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.