Total Loss of Service for 6 weeks

[RichS1]

I may be just yelling into the void here, but I'm sick of going around in circles and being straight up lied to by Virgin, so I'm hoping someone can offer some advice.

I have had no broadband service since the 20th June. It was working pretty much flawlessly for 7-8 months since it was installed, then suddenly nothing and it hasn't worked since.

I reported the issue that evening and was sent an engineer on the 22nd. She tested the connection and got nothing but said the signal to the cabinet was working fine (I live in flats so there are shared cabinets on the property with all the communication equipment), so she recommended I would need the external cable from my flat to the cabinet replaced. She implied that she would do it herself but didn't have time that day and it might be a 2 person job.

The next day I had a confirmation by text of another appointment on the 26th, which I assumed would be to replace the cable. Instead it was a different engineer who just repeated the same steps as the first. He told me he couldn't replace the cable himself and it would be an external contractor needed. He said he or his manager would arrange everything and let me know.

After a week or so I hadn't heard anything so I called for an update. Of course, the person I spoke to had no idea what I was talking about and arranged for another engineer on the 10th July. When this engineer arrived, he again had no knowledge of the previous visits and repeated the same tests and told me the cable needed to be replaced. He said it would be done within 2 days, and as it was early in the day it would either be done that day or next. He also told me he would schedule himself for another visit the day after to make sure everything was working, and he would text me to confirm the various appointments.

I never had any confirmation from him, but waited in the next day just in case and, of course, no-one turned up. I called again but I was told there was no record of those appointments and was given yet another engineer appointment on the 13th.

This engineer never even bothered to turn up.

At this point I made a complaint on the website and got a reply relatively quickly with an appointment for a "repull" on the 26th July. I had confirmation by text the day before, so I waited in again and again no-one bothered to turn up. I called after the appointment time lapsed and was told that someone from the technician team would call me back "within the hour". Nobody called me, within the hour or otherwise.

I then called again and was told because the repull had been requested the next available appointment wasn't until the 12th August. More than 2 weeks wait for something that was supposed to be done on the 26th July! I was told a manager or supervisor would contact me by text on Monday 29th to arrange a sooner appointment, but surprise, surprise nobody has bothered to contact me yet again.

I have had to take a lot of time off work to be in for these appointments, costing me money and annoying my employer, who has strongly implied I won't be able to do so for much longer. I have since made another complaint and mentioned that I expect to receive the automatic compensation for the time I've been without service and the 2 no-shows from the engineers as promised on the Virgin Media website, and was offered £25 credit as a "goodwill gesture".

One of the most frustrating things about all this is that I don't actually think my cable needs to be replaced!

On the morning that my connection died I saw 2 Sky engineers working on the cabinet and when I got home from work in the evening I had no service, so I think it's pretty clear that that's what has caused the issue. I have been told by the various engineers that the cabinet has been labelled the way that Sky typically label it rather than the way Virgin do it, and one of them said I seem to be getting a Sky signal through my Virgin port in my flat.

With all of that in mind, and given that everything was working fine until then, it seems more likely to me that the Sky guys have simply mislabelled my cable and plugged it into their equipment by mistake and all I need someone to do is check that the cable that is supposed to feed my flat is the correct one. I have told all the engineers who visted this but I guess this doesn't appear on their checklist or something so they've simply flagged it as a repull and now that's what I'm getting whether I need it or not, meaning 2+ weeks between appointments and just praying they show up on the day.

I'm sorry for the long rant, but I genuinely don't know what I'm going to do if this keeps dragging on. If anyone has any advice I would greatly appreceate it.

[jbrennand]

You are certainly in line for some compensation.

See here......

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/costs-and-billing/automat...
https://www.virginmedia.com/help/automatic-compensation
https://store.virginmedia.com/the-legal-stuff/terms-and-conditions-for-fibre-optic-services/automati...

[RichS1]

Thanks for your reply. I was aware of the page on the website Virgin (it was actually one of the Virgin engineers who brought it to my attention) but I hadn't realised it was an Ofcom scheme.

Not sure why the VM resolution team thought I would accept £25 - that's less than I pay per month, and my service has been down longer than that!

[RichS1]

I have rejected the £25 and I will be escalating to the Ombudsman as soon as I can - I believe it needs to be 8 weeks before they'll get involved.

I have had another response to my complaint which is almost identical to the previous one. I'm pretty sure these are automated or written by AI as they all worded in a weirdly specific way.

Every response I've received has begun with "We’ve tried to contact you to discuss in more detail, but we were unable to reach you" which is an obvious lie.

It then goes on to say "We didn’t want to delay things, so we’ve gone ahead and offered a proposed resolution" and proceed to tell me that they've arranged an appointment on the 12th August. The exact appointment I had already arranged on the phone and told them in my complaints, twice, that I should be entitled to a sooner appointment after being stood up on the 26th July.

No mention of compensation in this one. I guess they didn't read that far into the complaint, if they bothered to read it at all.

[Carley_S]

Hi @RichS1 

Welcome to the community forums 

Sorry to hear of your ongoing loss of service issue, we can appreciate that this would be very frustrating and cause inconvenience. 

We can see on the systems at our side that you've since spoken with the team assigned to your complaint since posting and they are working towards a resolution for you.

The automatic compensation credit is not applied until after the fault is resolved. As this is automatically added by the system, we'd not manually offer compensation for the total loss of service until we see what the system has calculated. After the fault is resolved and any automated compensation granted, if you wish to then dispute the amount, you can do so and this would be manually reviewed. Again, this would be after the fault has been resolved. 

[RichS1]

An update (such as it is, as nothing's changed):

After complaining that I shouldn't have to wait until the 12th August for a rescheduled appointment that was supposed to take place on the 26th of July, I finally managed to get a call back from a manager who booked in a slightly earlier one for the 6th (today).

So I stay home from work again and when the engineer arrives, yet again, it is an internal technician who has no idea that this is an ongoing issue - in fact he seemed to be under the impression that this was a new install!

He was very friendly and apologetic, as everyone has been individually, and has promised to flag the problem as urgent and it should be fixed by the end of the week. Which is basically what I've been told the last 3 times. So I'm back to square one, hoping and praying that someone that can actually help me will contact me because I have no way of contacting them.

Why can't Virgin communicate internally? Do the customer service team just have a big red buttom marked "Send Engineer" and hope it gets assigned to the correct department by chance? Why am I having to wait so long between appointments if it's not even the super specialist repull team or whoever is supposed to be responsible for running a cable?

[Martin_N]

Hi RichS1,

Thank you for the update. We can certainly take a look into this. 

I will private message you now to confirm your details. 

^Martin

[RichS1]

Again I was given an appointment. I got a confirmation the day before. Again I waited in all day. Again nobody shows up.

This is beyond farcical at this point, it is downright disrespectful.

[Jonny-M]

Make sure you keep a log of everything in a nice easily presentable table that you can show to the ombudsman which will help them to rule in your favour. I would recommend columns such as "date, issue (no service, missed appointment), compensation due for issue, running total of compensation" with the first column being an ascending number. Keep all written evidence you have of appointment confirmations and attach these as an appendix with the number they relate to in the table. This way VM have to dispute individual instances of failed visits rather than just making a blanket claim that you only had three rather than four failures.

I would also say that every single appointment where the wrong engineer was sent counts as a missed appointment (because how can they do anything materially different to not showing up if they cannot do external work?) and let VM argue that it isn't.

[Megan_L]

Hi RichS1, 

I can see that my colleague Martin sent you a PM on Friday, please respond to his message via the Private Messages in the top right corner and he will be happy to help further.

Thanks,

Meg