Switching to Virgin Media Problems

grovep

After many years with Plus Net I was persuaded by the 1st year deal to switch to Virgin Media for Broadband and phone. Openreach have no plans to upgrade the box our house was connected to, so unable to get fibre without going to VM. Our family heavy internet users and so I took the plunge. I was not dissatisfied with Plus Net just could not get fibre. All went smoothly until after the installation engineer left. It was a Friday afternoon! I was told that the router would reboot itself several time (presumably upgrading firmware etc.) and the phone would switch shortly (the BT line had just stopped working). The broadband is fine - a few quibbles about the poor router but I can live with this. The phone line never became live. I did the normal checks - disconnect internal wiring, plug phone directly into master socket but dead. I rang VM (chargable on a mobile phone) and eventually got through to someone (presumably Virgin get an income from these calls so keep you going through menus for as long as possible). I was then advised that it took upto 24 hours to switch over (on their forums they say longer than this in some instances). So relunctantly I waited. 36 hours later I called back as phone line still not working. They apologised and did nothing! Only after posting on their community forum over several days did I get a response and they booked someone to come out. So it seems the landline will be out of service for at least 1 week assuming they turn up and resolve when they say they will. So if switching to VM ( I guess not all have the same issues as myself) do bear in mind that your landline transition may not be as smooth as perhaps you have experienced with mobiles where the service is lost for an hour of 2. Why they don't do any basic tests before leaving I do not know or perhaps the Friday afternoon factor was the biggest issue. - they didn't even clip the telephone cable to the wall outside above where they could reach without a ladder (the master telephone socket was on the first floor) . Also don't expect them to tidy up after themselves - bits of cable etc.just left on the carpet.