VM cut my cable to give to neighbour

[Willc1000]

Hi, 

I recently rejoined Virgin after cancelling due to being offer something for £73 that is now costing £19 which is a joke in itself.  In the short time I was not with Virgin though it seems an engineer has come round and cut right through my cable to give it to my neighbour.  Now as far as I understand everyone has a connection installed because for whatever reason openreach only offers adsl even thought be fibre box is right outside.   What I don’t understand is how if my neighbour needed his cable replacing or needed one putting in (which seems less likely) then why wasn’t one installed.   I am now left with no service and no way of getting my service restored at the moment.  The people kn chat are only bothered about their ratings at the end and just speak nonsense at you and the people on the phone have no idea what you are talking about usually. I explained that I thought there must be a problem with the cable, but they just kept saying they sent a message to my hub to tell it to activate and then it will activate.  I mean I did say good luck with that because it has no connection, but they were not interested.  An engineer came today and confirmed the cable was cut.  The signal is not great quality so the cable cannot be split to both of us or the internet would be very slow.  I don’t understand why, when I had a perfectly normal working cable why I am the one suffering because of someone else.  I am paying for services I cannot use,  most broadband providers give backup solutions like mobile broadband.  Nothing has been said.  The engineer said it could be a very long time before they put on a new cable for me because of access issues and the fact the cable runs along the back of the building on the 4th floor.  Why would someone who works for Virgin Media cut someone else’s cable knowing they will no longer have any access to services.  It really is beyond belief.  Has anyone else had this happen? And know how long these things actually take? I cannot really function with no internet at home.  

[Vikki_M]

Hi @Willc1000

Thank you for your post and welcome back to our community. 

I am sorry to hear about the issues you are having getting re installed.

Could you expand on the visit you had today please and what was said regarding the cable?

Have we confirmed it was ourselves who damaged this?

Please pop back to us when you can. 

[nodrogd]

Looking at the description you gave it does not surprise me. VM only has a handful of heights trained teams that are permitted to work on cabling above 1st floor height. No doubt your old connection was taken as it was a minimal amount of work to connect a new customer.

[jem101]

I do say that I have a degree of sympathy with the VM installer here, you admit that you were not a customer and hence paying VM nothing at all. So the installer for your neighbour turns up, finds there is no cable for them and has a choice, do they tell your neighbour sorry about that but tough no connection for you? Or do they actually use a bit of initiative and use your apparently redundant cable , get neighbour connected up and everyone’s happy?

Well until you change your mind and want to come back to VM, but they aren’t psychic, they couldn’t have known that! 

999 times out of a thousand, it wouldn’t have been an issue, you are simply the one outlier where it didn’t work out. Basically when you left VM originally, you took a gamble - it’s worked out badly for you, but that’s the nature of the beast.

[spell]

Your contract does not commence and you do not pay until you are properly installed - you may want a rethink now

[Roger_Gooner]

The cable has not been damaged, what has happened is that it's been split with one leg going to you and the other to the neighbour. This is perfectly fine so long as the signal strength is strong enough. As an aside, all residential broadband regardless of ISP or technology is shared and if you were to follow your cable to the cabinet you'd find your cable and a load of others all sharing a single upstream cable.

Can you post some stats.
For a hub 3: go to 192.168.0.1 (router mode) or 192.168.100.1 (modem mode), do not log in, click on the link "Check Router Status".
For a hub 4: go to 192.168.0.1 (router mode) or 192.168.100.1 (modem mode), log in, click on the link "Check Router Status".
Copy and paste the Downstream, Upstream and Network Logs as text (not images). Mask any public IP address.

[Willc1000]

Unfortunately they clearly didn't want to spend any time reconnecting my cable at all as it is just dangling in the air attached to the phone line cable it is joined to.  So I have no stats to send as there is no connection at all.  Also that and the fact the hub I was sent doesn't work anymore as it has gone into a total reboot loop after waiting for a connection for a couple of days.  I can't seem to get another one of those very easily either!

[Willc1000]

Hi @Vikki_M

The engineer said the cable had been cut by another engineer installing a connection to next door, he said they should have really come over to find out if I was planning to use it as that is good practice rather than just cutting it and leaving it there.  He also said it should have been reconnected with a splitter and he was going to do that, but my neighbour was not in unfortunately.  I have since spoken to my neighbour and they confirmed that the engineer did cut it knowing that it went to my flat and also told him I won't be using it.  How they would know that I have no idea.  Apparently the engineer booked an appointment for someone else to come out Thursday So I took another day off work to stay in for the morning, I explained this to customer service as nobody had even bothered to tell me there was an appointment made at all and I only found out by the fact that I chatted with them on WhatsApp.  They said they had made sure they will come between 9-10am so I can leave afterwards, they didn't.  I rang back and the guy I spoke to on the phone got through to the engineer apparently and they said they were late and were coming 11.30-12.30.  Although very inconvenient I waited again.  They didn't come.  I rang back again, the customer service agent couldn't get through to field services so gave me their direct number.  I rang them, they told me I was wrong and I didn't have an appointment Thursday at all!  I was quite shocked by this point having had my entire morning and half my afternoon wasted by being told that they were actually still coming, at least to give me a new hub so that when I actually have a cable that works I can use it, but no.  So they tell me I have an appointment Friday and that they have spare equipment in their van that they can give.  So yet another day waiting in and guess what, they never come.  So I couldn't be bothered to ring this time because on Thursday I spoke to about 17 people all of which didn't know anything about what I was asking and also each time I was transferred nobody sent the notes with it so I had to go through security 17 times as well!  Which is just ridiculous really.  So I chatted to several people on WhatsApp on Friday and it seems that they knew they were not coming on Thursday, so the fact that not only did nobody call or text to say sorry we are not coming, they also lied to me on the phone!  They didn't call or text on Friday either and according to the customer service agent they have to contact the council because they need to do a repull and dig up the road and path.  Well that is absolute nonsense as I told the agent (who completely ignored everything I said about it) because there is a cabinet attached to the building with enough connections for all the flats here.  The engineer on Tuesday went in there and confirmed this.  So I literally have no idea what is going on, they then said they will make sure a manager comes out within 24-48 hours then proceed to tell me I have an appointment booked for Tuesday, 4 days later.  They also said I am entitled to Ofcom compensation due to the fact I have never had service and also I have had two missed appointments, when I asked how this works though they just said I don't know I am only customer service.  So quite what the point of telling me was, I literally have no idea!  The complete lack of communication is bad enough, the missed appointments are completely unacceptable.  I had 3 out of 5 days waiting for Virgin Media last week, only 1 of 3 appointments did someone show up.  2 of the appointments were made without my knowledge and I only found out because I called or chatted with customer service to complain about my lack of service and that was their response, that I have an appointment booked.  It doesn't help that I have now been waiting 13 days for someone to remove my old account from my email address so that I can register my new one.  This was said to be an easy job that first of all would take 48 hours, wasn't done.  Second a ticket was raised, 5 days I was told.  Didn't happen.  Again I asked, nothing.  I still cannot log into my account, I managed to get through to someone Thursday who seemed very proficient and told me everything had been done, but it seems that all they were proficient at was lying as it turns out nothing works at all still.

[Zoie_P]

HI Willc1000, 

Thank you for your post 🙂

I am so sorry for the experience you have had with us.

You advised you spoke to an agent and they advised all is sorted, is this the case for you?

Let us know 

Zoie

[Willc1000]

Hi, sorry for the incredibly late response, but I have been speaking with customer service via various means and got nowhere.  I ended up going onto someone’s balcony and hooking back into the original cable using an old splitter I still had from my previous equipment. My neighbour said it’s fine as a temporary thing which is a bit of a cheek considering that it was going to my flat in the first place.  I told customer service that I was so fed up with everything that I connected it myself and that someone needed to come sort it out.  I have had three appointments for a new cable to be put in and nobody ever turned up.  Customer service just lie to you and offer credit to you to get rid of you and never apply it to your account. They only really seem to want to tell you anything in order to get a good rating at the end.  I have said many times and even opened a complaint about the fact I don’t think an indoor splitter hanging in the air outside wrapped in a bit of tape done by a customer of all people is acceptable at all.  But nobody has done anything about it anyway.  It is quite unbelievable actually.