Virgin Media Community

[Oliver91]

I signed up to VM broadband ~1 year ago (June2020), initially the service was OK, albeit fairly intermittent, however, since January this year the service has been unbearable.

The internet will completely cut out for most the work day and I have to hotspot from my phone (dont ask how big my bill is!). VM have sent around 3 technicians to try fix the issue, each one has tried replacing everything, including the junction box outside the house, however, the internet still cuts out daily and I have to restart the box multiple times hoping it will eventually work. 

In Jan 21 a technician determined the route cause of the problem to be a fault in the fibre optic and booked in a specialist to fix this. He admitted that until this issue was fixed we would continue to experience drop offs.

Our first appointment was booked in for April, which was then cancelled without us being informed. It was then rescheduled for two dates in May and both cancelled without us being informed. We now have an appointment scheduled for late June, but to be honest I have no faith that it will be fixed!

We tried to escalate this issue to customer services to no avail. We have been told that VM speed tests show our average speed is above the minimum threshold, which is a flawed if you internet is down half the day and works ok the rest! 

We've now reached the end of our tether and have requested VM cancel our contract FOC as they cannot provide us with the service we have paid for, however, they won't accept this request. In lieu of that we've also requested a 4G back up service but they want £5/month extra. 

I really don't want to give VM anymore of my money so i refuse to pay the termination fee.

Has anyone experienced similar and reached a resolution? Or has anyone got any advice on how to better escalate this within VM??

Please don't tell we to turn and off again! We've all watched IT crowd we know the joke, VM really do make me live it

Thanks,
Oli 

[Z92]

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Sorry, couldn't resist 🙂

You need to document all the times that you can and can't use the connection. Submit a complaint to VM using that evidence. Give them an appropriate amount of time to fix it (typically 30 days). After deadlock or 8 weeks you can goto CISAS for further dispute resolution with your evidence and eventually you may be released from your contract.

It's a long, slow, process, but it does work.

and yes, you still have to pay whilst the progress is underway.

[Paul_DN]

Hi Oliver91,

Thank you for reaching out to us in our community and welcome, sorry to hear you have been having ongoing connection issues since January and now wish to leave.

I have had a look at things our end and can see some issues, I will be happy to discuss this further, I will invite you into a private chat, please click on the purple envelope to accept?

Regards

Paul.

[Paul_DN]

Hi Oliver,

Thanks for the details, I have done full checks our end and cannot see any issues at all, your levels are where exected, I have checked also for time outs where the Router has gone off and cannot see anything this end.

So we can see the bigger picture please set up a free “Broadband Quality Monitor” to continually monitor the state of your connection and record any network dropouts. It does it 24/7/365 and it keeps a visual record of any/all Broadband Quality Monitor of your network disconnections, useful data to have to match to the Network logs (in your Hub settings) and also in discussions with us. Make sure you uncheck the “ignore ping from WAN side” box in the settings if you see a wall of "red" - note it will take an hour or two to start seeing a sensible picture. please run this for 72 hours and post the results here so we can have a further look into this for you.

Regards

Paul.

[Oliver91]

Hi Paul, 

I would wager the VM tests aren't fit for purpose if that is the case! The last week we've been without internet for the majority of each day, the box has 3 green flashing lights constantly despite us rebooting regularly. On Friday we even had a VM technician visit, as we had no internet for 3 days. The technician said there were significant issues with my connection and it would continue to drop off until the cables in the road are relayed (an appointment that has been cancelled 3 times so far!). We've received this feedback from more than one technician so far...

I will try the broadband quality monitor as you suggest and feedback.

At this point I'm really frustrated... Clearly the tests from your end don't monitor when my internet drops off which seems beneficial to your company as VM can just deny any fault! Since 9am ths morning i've been on my phones hotspot!

Oliver

[Paul_DN]

Hi Oliver,

The problem we have is if it is intermittent this isn't always picked up however by monitoring this it should show on the BQM, please run this for 72 Hours then post the results here sop we can have a look further into this?

Regards

Paul.

[Oliver91]

Hi Paul,

As I can't use my VM internet I can find my VM IP address. Can you please message me the IP number so I can initiate monitoring?

Thanks,
Oliver

[Z92]

You need to login to your hub: https://192.168.0.1

It will then show you your VM ip address in the logs.

You'll see upstream, downstream and network log.

[Oliver91]

Hi,

I'm struggling to download the data from the think broadband website, I'm getting a "404 - this page is not found" message. Hopefully one of the following links will give you access to the data...

[url=https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/78dac730d2abfb1489ccbd1959441587884f3dfe]My Broadband Ping[/url]

The long stretches of red match up identically to when the internet goes down.

Thanks,
Oliver 

[Oliver91]

If that link doesn't work below is the first 4 days of data

Thanks,
Oliver