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View Full Version : No telephone service for almost 60 days!


madashell
06-09-2007, 15:37
Customer Service

This is my story of how the previously reasonable TeleWest levels of service have degraded to almost non-existent under Virgin Media.

A little background

I almost annually get a break in telephone service, due to old equipment and rain, I'm told. Whilst this was in prior years dealt with quite quickly, with telephone services back in action in a day or two, this year has proved quite unbelievable.

On July 6th I contacted VM to report that the telephone was once again not working. They duly sent an engineer along, who said the problem had been passed to 'Networks' who would resolve it in a day or two. As expected, this was correct and the phone was working again ... but only for a few days.

I then contacted VM again, and the best they could offer was an engineer in August. What can you do? ... just wait.

The engineer arrived, said this time it's a cable issue, and I needed a 're-pull'. This is interesting, as they had only done this a couple of years before to resolve the problem. With no other option, I agreed to wait another two weeks for the 'cable' team to turn up.

The 'cable' team arrived yesterday (September 5th) and after an hour or so of investigation, informed me that the cable was fine. There was no need to 're-pull' as BOTH telephone cables from my premises are fine all the way to the junction box. They could do no more. (Hey - some good news - apparently the original cable was fine too!)

To my astonishment, they also could not tell me how long or what would be happening from here, and that I should contact VM customer services again!

As instructed, I immediately called VM customer services and was pleasantly surprised to talk to a chap who could think for himself, and not just toe the company line. Although he verbally agreed that this was quite ridiculous, he also said he could do nothing at the moment - but that he would escalate it to a 'manager' who would call me tomorrow and update me on what was going to be done.

This morning (September 6th), I got the call at about 9:15AM. I was informed that the best they can do is send out ANOTHER technician on the 11th and maybe he could fix it. Note - not that he will fix it - but hey, he'll have a go!

So, to recap, I've had little or no telephone service since July 6th, about 60 days of down time. Common sense says time to look for a new provider.

When I mentioned this to the customer services 'manager', I expected her response to be something like "OK - I own this problem and will get some resolution for you!". Instead, I got "OK, I'll cancel the engineer, good luck with your new provider."

The above, I hope, demonstrates how VM are coping with their customer service issues - by simply giving up. Let them be someone else's customer.

This is in stark contrast to my experiences with the old TeleWest CS, as they actually gave the impression that they cared about whether I, as a customer, was happy with the service provided. VM, simply don't care and don't appear to wish to accept any responsibility.

In their favour, they instantly offered me a refund on the last two months line rental, without any provocation from me. However, they don't seem to grasp that no amount of refunds and discounts can compensate for no service, with no real resolution in sight.

I'll update you on what happens next ... hopefully a simple telephone will be working :mad:

on in an hour!
07-09-2007, 08:50
The 'cable' team arrived yesterday (September 5th) and after an hour or so of investigation, informed me that the cable was fine. There was no need to 're-pull' as BOTH telephone cables from my premises are fine all the way to the junction box. They could do no more. (Hey - some good news - apparently the original cable was fine too!)
if they told you the cable was ok then they should have been able to leave you with a working line.if the fault was further back from the 'junction box' then the original tech would have sorted it,or would have given you an estimated time of fix if it was a network fault.

madashell
07-09-2007, 10:03
if they told you the cable was ok then they should have been able to leave you with a working line.if the fault was further back from the 'junction box' then the original tech would have sorted it,or would have given you an estimated time of fix if it was a network fault.

I'm guessing I didn't make it clear enough in the original post. The original tech diagnosed a cable fault - hence why the guys who only do cabling were dispatched. Apparently, they are contractors, and ONLY renew cables - nothing more.

I am now waiting on engineer number 4 - who hopefully will have access to the history of the work performed or not by his three predecessors.

madashell
07-09-2007, 14:00
UPDATE

CS organised an engineer to come round today (September 7th) (Is this the power of cableforum? - could be!). It took this chap less than five minutes to fix.

So what was the real problem I hear you ask?

Turns out the line had simply been disconnected at the box, possibly by another engineer fixing someone elses' problem, and the previous engineer was testing the WRONG line!

So six weeks without a phone service due to one engineers mis-training.

Yay! Success at last!

In my opinion, www.cableforum.co.uk should be linked off the VM main site!