0845 foot-shooting by Virgin

Moneyer

For the amusement of anyone who hates 0845 numbers and like big companies shooting themselves in the foot....

Virgin Media have a large junction box at the end of our road, with a notice asking anybody who spots damage to call an 0800 number. The box has been broken open by vandals and the wiring is now exposed to the weather. So I thought I'd do them a favour and let them know before serious damage results.

Sadly, on calling, I get the message that this number has changed and I now have to call an 0845 number. Which of course I'm not doing, since I see no reason why I should pay them for the privilege of doing them a favour, I'm not their customer, and it is no skin off my nose if their network self-destructs....

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

That's funny LOL I hope it does self destruct and costs them to fix it.

spike7451

It's an ongoing problem ever since I started with what was then CableTel back in 1998,They have tried numerous ways of securing them from banding them shut,four locks,two per door,that mean the engineer needs four of the special keys to open it.Even with that they get broken open.It's not only vandals that break the cabs open,but people who want to re-connect an illigal TV or BBand box.Indeed I have been threatened & even had stones thrown at me for just opening a street cabinet.At one cabinet off the Lower Falls Road in Belfast,where we were attempting to repair a cabinet that was vandelised,we ended up having to get the Police to stand guard to ensure our safety from the local hoods.

Mark_In_Hampshire

What I don't really understand is why these things are so easy to break into. Both the VM ones and the new BT ones look like they're made of metal so thin you could force a screwdriver straight through the casing of it if you gave it a bit of a shove and the locks look pretty feeble.

spike7451

Mark_In_Hampshire wrote: »

What I don't really understand is why these things are so easy to break into. Both the VM ones and the new BT ones look like they're made of metal so thin you could force a screwdriver straight through the casing of it if you gave it a bit of a shove and the locks look pretty feeble.

Simples,they were the industry standards back when Cable first came out as well as being a lot cheaper to buy & maintain.
The redundancies that VM also had an impact as they made the guys who looked after the cabs redundant so the was no one to look after them on a 24/7 basis.
A lot of the cabs can actually be unlocked with a gas key,the was a secondary lock that required a special key & interfered with the main lock ,but most contractors didn't have one so quite often you'd find the interfering bar bent back on itself so in reality,the insecurity of the cabs was down to the engineer themselves.My bunch of cab keys looked like a jailers keyring with about 5 different types & 4 of the special keys for the four lock one.

Buzby

Call 151 free from a Virgin landline. Faults take external repair reports from concerned callers with no problem.

katejo

Buzby wrote: »

Call 151 free from a Virgin landline. Faults take external repair reports from concerned callers with no problem.

Except that Moneyer who started this thread is not a Virgin customer so cannot use this number. Virgin is making non customers who want to do a good deed pay to report an external problem/damage

valentina

Looks like you can report it online
https://help.virginmedia.com/system/selfservice.controller?CONFIGURATION=1002&PARTITION_ID=1&TIMEZONE_OFFSET=&USERTYPE=1&VM_CUSTOMER_TYPE=Cable&CMD=ESCALATION_REQUEST

Click "fault with your service" & "not a customer"

Heinz

valentina wrote: »

Looks like you can report it online
https://help.virginmedia.com/system/selfservice.controller?CONFIGURATION=1002&PARTITION_ID=1&TIMEZONE_OFFSET=&USERTYPE=1&VM_CUSTOMER_TYPE=Cable&CMD=ESCALATION_REQUEST

Click "fault with your service" & "not a customer"

Yes, there's even an option "Street cabinets: report an open door/damaged cabinet"