Calls from virgin mobile to virgin landline fail

[hashdef]

I have a virgin mobile family plan with 4 phones.  When any of us try to phone home to our virgin landline, the call frequently fails at the first attempt (probably more than 30% of attempts).  The mobile doesn’t get a ring tone but the home phone rings.  When answered, the mobile behaves as if connected (call timer starts counting up) but nothing is heard either end. 

[SixString]

Hi Beth,

OK will start logging and also check if other mobile networks can connect. Historically we have not seen this problem with others, just with our Virgin mobiles, but I'll check again anyway and log as requested. In the meantime, if you can restore our caller ID which seemed to be disabled when the accounts were reset by Steven L (above) that would be appreciated.
Thanks

[Corey_C]

Thanks for your reply, SixString, 

I'll get this reset for you. Please allow 24 hours for the service to update.

Cheers,

Corey C

[SixString]

Hi Beth,
We are still experiencing failed calls from our mobiles to our landline including crossed lines! I have logged incoming calls from mobiles as requested. How shall I send to you?, I don't want to post them on the public forum.
Many thanks

[Hayley_S]

Hello @SixString,

For now we don't need the examples, but if you can keep a note that would be really helpful if we do need to escalate the issue to our second line team.

Are you receiving incorrect calls? Is this from any mobile or landline? When you ring from your mobile do you get a message / tone? 

Many thanks,

[SixString]

Calls received, when they are received, are good. When a Virgin mobile calls our landline, sometimes they connect first time, at other times they fail to connect. The landline correctly identifies the incoming call but no connection is made to the mobile, however during one of these failed calls yesterday, upon answering the landline, the landline connected to a different call, someone who was giving his details to what sounded like an answering machine. i.e. a crossed line. At the very same time the Virgin mobile connected to a doctors surgery answering system stating which number to press to access services!!! The Virgin mobile caller to us always knows if the call is going to fail as no ringing tones are heard on the mobile even though the mobile is shown to be calling. If the mobile caller waits then eventually the call connected timer on the mobile screen will start counting , but with no sound heard unless a "crossed line" as described above occurs, which has happened more than once.

[Gareth_L]

Hello SixString

Thanks for the explanation

So I can get this looked at in more detail

Can I please send you a Private message to obtain account details 

If you can check the purple envelope top right of your screen that would be great 
Regards     
Gareth_L

[hashdef]

This problem has not been fixed and seems to be getting worse.  I gave up the other day after 3 failed attempts.  We've also had the 'crossed line' problem reported by others.  I've had two interactions with 2nd line support which were fairly unsatisfactory.  They were difficult to understand, just insisted the fault was fixed and closed the ticket.

Can someone please get this re-opened.   It is incredibly frustrating not being able to phone home!

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @hashdef,

Thank you for coming back to us about your issue. I'm very sorry to hear that this problem is still ongoing and that you're still struggling to make calls to your landline from your mobile phone.

Can you tell us a little more about how your technical appointment went? Was the technician able to resolve this issue for you previously?

Are you able to came calls out from your landline to your mobile phone? Are you able to make calls from your mobile to other mobiles and other landlines?

I was able to locate your account, and I cannot see any area outages that could be impacting your services. Have you been experiencing any broadband connection issues at all?

Please let us know and we'll be able to look into this further for you.

Thank you.

[SixString]

I gave up trying to resolve this problem a while ago after having zero success with the Virgin team. Below is the final response I received as a PM

Hello 

To be honest I have had a look at every possibility and nothing has helped

It is very strange especially as it is intermittent

There is not much else to check

Gareth_L

We, like @Hashdef have been living with the fault ever since! I am a recently retired Technical Manager from a Blue Chip, FTSE 100 company with over 30 years’ experience in the electronics industry. This is my professional opinion on the matter. It is probably a software bug that is causing the mobile often not to connect with a landline which is registered to the same account. I’m guessing (as I don’t know their system structure) that the fault is at the mobile side of the system. It is probably occurring when the mobile system checks the number its dialling to see if it’s a virgin number, this will probably be as part of the initialisation for the billing timing. A non-voice connection is made to the landline and the landline starts to ring, and the correct caller ID is shown on the landline system. However, the mobile caller will usually instantly know that its not going to connect as a ringing tone is not heard on the mobile. Whether the anomaly is in the mobile system as a whole or within the SIM of the mobile, I don’t know.

Software bugs can be difficult to track down especially those which are intermittent.  If I was Virgin I would set up a test account with a landline and two or three mobiles to try and replicate the fault and then take it from there by running debug routines on the mobile calling software. However, this sort of investigation can be costly in terms of man hours spent and unfortunately for us @hashdef we end up having to live with the fact that as it is affecting so few users, it would be uneconomical for Virgin to carry out a full investigation to resolve the matter. So it appears we will have to live with the fact that family members who want to call home, maybe requiring urgent contact!, have to dial in three or four times to get to speak to someone. 

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @SixString,

Thank you for coming back to us. I'm very sorry to hear that your issue has not been resolved and that you're still experiencing issues using your mobile to call your landline. We'll be happy to look into this issue further for you.

Can you tell us if you were able to have a technician come out to look into your landline set up when you last spoke to my colleague? I understand that you've not been in touch with them in several months, can you tell us if you've still been experiencing the same issue since then?

Any further details will be appreciated, so we can help resolve this issue.

Thank you.