Awful Packet Loss NW3

[damawa42]

Awful packet loss in NW3. What's being done about it, Virgin?

Frequent connection drop-outs

Simple traceroute shows loss occurring all throughout the Virgin network (outside of my house)

[damawa42]

Hi

After a week of delay you finally fixed the issue and I had one week of good service with acceptable latency and minimal to no packet loss.

However - you informed me you were doing works in the area yesterday (Thursday 27th January) and loe and behold, absolutely abysmal service has resumed.

Why can't you get your act together!?!?

I demand compensation. I have had terrible service for multiple months now.

[damawa42]

 You have now sent an SMS saying the work is now finished. 

But as you can see, the situation is EVEN WORSE than before the 20th January fix.
How have you ruined it again within one week?

TWENTY PERCENT DROPPED PACKETS?!!?!?!?!?!

[damawa42]

Just to really highlight the issues over the last few days:

You managed to fix the general long-term issue, with good connectivity for a week. Then on Thursday you performed 'maintenance' which led to a completely unusable connection for 20 hours, followed by 20+ hours of completely lack of connection.

Thursday - reasonable apart from one disconnect until the evening, the completely unusable:

Friday - disgraceful, initially connected but completely unusable due to your maintenance work, then from 3pm onwards absolutely zero connection:

Saturday - no connectivity until 1pm:

This is completely unacceptable. A long term issue of abysmal quality of service finally followed by two days of no connectivity. 
I demand a refund.
As a goodwill gesture owning to the long term nature of this problem, for which I have to spend many hours contacting Virgin AND incur the cost of running a back-up 4G connection, I demand three months of full refund. This issue has been going on since at least November.
This week's complete disconnects are the final straw.


Finally - you have unilaterally given me an appointment I did not ask for.... WHY IS IT AT 1 AM IN THE MORNING!?!!?!?!

[Kath_F]

Hi damawa42, 

Thanks for coming back and keeping your thread updated. 

We're sorry to hear the issues have been ongoing. Looking at our systems, I can see there was an open fault affecting you and this was open the times you were posting your BQM graphs. 

The fault has closed as resolved now and this was done yesterday. Can you please reboot your Hub to clear any residual issues and let us know how things are now?

Speak soon, 

[damawa42]

Things are fine now.

Please explain why you broke my internet connection for 2 days by doing "maintenance".

Please also confirm I will receive three months refund.

[David_Bn]

Thanks for coming back to us @damawa42, and I'm sorry for the service issues you've been experiencing.

From time to time we may need to performance maintenance work, as well as repairing any faults we have in the local area.

I can see further up the thread, we advised that this was an SNR issue that was causing the outage, and certainly not a deliberate attempt to break your internet connection.

In regards to a refund, or crediting for a loss of service, we are bound by the regulations put in place by out regulators and these can be found via this link

Kindest regards,

David_Bn

[damawa42]

Sure, from time to time you might do maintenance. But for maintenance to destroy connectivity for two days?! That's unacceptable.

And let me be very clear - you are NOT bound by regulation in terms of compensation.

You are bound in terms of compulsory minimum compensation. 

But you CAN choose to compensate above and beyond and in more circumstances.

This has been such a farce I demand significant compensation. 

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @damawa42,

Thank you for coming back to us about your ongoing issue. How is your connection at the moment?

I understand that maintenance and area issues can be frustrating. This is why we have set up our Automatic Compensation Scheme, so that if customers are impacted by a full loss of service issue, and we do not resolve it in 48 hours, they will be entitled to compensation.

We are not a fault free service, and issues can arise. We always aim to resolve any area issues we encounter as soon as we can. 

I do apologise that your services have been impacted, and I'm glad that the area issue is now resolved. Please let us know if you need assistance with anything else, we'll be more than happy to investigate this further for you.

Thank you.

[damawa42]

Sure - you can't guarantee a fault free service, but it's as if you don't even try, and don't have the basic competence to maintain a basic service for more than a week!

This problem isn't just a one-off of loss of service - this is MONTHS of TERRIBLE connectivity which I have to nag and beg you to fix for weeks, followed by complete loss of service.

Now I've had a good couple of weeks, something has gone to pot with your service already and voila, terrible latency again!!! THIS IS ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE

[Andrew-G]

VM staff are required to refer customers to the patchy auto-compensation scheme, and without saying so this implies it is the only option for customers.  When customers see the detail, they find out that it doesn't cover intermittent or repeated outages or poor service.  That simply means the automatic compensation scheme isn't applicable, it doesn't mean that you aren't entitled to compensation or other forms of redress.  The Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires any service to be provided with "reasonable skill and care" failing which the company are liable to resolve the matter through various fixes including compensation.  Also, the Ofcom Fairness Commitments that VM agreed to in 2019 (but CEO Lutz Schuler and his senior team seem to have forgotten) state "Customers’ services work as promised, reliably over time. If things go wrong providers give a prompt response to fix problems and take appropriate action to help their customers, which may include providing compensation where relevant. If providers can’t fix problems with core services they have promised to deliver within a reasonable period, customers can walk away from their contract with no penalty."  Having said that, it is important to note that any complex service can have faults, and the company are not being unreasonable if it takes a few days to trace and resolve - what matters is if faults are repeated, or if the delays are unreasonably long, or if the customer service is poor.  A one off fault that took a couple of weeks to fix would certainly anger customers, but probably would be regarded as not meriting compensation.  If you think you're entitled to compensation for a poor connection, repeated faults, unreasonably slow fixes, and/or poor customer service, then the process is as follows:

1) You ask to raise a formal complaint with VM, the best way is usually the online form in My Virgin Media; This should result in a complaint reference number.  The complaint should outline the problem and the history, and the resolution you want - in this case VM to sort out their shonky network, crummy support, and pay compensation for the repeatedly poor connection and failure to fix. Given that you say this is a repeated event, consider whether you'd want to leave VM.  If you do, but are currently locked in a fixed term contract, the complaint could additionally ask for release from contract without penalty, but at this particular point in time (Jan/Feb 2022) that may be an unnecessary complication, because if you've had the price rise letter you have up to 30 days from the notification to serve notice of cancellation (that starts a further 30 days fixed notice period).  Whatever the "remedies" you request as part of the complaint, it should also ask for a "deadlock letter" for the purposes of escalation to the industry complaints scheme CISAS, on the basis that you expect the complaint to be handled to Virgin Media's traditional standards of customer service.  

2) Either VM come up with a credible settlement, or they don't.  Set your expectations dial to low, and then turn down a further two notches.  Any poor outcome doesn't matter, including closure of the complaint, rejection, an inadequate offer of settlement, being fobbed off with tick box garbage, or even the disappearance of the complaint into the ether.  The point is that before you can take the matter further VM must have a reasonable opportunity given to them to address the matter before you unleash the hounds.  

3) If VM haven't satisfied your complaint, then you take the matter up with CISAS.  There are two important criteria here - either you have the requested deadlock letter, alternatively you have to wait eight weeks have elapsed since a formal complaint was made to VM.  If you have to involve CISAS, I'd say do a quick summary to Ofcom as well, although don't put much effort into that because Ofcom operate at an industry level rather than getting involved in resolving specific complaints.