Virgin Nightmare!

whiskydry

I've been without my Virgin internet connection for a few days now.

First they told me it was clearly my wireless router at fault. So I replaced it. That didn't help. Then they told me it was clearly that my PC isn't working properly and I'd better get myself to PC World. Instead I phoned the £1 a minute helpline who are in this country and not apparently working to a terrifyingly rigid script (don't ever try to tell someone on the 151 number that you know how to open the command prompt window and check the IP config without the step by step instructions - you will receive a resounding slap on the wrist!) The lovely man on the £1 a min helpline was able to diagnose that my PC is just fine and the problem lies with Virgin. Another call to 151 and they decided it must be the modem then, so they sent me a new one. That didn't work either.

Many painful, nay, agonsising calls later (with unfeasably long pauses mid sentence that actually caused me to lie down for a nap at one point!) and now it's a network issue and will be magically fixed within 72 working hours. I'm not clear on whether that means 72 actual working hours, as in 8 hours per working day, so 9 working days or so, or whether that means 72 hours across a working week, so 3 days or so. Either way, with the time of year this has happened, I'll call them again if I';m not online by mid Jan.

In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them! The crux of the problem (that I established before even ringing the helpline, and tried to explain to them, but in the end had to allow them to "discover" very slowly) is that the IP address when the coax cable is connected to the modem us a 169 number which means there is no communication between me and t'interweb. Unscrew the coax and I get a 192 number which shows that the PC is chatting happily to the modem

(This post was brought to you by Vodafone Mobile Internet)

Swipe

I had similar issues a few months ago. when you eventually get back online make sure you call customer services and get any phone call charges to their 0845 tech support/faults number refunded and your account credited for the days loss of service. They will do this for you if you insist.

spike7451

Sounds like a faulty Isolator or Splitter to me.Have you had a service tech out?You need one.
spike (ex NTL/VM Service Tech)

boho_2

ooo...useful info...

whiskydry

spike7451 wrote: »

Sounds like a faulty Isolator or Splitter to me.Have you had a service tech out?You need one.
spike (ex NTL/VM Service Tech)

I don't think we've reached that part of the script yet. And believe me, I tried to get them past the script! I begged to speak to a manager several times but they just won't let me!

spike7451

whiskydry wrote: »

I don't think we've reached that part of the script yet. And believe me, I tried to get them past the script! I begged to speak to a manager several times but they just won't let me!

Go to
http://www.cablehell.co.uk
The are VM employees on there (I used to be) who can help you out better than the p1llocks you spoke to!
Sounds like VM has gone downhill,mind you,considering they're useing TeleWorst systems & Processes,I'm not supprised!

whiskydry

Thanks Spike, will head over there right now!

mrtom21

spike7451 wrote: »

Go to
http://www.cablehell.co.uk
The are VM employees on there (I used to be) who can help you out better than the p1llocks you spoke to!
Sounds like VM has gone downhill,mind you,considering they're useing TeleWorst systems & Processes,I'm not supprised!

Jeez some people on here take out poor customer service on the people who answer the phone a bit too much. The person you ring isn't intentionally not fixing the problem they are just doing what the company is asking them to do... Diagnostics! Maybe you should take your judgements against advisors and instead turn them against the company. After all it's not as if you would do any better as an advisor on the phone...

spike7451

mrtom21 wrote: »

Jeez some people on here take out poor customer service on the people who answer the phone a bit too much. The person you ring isn't intentionally not fixing the problem they are just doing what the company is asking them to do... Diagnostics! Maybe you should take your judgements against advisors and instead turn them against the company. After all it's not as if you would do any better as an advisor on the phone...

Actually,I would & did.I worked for Sky Broadband in their Tier 2 & Tier 3 Technical Support call center from when Sky started offering broadband in July 06 until I left in Jan 08,so you see my judgement is based on experience,both as an engineer & a csr agent.

jcsc01

had the same problem on christmas eve. spoke to virgin on 151. they tried to tell me the problem was mine. explained i had done all the relevent checks so the problem was theres, after holding on for 5 minutes he agreed that it was a sevice provider problem and would be fixed a.s.a.p. bearing in mind its christmas, this could take days.
said in no uncertain terms how unhappy i was this was met with a sorry and we will refund the rental, not good enough, hubby needed internet to work from home over christmas.
it amazed me connection was fine around 1am but went of around 10am for the whole day.
sounds as if to many people surfing the net and virgin not being able to cope.

whiskydry

mrtom21 wrote: »

Jeez some people on here take out poor customer service on the people who answer the phone a bit too much. The person you ring isn't intentionally not fixing the problem they are just doing what the company is asking them to do... Diagnostics! Maybe you should take your judgements against advisors and instead turn them against the company. After all it's not as if you would do any better as an advisor on the phone...

Actually I didn't take it out on the person on the phone at all, despite my immense frustration. The only time I snapped at him a bit was when he spoke to me like *I* was the idiot, which was insane under the circumstances! And I have no problem with them doing the diagnostics, as long as that does actually lead to them sorting the problem out, which is blatantly not the case here. So far 3 seperate peices of hardware have been blamed and now we are on to "the network" and all this despite the exact same "diagnostics" being done over and over and over and over again.

I don't blame the poor bloke at the end of the phone. I blame VM. But that doesn't help me does it!