Virgin Media - 2 week BB outage, what to do?

Lit_Up

five days ago my broadband stopped working. Phoned them up, tried the usual tricks, to no avail. So they sent out a guy who arrived this morning who says that they need a two man team to do a "recull" or something, basically relay the external cable. Work can't start on this for 11 days.

I'm out of contract, so what's the point in staying with Virgin? My neighbour has O2 and has no problems with his service...

Currently paying 30 something a month for 40 or 60 megs, cant remember. no other services installed.

Buzby

You are in contract until you terminate. Your wire from the street to your premises needs replacing, and that requires te external team. It seems strange that you want to swap to an inferior service with slower connections and higher contention rates, but do remember te 30 days notice period.

spike7451

It's a "Repull" that the Service Tech has ordered & basically means the drop cable from your house to the street cabinet is cut,damaged or just worn out.Reason it can take so long is they may need to apply to the relevant council for permission to open up the footway or road.
And you cannot compare your VM Cable service to your neighbors O2 broadband service as they work completely differently to each other,for one,VM Cable does NOT connect or use BT's phone exchange or network to provide you broadband.

Spike (EX VM Service Tech)

Lit_Up

I'm not comparing. I'm just without internet. If neighbour has no issues with service and I do - then obviously I'll consider moving, especially if I can get set up on the new service straight away. (can i?)

I live in central London - not the Outer Hebrides or the Shetland Islands. For me to be without internet for two weeks is unfathomable and plain stupid. Maybe if Virgin actually monitored the condition of their infrastructure then customers wouldn't be without service for months on end.

Virgin mobile does internet dongles - I do hope that virgin media can supply one of these to me for free in order to plug the service. Not holding my breath though, because there's always some excuse, isn't there? It all goes to Branson's pocket so perhaps he could be straightforward.....

spike7451

Lit_Up wrote: »

I'm not comparing. I'm just without internet. If neighbour has no issues with service and I do - then obviously I'll consider moving, especially if I can get set up on the new service straight away. (can i?)

I live in central London - not the Outer Hebrides or the Shetland Islands. For me to be without internet for two weeks is unfathomable and plain stupid. Maybe if Virgin actually monitored the condition of their infrastructure then customers wouldn't be without service for months on end.

Virgin mobile does internet dongles - I do hope that virgin media can supply one of these to me for free in order to plug the service. Not holding my breath though, because there's always some excuse, isn't there? It all goes to Branson's pocket so perhaps he could be straightforward.....

1-Not unless you have an up & running phoneline & even then you will have about a 10 day wait for the service to be activated & running. (It took O2 9 days to activate mine from the day I ordered it)

2-They do,however the problem is with your drop cable & not the network,that is something outside VM's control.Because you live in London has no bearing on the issue.It's not a simple job doing a repull,I've done hundreds of them over the years,the are a lot of issues that can affect it.The duct could be blocked or crushed,the could be construction issues aside from the council permissions,part of the delay is getting a construction crew.Since VM took over,they have dramatically reduced the amount of 2 man crews they have (repulls are done by 2 man crews for H&S reasons)

3-I doubt VM would supply you with a dongle.

Buzby

The technology is totally different, and what your neighbour gets is of no consequence. If his service goes down, yours won't.

Virgin Mobile is only a brand, and uses Everything Everywhere to connect. You'll not get this free as the services are not connected or even similar.

It is n your cable that as gone faulty - how is this 'stupid'? If you want a faster response, pay business rates and you'll be up in a day - you get what pay for (from all of them).

chanz4

ask them to tempory provide a dongle

macman

If you want any other broadband service then you must have a BT-based landline installing or provisioning first. This will take 3-4 weeks and cost from £10 to £150 dependent on provider. Your cable service can only be used with VM-there arre no other cable providers.
So, basically when you moved to VM you left yourself with Hobson's choice of suppliers.

Pikeyp

I would phone up and speak to 'Retentions' and explain whats happening , they should offer to give you credit for your lost service (2 weeks worth?).
Say you want to cancel if you don't get satisfaction!

Lit_Up

Yup, said I want to cancel. Dude suggested that I borrow a neighbour's internet. Neighbour is on O2, funnily enough. Maybe I'll just go back to have a phone line based broadband so that I don't have "Hobson's choice of suppliers". I didn't move to VM by the way. It was there when I moved in.

Lit_Up

Any ideas if I can get Virgin to pay for me having to purchase internet to plug the gap in their service? Whilst virgin are not charging me for their service, the amount saved from this does not cover the amount I am paying to plug the gap, and I don't see why I should be liable to pay it.

I have four people from abroad staying with me and I had to buy three Sim cards from 3 with unltd internet for £45 so they could have internet on their mobiles. Before these people would have just connected to my wifi. I have also had to spend £15 extra on iPad 3G sim card in order to have connection on that. All in all I have spent 60 quid thus far.