Virgin Media Fibre Cable Damage – Ongoing Service Outage (11 days currently) and TERRIBLE Response
Our Virgin Media fibre cable was damaged by a third party on Friday 18th July 2025. It turns out that when it was originally installed, it had only been buried 3cm below the grass, making it extremely vulnerable. I reported a total loss of service straight away and was told—very clearly—that the earliest an engineer could attend to do a repair would be Wednesday 23rd, between 8am and 1pm. On the day, at 12:55pm, I received a call from the engineer saying he couldn’t make it and would be at least 3 hours. It then became clear that he had been assigned the job as a new installation—not as a fault repair or cable damage issue. He arranged for a work crew to attend, who arrived around 2pm. They found that the issue wasn’t just a case of blowing new fibre lines as the ducting is blocked and/or damaged further up the road, requiring the footpath to be dug up and the cables re-run from the box. They told us they would apply for the necessary permits and the timeline would be 2–3 days and we should expect to hear from Virgin with an update to this. Five days later, with no updates, I contacted Virgin customer service again. Unfortunately, the agent I spoke with had no record or knowledge of anything that had previously happened. They then scheduled another technician to come out on Monday 29th. That technician arrived early this morning, only to tell me he also had no information about the issue and had just been booked for a routine visit. He confirmed this needed to be handled by a ground crew and said he would contact the manager at Avonline (the third-party contractor responsible), and promised a call back later today with an update. He also commented that this job should not take this long, especially since we live in a tucked-away cul-de-sac where no road closures or diversions would be required. Unsurprisingly—and in typical Virgin Media fashion—we’ve heard nothing further. No update, no progress, and we’re now back to square one: repeatedly calling customer support, only to be met with script-reading staff who have no access to case history or the power to escalate the issue. How many more days are we expected to chase Virgin Media just to find out when the basic repair work will even begin? We’ve been loyal customers for over 5 years, but based on this experience, we’re seriously considering switching. The ability to fix faults—and communicate clearly—is frankly atrocious.Avoidance of responsibility by virgin media.
I have been a VM customer for decades, in fact since they first acquired the company NTL World, who I joined on their beta tests in the 90’s. I have never felt so disrespected and ignored by a company, despite always paying a bill and being a loyal customer. For more than 3 years I have suffered with intermittent WiFi and router problems. I have had several engineers visit my property, I’ve had all wiring on my property replaced, the last 4 engineers have all pointed to the cabinet in the road, telling me it needs rewiring and they have all said they will report it to the field team who look after the cabinets. Craig, the last engineer who visited my property did so due to the wrong information being passed by the faults team, this was approximately 6 months ago, I just happened to be home when Craig called, I said to him “you aren’t meant to be coming to my home, you are supposed to be repairing the cabinet”. Craig told me that’s a separate department… I told him this had been happening for 3 years and I wasn’t surprised. Craig told me he was going to make a report their and then, he took pictures of the box and satin his van, once again reporting to the correct team. I have spoken directly to the cables department a few times, I’ve even been told the repair has been booked and will happen within 72 hours. Lies followed with more lies. One manager at the cables company had written in his notes that the customer, me, was going to bury exposed cables himself! Firstly I wouldn’t want to do VMs job for them, secondly I can only imagine it would be illegal for me to bury things on a public highway… what the hell was he talking about? Despite repeating this half a dozen times, no one at VM seems alarmed about this. I have filed numerous complaints with VM, there is no contact from anyone specific, just generalised letters of apology offering me an embarrassing amount of compensation that wouldn’t even cover one time spent on the phone. No one at VM takes responsibility, when they do communicate it’s signed on behalf of an entire department On the 10th January 2025 I spoke with Daniel in retentions tier 2. Daniel told me he’d spoken with Patrick Savastano, the Access Field Manager for South Central. Daniel told me he was confident the action would happen within 72 hours. So far the field team have put a cover over the cabinet and taken the cover off again. No one has tried to contact me, it’s now 5 weeks later I spoke to a manager of the complaints team yesterday, I asked him to look at what was happening and call me back to advise me how to proceed. As agreed he called me back today, but it became very clear he hadn’t gone back over the file, he started the conversation saying he could see I’ve been complaining since December… he was only 3 years out! Virgin Media should be embarrassed. A quick search on them reveals complete and utter failure in their customer service. There is no one in the company who takes any responsibility and anyone with any authority is shielded from the public. It’s ironic that a company who provide a communication service cannot communicate internally, indeed some services agents will say they are sorry but they don’t have the capability to put the customer through to another department. I am a broadcaster, I am regulated by OfCom. Virgin have one more opportunity to fix my problems and to compensate me fairly for more than 3 years of not fixing a problem… not even attempting to look after their own infrastructure… if they fail I’m going to expose them as publicly as I can.