Virgin Media Outage - Northcross Road

[1921]

Due to the problems with virgin they have been giving me free data via my Virgin mobile so I can hotspot my phone. It works really well and does reduce the stress a bit.

[MissWiggy]

Our experience of Virgin media has been awful. Customer in SE22 since 2012. On 8/9/17 I called them and told them we were moving to SE5 and asked to transfer our service. I was told this wouldn't be a problem as they had checked the house and could see it had had a previous connection - no problem at all and connection appointment made for 25/9/17.

On 24/9/17 we received a phone call telling us the appt on 25/9 could not go ahead as there were construction issues. It was rescheduled for 4/10/17. On 30/9/17 my husband telephoned VM to check that all was on track for tomorrow - told yes of course, pre-installation work has been done and all go for the appointment tomorrow.

at 1830 this evening I get a call saying that there are construction issues and the installation cannot go ahead. The construction team will be in touch in 5 working days to let us know what the timescale for the work will be - could be up to 8 weeks before we are connected.

Absolutely appalled. My advice is to avoid like the plague.

[MissWiggy]

Our experience of Virgin media has been awful. Customer in SE22 since 2012. On 8/9/17 I called them and told them we were moving to SE5 and asked to transfer our service. I was told this wouldn't be a problem as they had checked the house and could see it had had a previous connection - no problem at all and connection appointment made for 25/9/17.

On 24/9/17 we received a phone call telling us the appt on 25/9 could not go ahead as there were construction issues. It was rescheduled for 4/10/17. On 30/9/17 my husband telephoned VM to check that all was on track for tomorrow - told yes of course, pre-installation work has been done and all go for the appointment tomorrow.

at 1830 this evening I get a call saying that there are construction issues and the installation cannot go ahead. The construction team will be in touch in 5 working days to let us know what the timescale for the work will be - could be up to 8 weeks before we are connected.

Absolutely appalled. My advice is to avoid like the plague.

[Rusty_the_greyhound]

Hi neighbours,

We live on Crystal Palace Road - same issue - no internet since Thursday 21/9/2017. Thanks for the useful posts about the issue - much more helpful than anything anyone from Virgin has been able to tell us about the fault. We were also told that a daily credit would be applied to our account, but the full amount went out on 03/10/2017, so check your bills to make sure your credits are being applied.

We've been with virgin a few years and service has generally been good, but this is appalling! Thanks also to councillor James Barber for your support - we'll email you shortly.

[nak23]

Bic Basher Wrote:

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

> Virgin Media is oversubscribed, so no real

> surprised the service keeps falling apart. I'm

> on TalkTalk on LL near the exchange and get 75mb

> down, 19 up.

You do know that talktalk is using BT's network right? So you are on BT's network in reality, you are just paying a middle man for your subscription.

Btw Virgin media is making so much money, you think they'd be losing money but they are not.They are using the same business plan as airline companies do with overbooking people.

An explanation on how Virgin and any other company doing that and how they make money out of it :

[trizza]

A little more information.

I spoke with them three weeks ago. They initially booked in an engineer then I got a text message saying they had cancelled it as it was a network wide fault. I waited a week (still no internet) and spoke with them again. The UK customer services team advised that the broadband should be intermittent with the network fault - not completely off. So it is probably an issue specific to our address.

So they acknowledged we needed an engineer and booked one in (another week delay).

The engineer is due to come tomorrow so we will see what the issue is. However, if you have no internet I would not accept the advice from the technical team that this is down to an area fault.

[CatrionaHelen]

We are on Lordship Lane and have now been without internet since 21st September.

We?ve been given about four different fix dates, (which we have had to call Virgin to find out), all of which have been and gone with no fix and no communication from Virgin.

We?ve incurred costs calling Virgin 6 or 7 times now, and on Friday were cut off twice, before finally getting through to someone who gave us a fix date and then hung up. The most technical information we've got from the as to what the problem is is that it's a 'complex problem'.

We?ve had to continually ask them to take money off our bill (why should we be paying for something we can?t use). We?ve also asked them to cover other costs, eg having to buy extra data for phones, the cost of subscription services we can?t use (Netflix, apple music etc), cost of phone calls, and compensation for general inconvenience, and have been told that ?this isn?t our policy?.

The most recent fix date we?ve been given (given on Fri 6th after that fix date came and went), is tomorrow at 2.30pm. Fingers crossed eh.

[Penguin68]

All local network is delivered to domestic premises either by BT/ Openreach (which has a Universal Service Obligation) or by NTL/ Virgin - who provide where they can make money, mainly in cities and conurbations.

Only services branded Virgin are delivered over the Virgin local network (which is not required to open its network to others) - all other services, whatever their brand, if delivered over landlines/ fibre are delivered by Openreach. Some terminate on equipment in exchanges (racks) which are provided and maintained by third party suppliers (local loop unbundling), others will be a service fully managed on behalf of a wholesale customer by BT wholesdale. BT itself operates, as a retail service, Plusnet, as well as its own branded broadband service.

If you choose any supplier other than Virgin for a landline delivered service it is BT Group's network you will be using (and BT is a significant supplier of network to mobile companies linking their cell towers).

Supply into the business market is more complex.

[trizza]

Our broadband has now finally been fixed.

The cause... Virgin Media installing a noise blocker on our line at the cable box! You honestly could not make it up. According to the engineer, this is routine if the line is not meeting their spec...

Problem is that the engineers do not speak to the technical team, so the technical team don't know a blocker has been installed.

[Jones]

Interesting to hear your services are now restored, trizza. We are on Underhill Rd and have been without tv and broadband for a week and I've just been told the outage will not be repaired until the 18 October! CatrionaHelen, I wonder if we are impacted by the same outage. Sigh.

[Rusty_the_greyhound]

trizza Wrote:

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

> Our broadband has now finally been fixed.

>

> The cause... Virgin Media installing a noise

> blocker on our line at the cable box! You

> honestly could not make it up. According to the

> engineer, this is routine if the line is not

> meeting their spec...

>

> Problem is that the engineers do not speak to the

> technical team, so the technical team don't know a

> blocker has been installed.

Ours still down on Crystal Palace road, ugh I need my internet back.

[nak23]

Penguin68 Wrote:

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

> All local network is delivered to domestic

> premises either by BT/ Openreach (which has a

> Universal Service Obligation) or by NTL/ Virgin -

> who provide where they can make money, mainly in

> cities and conurbations.

>

> Only services branded Virgin are delivered over

> the Virgin local network (which is not required to

> open its network to others) - all other services,

> whatever their brand, if delivered over landlines/

> fibre are delivered by Openreach. Some terminate

> on equipment in exchanges (racks) which are

> provided and maintained by third party suppliers

> (local loop unbundling), others will be a service

> fully managed on behalf of a wholesale customer by

> BT wholesdale. BT itself operates, as a retail

> service, Plusnet, as well as its own branded

> broadband service.

>

> If you choose any supplier other than Virgin for a

> landline delivered service it is BT Group's

> network you will be using (and BT is a significant

> supplier of network to mobile companies linking

> their cell towers).

>

> Supply into the business market is more complex.

On top of that just so people understand what has been done here, is Virgin has literally dug around London putting their own fibre to serve their network.

BT does the same and whereever there isn't a need they just use the copper cables for phones.

Now imagine if other companies started doing the same, you'd have London being dug all around from different companies.

Imho the only thing that should be done but of course its not because Next Generation and the Internet is not in any politicians Agenda, would have been to make BT more powerful and give BT enough funding to go through and start upgrading its network making London what it should be in 2017.

[CatrionaHelen]

We've just been given a new fix date of 18th October. Which will be four weeks since it stopped working. Sigh indeed.

[trizza]

Just to be clear.

Virgin told us our fault was due to a network issue. We pushed back on this as we have no service, whereas the network issue causes intermittent broadband issues.

The Virgin engineer told us the fault was caused by another Virgin engineer blocking our line at the local junction box (boxes that are located on each street).

Apparently the engineers routinely inspect these boxes and block lines where there is line noise or the performance is not within recommended limits. They are supposed to tell the impacted customers so the issue can be investigated, but it didn't happen in my case. The engineer who did this also didn't log the issue centrally, so technical support had no idea about it.

My advice would be that if you have no internet then this may not be attributable to a network issue, but something specific to your line and you should insist an engineer attends to inspect.

I have elevated a complaint about this issue as I think it is unacceptable.

[Jones]

Thanks for the extra info. I have an engineer booked for Friday but they seem to have the ability to automatically cancel this so I will call (again) and confirm they are actually going to turn up.

I've looked at switching to Sky and BT but both would take weeks to switch. I seem to be totally unable to change the situation.

Catriona, I'm feeling your pain...

[MissWiggy]

I'm beginning to wonder whether there is a serious problem with Virgin being able to provide the service they offer.

I was told last Tuesday that someone from the construction team would be in touch within 5 days to give me a timescale for the works being done and thereafter installation. I haven't heard a thing.

I rang them today to cancel and they still couldn't give me a timescale. They were only able to say that it was likely it would be 6-8 weeks, depending on permission needed from the Council.

My sister is on BT for internet and Sky for tv - she has never had the volume of problems that I have had so I am switching.

What was appalling is that when I tried to cancel my contract it took them 15 minutes to actually "agree" that I could do so - they kept insisting that I didn't cancel and just left things on hold and told me to get a "temporary" service from another provider in the interim.

Like I said, I would avoid like the plague...

[trizza]

Engineer said the practice I described is common. So if you have no Internet at all press for an engineer to come out and see if your line has a noise blocker installed...

[redjam]

We've had no Virgin broadband or phone since Thursday afternoon (just off North Cross Road). Just completely dead. We have now finally bitten the bullet and are in the process of signing up to BT, though it'll take a month to switch.

Anyone else having problems at the moment? They've been saying since Friday that it'll be fixed on Monday 'by 3.30pm', which seems very precise! Don't believe it for a minute.

[CatrionaHelen]

Our latest fix date is this Wednesday I believe, but yes, it does seem like they pluck them out of thin air. And if it's a problem in the area, as we've been told, surely it would all be fixed at the same time. If we'd switched when the problems started we could have been up and running with someone new by now...!

[jagrass]

We've been suffering a complete outage for four weeks now. I was assured that the final fix date would be today (16th) but this has now been pushed back to the 23rd. Having spent four weeks going through the same painfully unresponsive customer service/technical support process as everyone else, I'm now feeling utterly powerless and at a complete loss as to what to do. Do we know how many people this is actually impacting? Has there been any information back from James Barber? If individually we are all suffering the same dismissive response from VM, is there any way we can take action as a group? It's completely inexplicable that a customer can be cut off with zero warning, have to spend innumerable phone calls investigating the issue only to be repeatedly misinformed regarding fix dates. It's absolutely outrageous that after four weeks a business so clearly failing in its responsibility to its customers would then offer little more than credit on the user's account as a form of resolution (not to mention the lack of any attempt at an apology). However, it's not just living without the service, it's the cost of finding alternative ways of getting online -- the mobile data usage, the pay-as-you-go wifi -- the premium cost phone calls, the lost time spent listening to the same unhelpful script talk, the work hours given up (and inevitably made-up later) waiting for engineers that clearly have little more information than the customer. It's the false relief of thinking tomorrow it will all be over, only to be told it'll be another week (and another week, and another week).

[MissWiggy]

When I lived in SE22 (now in SE5) we had VM for 5.5 years. No major outages such as this but there is no way we were getting the super fast download speeds they sold to us. You'll be able to see from my post above the major debacle we've had since moving.

From what I can tell VM are having major issues in this area with their service. What makes it all the more frustrating for us as the customer is that they're not up front about what the issue is (they MUST know, and if they don't that's an even more serious problem) and they lie about timeframes as to when the work will be done. In our case they categorically told us on one day the works had been done only to tell us 5 days later they hadn't.

In my view the most effective thing you can do is vote with your feet and perhaps take to Twitter etc. as well. Setting up an action group is a good idea but I wonder how much more of your time that would take up, with possibly minimal results.

I cancelled our VM contract (yes, they made that virtually impossible too) and have signed up to Sky. Watch this space for how that goes...

I'd urge everyone to bite the bullet and cancel their contract. In the meantime you can get a temporary 1 month contract with BT. All far from ideal but perhaps better than sitting on those endless calls...?

[CatrionaHelen]

Our fix date has been pushed back again to the 23rd now, like you Jagrass. I am calling later to make a formal complaint, and see what we can get out of them, then we'll probably cancel.

MissWiggy - do you know how long it will take to get Sky set up? And do you have any details on the 1 month BT contract?

[Bic Basher]

Vermin Media - Oversubscribed, nowhere near the capacity they claim to have and yet they continue to sell the service in ED and across parts of London where clearly they can't meet demand.

[MissWiggy]

CatrionaHelen - this is what I was thinking of - https://www.btwifi.co.uk

We were given a lead time of 3 weeks from Sky - not ideal but to be honest it's just a relief not to be constantly on the phone to VM and repeatedly being given wrong information. Crossed fingers our Sky experience will be different...

[Jones]

A little update from here. The engineer came out and I showed him this thread and he was able to fix and reconnect immediately. It looks like the issue was unrelated to this wider 'outage'. Might we worth insisting on a visitor from an engineer.

Having spent close to ?100 on data and a 4GEE mini wifi thingy we are now left with the dilemma of whether to switch to another supplier...

Good luck!