Heads up: VM CS clueless

[tehjumpingjawa]

I use a Virgin broadband installation to remotely monitor and control the central heating in a holiday home.

Initially the router provided by Virgin was a hub 3. Everything in the home was setup and working fine with this router.

At some point a free promotional router upgrade was offered, which I accepted & scheduled delivery for a date I'd be present.

However delivery didn't occur until several weeks later(failure 1), with the router (a signed for parcel!) being left on the doorstep(failure 2).

Fortunately I was able to notify a neighbouring friend to save the parcel from the elements/thieves.

Several days later I lost connectivity to all the monitoring devices in the house. Figuring the router had simply crashed, I had the neighbour power cycle the router. No change.

Contacted VM CS, explaining that the new router had not yet been installed, and if they could determine why the old router had stopped working.

Quizzed whether they could see the router, and if it was functioning normally. They said yes.

Asked them whether they operated mac address locking on their routers, and if my account had been transitioned to the new router's mac address. They said they did, but that wouldn't occur until the new router was connected. (a lie, failure 3)

Having just arrived at the property, I've determined that the lack of Internet access is entirely down to the old router having been remotely disabled. Swapping it out for the new router(hub 5) everything was back up and running as normal.

Lessons of the story;

1) Virgin will happily cut off a paying customer who's tardy with installing a replacement router.

2) Don't trust what VM CS say. Either through ignorance or laziness, they will lie to you.

3) Signed for courier services aren't worth the paper they aren't written on.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @tehjumpingjawa,

Welcome back to our Community Forums! Thank you for your post and we're sorry to hear that you've had a poor experience with our team and with our services.

When new Hubs are sent out, they will automatically replace the older Hub on our system when it's connected at the property. We do apologise that the Hub was left outside of your property and glad that a neighbour was able to help bring the parcel in. We'll pass this feedback onto the dedicated team so that we can ensure that this does not happen again.

I've taken a look at your account and I cannot see any connection issues at the moment. Is there anything we can do to help you today?

Let us know so we can assist further if needed.

Thank you.

[Tudor]

@Paulina_Z said "they will automatically replace the older Hub on our system when it's connected at the property." Not entirely true, I had exactly the same experience when I was abroad as I am at the moment. The new hubs that are sent out have a time period that they must be activated within and then the user gets an email saying the new hub must be installed and the old hub will be deactivated in 24 hours. Luckily I was able to get my old hub ‘extended’ until I returned to the UK. I’m usually out of the UK for 3 or 4 months a year and I’m sure this applies to lots of other users.