM customer?

Who's property were they connecting up - an immediate neighbour's ?

[Roger_Gooner]

I think they dug the service strip which belongs to the council. Why don't you post some photos which show not only the bed and border but the surrounding area.

[apix]

Thanks for your replies. Just a quick update: today they were still passing cables to and from our flower bed and I managed to speak to a Virgin engineer on-site, who acknowledged the issue and confirmed that the cable entry point should have not been placed there. He ensured me that it will be removed from our flower bed and moved to the pavement where it should have been positioned in the first place. Can a VM representative please get in touch and confirm this issue has been logged and will be sorted out promptly?

[jem101]

@apix 

Now I will be realistic here, regardless of what you have been told, the most likely outcome is that absolutely nothing will happen, it certainly won’t be removed because that will cost money and VM have absolutely no incentive to do it. 

So I will predict that you will hear absolutely nothing back from VM other than a possible, ‘it has been escalated and is being looked into by the relevant team’.

So personally what I would do is;

a) make absolutely sure that the cable and equipment is on your property.
b) give VM a reasonable time (14 days?) to rectify, after which, go out and dig up and remove any tee point on your property and cut away every single cable at your property boundary.
c) legally this is all the property of VM so not not dispose of it but keep it safe in the event they ask for it back - for a reasonable time frame, six months should do it.

You absolutely cannot just leave it, because that gives tacit permission for VM to use and access your property at any time they like, something you need to declare if you ever want to sell the house in the future.

[Roger_Gooner]

If you cut the cable there must be the risk of noise ingress which will not be good for the neighbourhood.

[spell]

And how is that relevant to the excellent advice provided by jem101 - what you say is VMs problem not the OPs

[jem101]

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@Roger_Gooner wrote:

If you cut the cable there must be the risk of noise ingress which will not be good for the neighbourhood.

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Unfortunately for anyone involved but tough!