Virgin Media Community

[eddiew]

Short version, my broadband has been flakey for the last few weeks. Random disconnects lasting anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes, variable times of day, often at peak times. There are several VM routers near me on the street, and I when mine drops the line and reboots, so do all my neighbours. 

This morning I woke up to a green light (ironic laugh) on the router, and by the time I left the house, it still hadn't found the internet. Wifi comes up for 5-10 mins at a time, but never gets an outside line.

Like many folks these days, I use the internet for both fun and actual work, and it's not ok to have connection issues this often. I could pay 1/3 as much for someone else's poor service as I'm currently paying for VM's poor service. I've been justifying the cost because it's a "solid" connection, but that's rapidly becoming untrue.

Calling support, I get the canned "We are sorry you are having intermittent broadband problems in <postcode>, an engineer is on the way" and NO OPTION to talk to a human. I've been getting this message every time for months, and I no longer have any confidence that it means anything. At this point we should be considering a rescue mission to find the engineers who've already been sent out and gotten lost in the jungle before arriving.

North Leeds area. Known problems? Issues across the zone? VM will never admit it if there are, hence I'm down to asking on these forums whether there's something going on, and how the heck do I get past the automated support call and reach an actual person? I'm not sure VM actually know that there is an issue, and I don't seem to have any mechanism to tell them.

At this point all I can come up with is cancelling my direct debit - bet I get a call from VM pretty soon after that!

[-tony- · Accepted solution]

last point first - you will not get a call from VM if you cancel your DD but you will have dept collection agencies getting in touch and your credit rting will get a black mark which is never good

so to the rest - if there is a telephone message VM know about the problem - what they are doing about it is another matter - speaking to a human might get you more info but not much i would guess - a fault number maybe for what good that is - you have answered many of your own questions by watching other VM hubs drop at the same time as yours - its an are fault - if its not on the service status its local but that does not help you

again if you get through to a human they will not book a tech or if they do it will be cancelled as its a known external fault

and further to speaking to a human - thats likely to be offshore - at this point with your investigations of the local area you [probably] know more than they do 

you can try this if you really do want to hear a voice rather than a recording but i would think they will just pass you on

dial 150 or 0345 454 1111 and follow the prompts to - 'thinking of leaving us' - then "technical issues" - dont worry about that they do much more - open 8am -10pm 7 days a week - should take you to a UK call centre

best option is wait here for VM - if it is a booked fault you should get a fault number - with that you should be able to get a reduction in your 

[eddiew]

Thanks for the response, I'll give the 'thinking of leaving' a shot if it's still down this afternoon, see if I can get a real human.

Right now, I've had the automated "we're sorry you're still experiencing intermittent problems" since an outage around xmas, so either the problem has never been properly resolved, or this message is somehow being handed to me with regards to that old issue. At this point I'll settle for a person telling me that yes, there's a known fault logged as of whatever time last night, but I've rather lost confidence in the automated message meaning anything.

[jbrennand]

There is also a Service Status number 0800 561 0061 which usually tells you of local issues, down to postcode level, that might not yet be listed on the Service Status web page that may give you more info.

[eddiew]

Ok, well, many hours later the service status page is finally telling me there's an area problem. Since this is the first time I've seen that (usually it tells me I'm unplugged), I'll trust it.

Tip for VM: get the status updates out there faster. I've subscribed (repeatedly) to SMS updates about internet problems, and never had a single thing come through. I would forgive a lot had I woken up to a text that told me yes the internet is down in my area.