Why won't Virgin deal with totally loss of TV for months?

[Billot12]

Honestly at my wit's end and don't know where to go next.  We have had endless problems with the TV part of the Virgin service for months. No one is listening and it never gets sorted.  Pretty sure the operators are making it up as they go along as always told an outage has "just happened" yet I reply, "It's been happening for months"  What do I do to make them deal with this?

We used to have three TIVO boxes around the house and gradually we were finding a loss of channels on two of them. One Christmas a couple of years ago we had no TV whatsoever over the whole holiday period and Virgin didn't care at all. Over a period of months I kept calling and would have to switch off and on again and it never resolved it and eventually we took the decision to cancel two of the boxes because we had total loss of TV on them and no financial compensation or resolution and a return to service.  

The remaining main box limped on for a while but stopped in January 2021 and there the nightmare began, I spent hours on the phone over several days until they finally got an engineer out, he messed us around - looked at it, disappeared to the cabinet in the street, came back, said there was a problem at the cabinet and he had made a call and organised another engineer to come back out to us.  This never happened and we had to chase again.  A new engineer finally came who was good, but said there is a problem at the cabinet and the signal is too low for us to get a good service, so he did what he could and we got a couple of channels back.  However since then we have lost all service, as in every channel is either pixellated, stuck or black screen with WO2 message. I call but nothing happens.  I am also not being compensated for this total loss.  It is so bad we don't even have BBC/ITV, so no channels at all. We have to rely on streaming services. Yet we are paying a fortune. Today an operator said the following:

Yes there is an issue with a low signal, wait a week and if it still doesn't work call us back, there is no compensation because you do have working internet so not a total loss of service so auto compensation doesn't apply.  WE HAVE TOTAL LOSS OF TV, NOT A SINGLE CHANNEL

What do I do next?  I'm currently looking into writing to the comsumer pages of the national newspapers because despite asking them to raise a complain, I haven't heard from Virgin in all this time with regards to a solution. What do I do next?

[japitts · Accepted solution]

I can see you posted back in January about your TV fault, and a tech visit was booked off the back of that.

You've referred to, what seems to me, further symptoms of the same problem - pixellation & W02 "loss of signal" errors are all symptomatic of the fault still being apparent. Whether the original fault is still unresolved, or there's another problem somewhere - is precisely why you need "hands & eyes" tech physically in-front of your equipment & installation.

Normally the best way to follow this up is to do what you've done - call in, and describe your symptoms. You may yet find that calling back and getting another agent elicits the correct response - i.e. a tech visit. I will wave a VIP "magic wand" and escalate this post to VM forum staff for attention sooner than you would otherwise get.

Hopefully this will start to get you the solutions you need - i.e. a tech visit. Out of interest, do you have Virgin broadband? At the risk of opening another can of worms, then if you do... you could do a lot worse than consider a box-swap from TiVo to a newer V6. It runs the same software as your existing boxes but on much newer, more capable hardware. But for now, let's start to get you the help you need...

[Billot12]

Yes same problem as January as never properly fixed.  

1st engineer came out, (no mask and coughing everywhere) had a look then went off to look at the box saying he would come back once he had looked at the cabinet in the street.Came back 2 hours later - "You need a different engineer I have arranged this as there is an issue with the cabinet in the street"

No new engineer, after waiting and spending hours on the phone I was told no engineer visit had been rebooked but there had been an issue with the cabinet for sometime. Great!

2nd engineer finally arrives - confirms no engineer had been booked until I called again.  Also spent a lot of time with us and and the cabinet and on the phone and said the problem is the signal levels to the cabinet are too low and he needed to make calls and do tech stuff to get them raised. He managed to get us a working set of channels and left his number saying we could call again if needed as he felt the problem might come back.

A few days later problem returned, we have no channels at all not even BBC/ITV so cannot watch anything other than stream Netflix via Xbox.  Tried contacting engineer - no answer. This was late Feb. 

Today - no internet so I called Virgin, once they sorted that I pointed out still no TV channels. Operator suggested waiting a week as others had complained today too, I pointed out it had been months and wasn't connected to any specific issue they might have today.  Got nowhere and they won't refund as not a total loss of all services. How can that be?! surely total loss of one service for MONTHS should result in some refund?

I think our equipment is ancient and does need replacing but they won't even offer this. I don't know what to do next as no resolution offered other than 'wait a week then call back'. Clearly there is a big problem with the street cabinet, but they aren't fixing it. The operator acknowledges there has been a problem with the signal since 21st July, ok it has been way longer, but even taking their date of the current problem, they should refund me from there until now while they look into it further, shouldn't they?

[Molly_G]

Hey @Billot12,

Thanks for your recent post - I'm really sorry to hear of your experience and that you're still having TV issues after all this time.

I'd like to look further into this for you, so will just send you a private message to confirm some details and I can hopefully find a suitable solution here to ensure your services are all working as they should be.

Please keep an eye on the purple envelope at the top of the page.

Many thanks,

[Billot12]

Hi Molly, 

I've replied to your pm.  Just to say I've also sent a letter to complaints today and really do expect someone to deal with this whole problem this time, I do think we have been patient but Virgin cannot continue to take a lot of money every month and make no attempt to provide a service. At one point they agreed there was a problem with the cabinet and said the status said it would be fixed but the date was somewhere around 6 weeks after the day i called. How can they think that is acceptable?

[japitts]

Just a couple of small points of observation more than anything else...

I don't know the particulars - only boots on the ground do - but if there is a problem with VM's local street cabinet then this could easily affect single users or multiple users. If multiple users are affected, then those multiple users need to be reporting their faults. Sometimes they are, and VM's processes let things down, but far too often on this forum we read tales of "I've put up with this for months but not done anything about it".... It can very often be a "bit of both" as it were. Hopefully now that the forum team are involved in yours, then this should get your issues at least, moving in the right direction. I will certainly follow the progress of this thread with some interest.

The credits issue follows on from that to an extent. VM's "auto-compensation" scheme only covers outright loss-of-service for broadband & landline services, not TV. Any goodwill credits for poor or degraded service, are a different argument entirely and would be between yourself & VM.

And I'm sure @Molly_G  has already found it, but just incase, your previous thread for reference, is at https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Virgin-TV/No-TV-service-for-weeks-W02-error-code/m-p/4571670