V+ : Removal of cable in back garden

[Miss C]

Hi All

After many years as a Virgin - and their many predecessors in name - customer I'm swapping to Sky. I've been reading here that Virgin don't remove cables. In our back garden we have a cable which runs from the outside box to our back fence where it disappears into the ground. It's very ugly and I really do want to be rid of it. Once the service is disconnected can I cut or disconnect the cable from the box on my wall without (a) hurting myself and (b) risking any comeback from Virgin. I wasn't intending to cut it at the back fence, simply coil it up and hide it.

Thanks for any advice.

C

[Scrubbs]

If it is on your land and you don't want it , cut it off, you could as a courtesy ring virgin and tell them you are going to landscape your garden, and its in the way.

[Rob]

If you are absolutely sure that you are not going to watn VM services in the future then you could sever the cable. Chances are that eventually it would be physically disconnected at the street cabinet. But once severed bear in mind that if you do want VM's servies in the future, perhaps you find that Sky aren't quite what you'd hoped for, then you'll have to have a full reinstall and that could cause problems if VM thought you already had a cable fitted.

If you do cut the cable, do try to do it cleanly so that the inner and outer wires don't come into contact. That way there will be less risk of interference from a short being introduced.

When you had cable installed you granted VM a wayleave to permit them to run the cable over your garden, and to allow them to maintain it. Before severing the cable, as a courtesy, you should tell VM you are going to terminate the wayleave and then remove the cable. That way you avoid any small risk of them getting cheesed off with you as they can do whatever they need to at the cabinet to isolate your connection.

[Miss C]

Originally Posted by Scrubbs

If it is on your land and you don't want it , cut it off, you could as a courtesy ring virgin and tell them you are going to landscape your garden, and its in the way.

Thanks Scrubbs, sound nice and simple.

Originally Posted by Rob

If you are absolutely sure that you are not going to watn VM services in the future then you could sever the cable. Chances are that eventually it would be physically disconnected at the street cabinet. But once severed bear in mind that if you do want VM's servies in the future, perhaps you find that Sky aren't quite what you'd hoped for, then you'll have to have a full reinstall and that could cause problems if VM thought you already had a cable fitted.

If you do cut the cable, do try to do it cleanly so that the inner and outer wires don't come into contact. That way there will be less risk of interference from a short being introduced.

When you had cable installed you granted VM a wayleave to permit them to run the cable over your garden, and to allow them to maintain it. Before severing the cable, as a courtesy, you should tell VM you are going to terminate the wayleave and then remove the cable. That way you avoid any small risk of them getting cheesed off with you as they can do whatever they need to at the cabinet to isolate your connection.

Thanks Rob. Virgin was already installed when we moved here just over a year ago - it's actually an NTL box - but I was already a Virgin customer and with all the moving hell I couldn't be bothered to go through changing to Sky at the time.

Do you know if it's possible to actually disconnect the wire from the grey box on my outside wall rather than cut it? As you say, it's possible I'll want to return to them one day so that's why I was thinking of keeping it but just trying to coil it up, dig a little hole and hide it under a paving slab and plant pot.

I'll give them another call tomorrow. They've been very helpful in the cancellation department actually - obviously tried various things to persuade me to stay but have been agreeable enough. Could be because I'm not one of the biggest spenders, of course...