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Virgin Media Outage - Northcross Road


Neil.P

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Hey Forum,


I was wondering if anybody else was having trouble with their Virgin Media services(specifically broadband & TV). We have been without service for almost a week now (Northcross Road) and I have had to complain several times to which nothing of note has been offered and the resolution of fault time every time I called was "the next day by 4:30", until yesterday, where they have now said it will be this Friday when the service will resume (which will mean over 10 days of no service!)


I've lived on Northcross Road for over 20 years and have had Virgin Media, but in the last year especially have had periods of time where the service goes for a unacceptable amount of time. And all they offer for the inconvenience is to credit the amount that my package costs per day, and I pay around ?130 a month for all my services, which in itself seems like a lot! The amount they end up crediting simply does not even divide to what that would cost per day, let alone account credits for inconvenience as a gesture of goodwill. Not to mention the amount of mobile data I have had to buy from EE to have some internet access for my children whilst VM screw me around, which has already cost me in the region of ?80 for the last two faults! I am really upset with the service. The staff at VM do not seem to communicate with each department and cannot offer the reason of why the service is down and refuse to let you speak to a technical engineer to find out such things, saying that is not how it works. The last time it happened they went from the fault is outside, to in your house, to cancelling an engineer visit (waited at home all day) saying it was fixed, which is was not for a further two days.


I have told them I am leaving and given the 30 day notice to leave. My only concern now is who should I trasnfer to? Even with all the issues and terrible customer service it still seems that Virgin media is the best option for broadband on Northcross Road and perhaps ED. I no longer want my bulked up TV package so not worried about that, just want fast internet for streaming mainly and perhaps to keep my landline for older relatives who live internationally.


PLEASE any advice or recommendation or even others who are suffering please get in touch! At least to let me know i'm not in this alone. They are driving me crazy.


Thanks in advance,


Neil

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we have just this week cancelled ours and returned to Sky. Our burglar alarm is linked to our wifi, with a call monitoring system and on several occasions we have had to dash home from work to check all ok only to be told the wifi has dropped out. One time we were abroad and it was highly stressful. Two weeks ago it was down for a day. When my husband called to cancel we were offered an amazing package - half the price of what we paying now and a snazzy new box that is reserved for complainers! The guy on the phone said they were losing people in droves. However too late - back to Sky it is, who we have had in a previous house. Even if it as bad a signal, it is cheaper and we prefer the technology. We have BT in our house in Suffolk and it is excellent- worth considering if others recommend. We live on Melford Rd.
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We have BT Infinity on Underhill/Melford - it's pretty much rock solid - one serious outage in the last 12 months. Lasted 5 hours and affected most of London.


Otherwise, other than the occasional reboot of our router, it's great - average 50mbps at peak times (helps that Underhill/Melford isn't far from the exchange). You do pay a fair amount more for BT than Virgin and I suspect Sky, but for us it's worth it.

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We left Virgin Media 18 months/2 years ago after experiencing exactly the same as described above. Went with BT. TV is rubbish in comparison, just a rehashed freeview with some catch-up capabilities. Internet too is slower on paper, but as mentioned above is night and day more reliable. I'd rather have a steady 45/50 Mbps than pay for 150 Mbps but receive only 1! Since that day I've never thought of or worried about broadband. Never had to phone BT and never had reason to complain. In ED at least it just works, and sometimes that's all people want.
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I'm on North Cross too and agree with Siduhe about BT, I'm on Infinity 1 which gives unlimited broadband at the 50mbps speed and is sufficient for streaming on iPlayer and the others. Have been with BT since 2006 and never thought of changing. BT have good introductory offers and if you call them at the end of the introductory period and ask if there is any discount they can offer for the coming year, they'll generally offer a decent discount.
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I've had problems for the last week with Virgin media, connection drops and takes a long time to connect with a site. I called them and their tech team reviewed and found a fault and so coming out next Monday (I called them yesterday).


When my contract is up I'm certainly changing to another provider though

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That's exactly what we did too like DulwichSal and we got compensation from Virgin. Returned back to Sky and not really had any problems. Virgin admitted they flog their product on high speed capabilities. However this is useless when you can't even connect most of the time. Also they need to do a lot of mintainance work which they've only looked at this year held up by getting council permission apparently. We also found their engineers were really stretched and often vented about their contractors. They just need to realise customers aren't necessarily going to hang around until they get their act together.
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We left Virgin Media about 4 months ago and switched to Sky because we were fed up of the constant day-long outages. Sky's fibre service is perfectly fine for streaming even though it does drop out occasionally, but it's nothing compared to the regular loss of service that we suffered with Virgin. It's a shame because I like VM's product (when it works!), but their customer service is abysmal. The people in the overseas call centre are utterly hopeless and VM's policy towards compensation for loss of service is a complete joke.


Neil: you need to speak to one of the "disconnections team" in Newcastle. They are a lot more knowledgeable regarding VM's systems than the people overseas and they have a lot more freedom when it comes to compensation for loss of service. We managed to get ?45 to reimburse the money we spent on mobile data add-ons when VM's service went down for two weeks. Note this is not company policy but we were persistent and eventually they caved, so it is possible to get your money back.

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Posting this on behalf of my friend who has recently had virgin media installed and is expirencing the same issues. She's had no internet for over a week and no real reason as to why. She too has been on the phone to the customer services several times and it's been pretty much pointless every time.


She has been advised to email the MD, as this seems to get the issues resolved. If enough people from one area email, hopefully something will be done. If you are able to, please could you email [email protected]. I get posting this email address may not be allowed, but you can google it and it seems a lot of people up and down the country have done it and it seems to have helped.


Thanks!

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BT are not universal across East Dulwich SE22 area. So real BT not spots - weirdly near their exchange!

When I met with BT they asked if the council could make the required investment.

So we need Virgin Media broadband to work reliably as some level of competition. We also need mobile phone masts upgraded for 4G LTE and soon 5G - but that's for another day.


I contact VM formally Spring 2016 and was given all sorts of promises about August 2016. Clearly a problem. And the excuse of the council blocking them I just don't buy.


One way to get their attention is via social media. If you can please retweet this so we get their attention -

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BT are not universal across East Dulwich SE22 area


To clarify, James, I think you mean that the roll-out of BT Fibre - i.e. the Infinity service is not universal across SE22 - I can assure you that BT phone and ADSL broadband services are.


The fibre is run from racks in the exchanges to street-side cabinets ? which means that there must be capacity on the racks and in the cabinets (and in the ducts which connect these) before service can be offered. The local network is provided by BT Openreach, who are required to act at arm?s length from BT Retail services and serve all customers (i.e. other network services) with an even hand. A particular close local BT exchange may not be the one supplying the fibre capability - hence the apparent anomaly that someone close to 'an exchange' can't get BT Infinity services. It's not like the twisted pair (voice) phone service where you will be supplied normally from your closest exchange.


[Although it's worth saying that London, being a hugely long-lived and developed network area may well have two contiguous houses supplied from different exchanges, just based on local capacity at the time, when historically on one exchange group (i.e. numbers starting 020 8299) there will only be 10,000 numbers (from 0000-9999). Old exchanges (in London and various other metropolitan cities) were built with a 10,000 line capacity - and new equipment (another 10,000 line 'Director' Exchange) would have to be added to extend this, in the same or a new building.]


So it is possible for, e.g. Sky to be being supplied with (BT Openreach) fibre network where BT Retail isn?t, just based on available capacity. Indeed only the cable TV company known as Virgin (which used to be NTL) has competing network, and they aren?t obliged to open their services to third parties.

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Arrived home at 6 to find no Virgin broadband & tv. No idea how long it was off. After speaking to someone they confirmed it was a cable issue and that the estimated recovery time would be 23.30 tonight. When I said I had important work to complete they put me through to customer support to complain. Was wrongly transferred twice and while hanging on for ages the tv suddenly came on. When I eventually got through she said that they give an extra long estimated recovery time to cover themselves. I said this was unreliable and not proper support to customers and she could only apply the daily rate of ?3 or so as compensation. Grr...
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James Barber Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> BT are not universal across East Dulwich SE22

> area. So real BT not spots - weirdly near their

> exchange!

> When I met with BT they asked if the council could

> make the required investment.

> So we need Virgin Media broadband to work reliably

> as some level of competition. We also need mobile

> phone masts upgraded for 4G LTE and soon 5G - but

> that's for another day.

>

> I contact VM formally Spring 2016 and was given

> all sorts of promises about August 2016. Clearly a

> problem. And the excuse of the council blocking

> them I just don't buy.

>

> One way to get their attention is via social

> media. If you can please retweet this so we get

> their attention -

> https://twitter.com/CllrJamesBarber/status/9096933

> 05864310784



Hi James, did you see the BBC Watchdog investigation into Virgin Media back in July? https://www.telecomstechnews.com/news/2017/jul/05/bbc-watchdog-calls-out-virgin-media-slow-broadband-stores-close-and-staff-voice-dissatisfaction/ The experiences of the people featured are identical to what's happening in ED. In the end the CEO Tom Mockridge intervened to bring additional capacity to the areas featured and people reported vast improvements. Can you make representation for them to do the same thing in our neighbourhood please? This over capacity issue has been around for at least 3 years but yet they still sign more people up.

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James Barber Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> BT are not universal across East Dulwich SE22

> area. So real BT not spots - weirdly near their

> exchange!


Indeed. Right across the road from their exchange is one half of LL without VDSL (otherwise known as fibre broadband), while the fibre cabinet nearest to the exchange serves the Lordship Lane Estate and Dukes Court. Not sure if that fibre cabinet also serves the shops/houses across the road. But certainly Norman Court and the houses up to Melford Road are ADSL only, so reliant on Virgin.

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We have also been without internet and phone in Shawbury Road for the last 5 days. Should have been fixed today, but hasn't been. Have called three times tonight but get cut off after 14 minutes (I am using the 0800 number from my mobile, not the extortionately expensive 0345 number). So frustrating. We've been here 5 years and Virgin Media have actually been pretty poor during that time. Periods of over subscription leading to very slow speeds or timeouts. Pretty much ready to bin them and go with someone else. BUT - it's great when it works and I don't want to line that horrible Murdoch's pockets.
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It all gets curioser and curioser .....


When we moved into North Cross Road five years ago we had Virgin installed because we had been very pleased with it for about ten years in our previous house in East Anglia, and have had no serious problem with it.

The occasional small glitch has always been dealt with very promptly.

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Jadebela - I think I know what your problem is as you are around the corner from me. So after no internet for a week, mine got fixed yesterday - I'm on glengarry road. The engineer advised that in the box on the street, there are boards with about 50 connections on each. One whole board is not working. He moved me to the other side and has fed back to head office and requested a network engineer. My engineer wasn't able to fix/ replace the board - different skill set. My guess is you're on the broken connectivity board. And no, they don't seem to be reporting ''tis as an area problem despite all these people with broadband!

The engineer had some pretty interesting (though not surprising) things to say about "head office" and the challenges around communication to engineers, customers, appointment logistics etc. Sounds like it's all rather chaotic.

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Virgin engineer in my street fixing someone else's broken broadband... he said network engineer is turning up within an hour or so to resolve problems mentioned above. (Crazy there are all these separate customer-initiated callouts going on when virgin know what the problem is... but at least it looks like this particular issue in our particular ED pocket is about to get resolved!)
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We're on St Aidans have had had no broadband for the last few days. Apparently this is down to "line noise"... i.e. a problem somewhere on the network that effectively scrambles the signal. They are estimating 1 week to locate the fault.


They have become really unreliable over the past year or so. We were told the main reason is they have too much demand i.e. they have taken on too many customers. Consequently, they are having to upgrade their systems.

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We are on Bawdale and internet has been out since 21st. Was due to be fixed by 4pm on 26th and then by 4pm on 29th (today) - got email at 3pm today pushing fix to 4pm on 3rd. Will be switching at first opportunity but as noted above no capacity with BT or Sky so trapped.
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