Need Guidance on how to proceed with a Virgin Media issue

cannugec5

I had a very similar issue earlier this year with Vodafone. I have ended up with my base station under the sink in the utility room in order to be plugged into the router, which in turn needs to be plugged into the ‘master socket’. 

After my complaining Vodafone did attempt to move the master socket to somewhere more accessible but this failed and we/they reverted to the under the sink placement.
I was fuming that Vodafone hadn’t warned me about this ridiculous set up and I had been so careful to explain that my landline is very important to us before we agreed to Vodafone taking it over. But I’ve now calmed down and moved on. However living in an area with dubious network coverage and  flaky Wi-Fi I have swapped my own SIM card so that my husband and I have mobile phones on different networks. When the Wi-Fi is down, the landline can’t work and neither will hubby’s phone  but I’m still able to communicate! 

inkwell2write

Sorry for the delay in providing an update.

Ombudsman felt that as I had not explicitly reported my telephone issue at the time the line was setup, they could not ask for the landline part of the package to be refunded even though it was not working. So bottom line, they have asked Virgin Media to give me £75 as a goodwill gesture for bad customer care (I had to ring them to get updates) + the fact that they knew they could not port my landline number prior to the move but failed to inform me.

I have donated the £75 to Cancer Research and suggested to Ombudsman that they should get Ofcom to upgrades the penalty's the Ombudsman can impose up to the value of £1000 perhaps.

They have also ruled in my favour of being able to cancel my contract without incurring any penalty.

Summary - not a fan of Virgin Media.    

Aylesbury_Duck

The trouble with upping penalties by an order of magnitude is that we'd all end up paying more for services to cover the risk.

A £1,000 penalty for your situation would be totally disproportionate.

BethRobinson

Who are you to ask for a "strong fine to be levied"?

VicariousThrills

Aylesbury_Duck said:

The trouble with upping penalties by an order of magnitude is that we'd all end up paying more for services to cover the risk.

A £1,000 penalty for your situation would be totally disproportionate.

I see your point and fines can have unintended consequences which are bad for consumers - e.g. the recent Imgur debacle. But on the other hand, having tiny fines has a moral hazard issue - it's cheaper to be crap and just pay the odd fine. If your primary concern is costs, why have regulation at all?

DANBOII96

Recently had the same issue too when switching to Virgin. Ended up porting the landline to Plexatalk for £4/month and going down the VoIP route. Apparently the copper lines are coming to an end in the near future anyway which I think is why I was told I could keep it and then could not maybe?