Installation will not be carried out in a new build

[huri000]

I am about to purchase a flat in a new build that has overall 3 flats. One of the first checks that I did was to confirm that the house has Virgin Media broadband available, as VM is the only decent ISP able to provide more than 70Mb in my area. 

From checking the availability in the Postcode Checker, it turned out that the two adjascent houses have Virgin Media connection. However, my future house does not.

My wife and I have spent over 5 hours chatting to VM over the past two weeks, trying to understand the situation.

Yesterday, a representative called back telling me that VM is not planning to carry out installation in the house because the house is a conversion and planning permission would be required to initiate the process. He was not able to expose more information as to why this is such a complicated process, but he was clear that VM is not going to prioritise the installation, and there is nothing that we or he can do to unblock ourselves.

The house we are buying is a semi-detached house, and the adjascent properties (including the other part of the house) both have VM, so why is installation not be possible?

In addition, one of the support representitives noted that the property had been connected to VM in the past, probably before it was rebuilt.

When we started interacting with VM, we thought that the installation process was a trifle, but the past days we have become increasingly concerned about it.

As we both work from home, a good broadband connection is our lifeline.

Can someone please try to help us solve this?

[Kath_F]

Hi huri000, 

Thanks for coming back to me on this one. 

I'm afraid to say I haven't had any update. The last one I had was that they were waiting for the address to update on the Royal Mail systems. I checked and could see it showing so referred them back to this but I've not heard anything else. 

As a last ditch attempt I have sent them another screenshot over advising you are chasing this and I hope to have a reply within the coming days. 

We understand you need to do what's right for you though. Either way I will let you know any updates here as even if you go with someone else, I can ensure our systems are corrected to future proof this. 

Thanks, 

[huri000]

Thanks so much Kath.

I went to Royal Mail today + chatted with Open Reach in order to confirm my new address and updates their records.

I'd gladly cancel with my other ISPs (&pay any incurring early cancellation fee) to reconnect to VM, so please please please keep chasing this for me, and hopefully, all this will be enough to update VM's data sources so we can kick-off the installation process.

Hope we can catch up soon on some good news.

[Kath_F]

Hi huri000, 

It's no problem. I am happy to keep chasing for you until we get a reply either way. 

Sometimes as we are chasing so many things we do lose the threads so if I haven't come back to you in around a week - 10 days just pop back and give me a nudge. 

Hopefully I will have some news for you shortly though. 

Thanks, 

[huri000]

Just ot update on the resolution for this subject.
The Home Moving team was not very helpful througout our move, and we were only able to connect as new customers after disconnection. It's a shame that there's no good home moving process and we had to bear the additional costs of disconnection / connection that amount to close to 200 GBP.

However, I'd like to thank @Kath for following up, @Amol (spotter / engineer) who was able to ad our address ad hoc, and accompanied us throughout the process, and Paul (onsite engineer) who did an amazing job connecting the building and our flat to VM in just about two hours of work. No digging was needed at all!

We now have 1Gb VM broadband.

[Alex_RM]

Thanks for the updates huri000,

Glad to hear Kath was able to help and you're now up and running 🙂

Alex_Rm