Council cut cable on pavement to my house

[Shamstone]

The council workers cut my cable on the pavement while carrying out work. The engineer came and determined the total loss of service for broadband and tv was due to a cable being cut on the street. He promised after speaking to his boss it will be rectified within 24 hours as they have to subcontract out. Later that day after chasing for hours on the phone the Virgin team sent me a text saying it’s been booked for the 27th Nov which means I will be without tv and internet for 3 weeks. I work from home and this will effect me really badly. Please help.

[japitts]

If a new cable run from the streetcab to your home( known as a repull) is required and it's been booked in, there's not much more can be done - and a couple of weeks lead-time is about right in practical terms.

If it's any consolation, you will be entitled to loss-of-service compensation as per https://www.virginmedia.com/help/automatic-compensation 

In the meantime - I recommend you start making some alternative arrangements for your home internet & TV. If you work from home, then... if any of your neighbours have working broadband/WiFi and you get on well, you could ask to borrow it? Or go and buy yourself a mobile-data dongle-device from whichever network operator has good service in your home, and/or add some data to your existing data allowance.

Unfortunately, a repull is very rarely organised in a matter of days.

[Shamstone]

Thanks for the information I really appreciate it very useful. Just feel as if though they should treat this as a total loss of service as I have no internet or tv. If my gas, electric or water was off for 3 weeks that would be totally unacceptable. I have children in the house a full family and we are at a total loss without internet or tv.

[japitts]

You probably won't want to hear this, but I'll say it anyway....

Given some of the horror stories on this forum recently about install delays, I suspect that a 2week leadtime for restoration of service is indeed based on your being off-service - I don't want to worry you unduly, but there's been tales of such things dragging on months if you go digging around this forum enough.

As for your point about other household utilities, whilst I sympathise.... those things genuinely are essential. TV certainly isn't, and internet - well the WFH regime that's come in the past year or so has changed a few things.

Edited to add another VIP user @-tony-  who recently suffered a similar outage and may want to add their tuppenth worth.

[jpeg1]

Just to continue the horror story, if the repair work means digging up the Council's new pavement the contractor will first need permission from the Council. That could mean a further delay. 

If you have a reasonable 4G signal you should set up a mobile data contract. You can get unlimited data for £20 a month. 

[-tony-]

hmmmm - similar story - in my case it was the elec people - you can push but getting info will be difficult - the big unknown is if the duct is in good condition - if when the cable pull team come they can pull the cable then thats the 1st hurdle overcome - if not then you are looking at an initial delay of 6[ish] weeks for council permission to get things sorted - 6 weeks being typical but could be longer - from there the cable has to be pulled - in my case it took another 3 weeks for them to turn up and pull the cable - same subcontractors but different teams - connection then happened on same da

in all it took almost 10 weeks - make sure you have logged for compensation - i used a Smarty sim - £20 unlimited - no good for TV but internet was reliable if slow 

its all up to you but i learnt very quickly that there is not a lot you can do other than sit back and let them do things at their pace

hopefully it will not come to most of that and the cable can be pulled on the day its booked 

[Shamstone]

Okay thanks guys for all your help I’ll take information on board and let you know how it goes hope everything works out okay

[Eeeps]

If you want to use mobile data I'd recommend iD mobile. They use Three's network (like Smarty) but have 5G and WiFi calling.
1 month contracts currently £17.50

[Daz240474]

I had the same thing happen a few on the 1st of this month, a Monday. We got the repair completed on the Wednesday afternoon. My reason for posting is because we are being charged £25 for the repair. Were you charged for this as well

[Shamstone]

I was not charged for my repair as it was not my fault but mine got repaired one month after the cable got cut on the street by the council Virgin Media engineers eventually came after month of chasing and replaced the cable under the street I hope you can get your sort it out soon as well