Virgin Media Community

[ElaineCurrie6]

I have been told I need to post on this forum to get help from Virgin Media.  I have tried every other way I could find but VM just ignore me: so here I am!

Prince PhillipThis is a recent photo of my tv screen.  I have been getting this sort of picture since June/July last year.  I reported the fault in July 2020.  Was told it is due to an "outage", Virgin aware and working on repair.  No improvement to date.  Have phoned VM on numerous occasions, holding on for an hour, getting cut off etc. Did the whole rebooting routine a few times (made no difference).  Have filled in forms on VM website. Have filled in online complaint forms. They were shut down on grounds that technicians were working hard to repair the fault at the "earliest" (how does that invalidate my complaint?). Sent letter to VM Head of Complaints beginning of January asking for refund of my monthly payments since outage and estimated date for completion of repair. He hasn't bothered to reply.  If VM technicians have been working on this outage for 7 months or more it must be serious but that is not my fault. How can they justify taking payments from my Bank when they are not providing the service according to contract?   All I want is for Virgin to provide a proper service (eg proper clear TV pictures) and give me a refund for the 7 monthly payments they have taken despite not complying with their contractual obligations. It would also be reasonable for Virgin to stop taking payments from me until this fault has been fixed. They have not even had the courtesy to give me a proper reply to my enquiries/complaints, but they have written to tell me they are increasing my monthly bill.

[nodrogd]

So much corruption there I would be tempted to say that is a fault MPEG decoder in the box rather than signal related.

[ElaineCurrie6]

Hello,

Thanks for the reply.

I looked up MPEG decoder.  To be honest the explanation didn't mean a lot to me, but I am working on it.

One question.  When you refer to "box" do you mean the box outside or the tivo boxes?

[japitts]

Pixellation is often caused by a signal fault, but @nodrogd is suggesting that your picture is too bad even for that, and there could be a fault within your box itself - I'm inclined to agree.

Have VM offered to replace your box at any stage? Or has an engineer attended and witnessed this picture first-hand?

[ElaineCurrie6]

Virgin Media have not sent an engineer or made any recommendations.  They have done absolutely nothing.

In July when we first phoned them, Virgin said the problem is an "area outage" and their engineers are working on it.  For 7 months they have stuck to that line and shut down my complaints without acting on them. 

I don't like to accuse them of lying but a widespread outage not fixed for 7 months!  Really?  I would expect a lot more people to be complaining.  As it is, I haven't even found a single neighbour with a similar problem.

Virgin Media's conduct is disgraceful.  This is the reason I am so annoyed and have asked for a refund of all the money they have taken out of my Bank (over £600) while they know they are not providing anything like a decent service and are not bothering to fix the fault.  They have ignored my request for a refund as they have ignored my request for a repair and a decent service.

It seems I will be forced to sue Virgin Media or go to the appropriate Ombudsman. Really fed up with having my time wasted on what should be a simple matter.

[japitts · Accepted solution]

I've escalated this post to the forum staff, to make sure it's picked up.

I can't promise how long it'll take, but this should at least get you a staff response.

[Zak_M]

Good morning @ElaineCurrie6 

Welcome to the forums and thank you for taking the time to post. 

I am really sorry to hear that you have had some issues with your TV services. 

I have taken a look over the account and can see the TiVo box has a hardware issues that we need to replace with the box. I have arranged for us to send you out a new box, this should be with you in the next 3-5 business days. 

Kind regards,

Zak_M

[ElaineCurrie6]

Thank you for the reply Zak M.

Not sure how you managed to diagnose a fault by looking at my account, but take it as a positive sign that you are arranging to send me a replacement Tivo box.

Why are you only sending one replacement box when I have 3 Tivo boxes affected by the same fault?

[Zak_M]

Thank you for coming back to me. 

I used the details provided when signing up at the forums to access your account and have run some diagnostic test. 

I can see that you have 3 TiVo boxes however the only one that has provided an error is the one that I have sent a replacement out for. 

Kind regards,

Zak_M

[ElaineCurrie6]

I note you say only one of my Tivo boxes gives you an error.  However, all 3 of them are exhibiting the same fault.  I have photos of each of the boxes in situ showing the same type of corrupted pictures.  Perhaps you could have another look for errors.