View Full Version : ive had enough and its time to take action constant drop-outs!!! no help!!!
Hello i am a very **bleep** off with virgin broadband and there shabby so called customer service!!! ive been a customer for 17 years and over and was very happy with there service until the past year which is a joke!!.
since december 2009 ive had these conctant drop-out or disconnections where i will have no internet for 3 to 6 hours as the cable light will keep flashing. since then i have had 4 different modems and 4 different engineers come over and all 4 off them said different things and not consistant, 1
says i might need a new cable from the roof and then he decided i didnt, 1 engineer checked the cable on the roof and said its fine etc.
last month i decided to upgrade to 50mb as the dropouts was getting worse and no one in virgin media seems to no what the problem was and it was very frustrating and ****ing me off, so i thought ill pay more and maybe i will get a better modem with the 50mb pakage and i did but the problem is still there and getting worse!!
i have tried to cancel so many times but they keep persuading me to stay by giving me some sort of credit back to my account and sending engineers who haven't got a clue. so last few weeks i was lucky to have internet connection for 2 days a week and i aint paying for something that decides to work when it wants to and no one in virgin media taking it seriously.
today i tried to cancel again and they said i cant now because its been 2 days over a month since i upgraded to 50mb so the contract is 1 year !!!
taking the **bleep** or what, so they said on tuesday i will get a phonecall from the higher end tech (hes supposed to be special) to find out what exactly is wrong ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz .
anyway if they dont sort this dropout coneection in a weeks time and they dont let me cancel my broadband then i will close the direct debit and see what happens.
by the way cant i report virgin media to offcom or something because i really dont like whats happening to me and how they are treating me some advice please on what i should do thanks.
You can lodge a complaint with CISAS. They're the OFCOM adjudication service and you can also put in a claim for financial compensation too. You can lodge your complaint online with them as long as your first complaint to VM was at least 8 weeks ago. VM definitely take notice when you do this, they did when I went through CISAS and I ended up with about £300 compensation and all my problems fixed (after about a year!). I can't guarantee that it will sort all your problems though!
Mick Fisher
04-09-2010, 22:17
I had a similar problem some time ago.
After numerous engineers calling that only wanted to change the modem and scoot out the front door, I eventually got a super chap who actually was carrying a tool kit (possible a telling sign).
Anyway he went straight for the isolator (looks like a splitter inside the wall box) replaced it, problem solved in 10 minutes.
If your isolator or any splitters in the line haven't been checked already then suggest it. It only needs a poor connection to give the symptoms you describe.
Good luck. :)
pip08456
05-09-2010, 00:25
It is a sad fact that VM (not uniquely) have, in some areas, engineering staff who are either totally clueless, uninterested or ill trained.
Go the CISAS route if that appeals and you are willing to wait, which I think you don't, nor should you.
I would recommend you send an email to Neil Berkett the CEO. He will not answer personally but a member of his staff will and they will take over your case. You will have one point of contact within VM until your problem is resolved.
State your case clearly and concisively, Don't go "Head down wade in!" but be polite. You'll be amazed at how you will be treated differently and every avenue will be explored to solve your problem to your satisfaction.
neil.berkett@virginmedia.co.uk
It is a sad fact that VM (not uniquely) have, in some areas, engineering staff who are either totally clueless, uninterested or ill trained.
Go the CISAS route if that appeals and you are willing to wait, which I think you don't, nor should you.
I would recommend you send an email to Neil Berkett the CEO. He will not answer personally but a member of his staff will and they will take over your case. You will have one point of contact within VM until your problem is resolved.
State your case clearly and concisively, Don't go "Head down wade in!" but be polite. You'll be amazed at how you will be treated differently and every avenue will be explored to solve your problem to your satisfaction.
neil.berkett@virginmedia.co.uk
Thanks you i have wrote a letter can you tell me if this is fine thanks. i just pasted it so the writing may look odd here so i apologies.
Dear Mr Neil Berkett the CEO
I am wring this complaint in order to resolve my on going no Internet connection since December 2009.
I have been a customer for 17 years now(since the Telewest days) and was very happy until last year when i was getting poor customer service over the phone and through engineers.
i had a 20mb broadband and since last december i was having these constant dropouts of Internet connection where at random times per day i will not have Internet for 3 to 6 hours and no matter if i restart the modem there was no Internet.
Since then i have had 4 different modems and several engineers coming over and still the problem is there and its has got worse.
Last month i have decided to upgrade to a 50mb broadband just to get a better quality modem as i thought it was the modem causing the dropouts but the problem has grown and ill be lucky if i have 2 days full Internet connection in a week, and that is disappointing and frustrating, and i am not getting speedy recovery in my loss of service.
The engineers say they cant find the problem or the root cause of to what is triggering the dropouts, but that is not my problem and its virgin media has to fix this as this is unacceptable to leave me hanging out in the dry. They also seemed they were in a hurry and they changed a cable that took 1 min and they were out as they didn't have a clue on what was wrong.
2 weeks ago i again complained to virgin media and they sent out another engineer as usual there test over the phone suggested i needed an engineer sent out again, this the the guy spent some time and didn't seem he was in a hurry and i explained everything to him and the engineer did all the test he could, even going to the roof to see if there is a break in the cable wire hats preventing my Internet connection at random times, but he said everything was fine and was about to leave, so this made me angry and i insisted that he to try some other solution so he phoned some head technical team and did a test from there and at that time it was fine cause i did have an Internet connection at that time, so they said they will monitor the situation over a week and see where the signal is getting lost. I waited a week and still had problems so immediately phoned VM and asked them to check the monitor situation now to see what is happening exactly at that moment where i didn't have any Internet, they guy on the phone did some tests and said he may have found the root cause and that a server in Camden wasn't stable and the power was going up and down so he made a request to resolve this.
Yesterday i phoned VM to cancel everything as i finally had enough of this problem and nobody sorting this out and not taking me seriously but the guy said that since i upgraded to 50mb broadband last month its a new 12 months contract and i cant cancel as i had 28 days to do so. So he said the best he can do is i will get a call from a special engineer on Tuesday called James and he will try to solve my problem since December 2009.
Now to be honest when VB works its the best! but i am not happy with the customer service and thats why i am writing this letter as a last resort to sort this out, i have wasted so much money without using your service and i was told if they find the root cause i will be refunded my broadband installation charge and also be refunded for the lack of service i had over the months.
Everytime i come home from work i want to relax and use the Internet but i always have this fear now whether i will have Internet tonight or not and that is not right? im hoping writing this letter you will take this issue seriously and get back to me with a solution on how to resolve this ASAP thank you very much.
I've been to a customer with a similar situation, his upstream is fine and downstream is fine and I called that number and they said the power levels fluctuate. I'd be very interested in the final outcome of this as I couldn't diagnose it as all we have is a signal meter
This will most probably be nothing do with your issue you are having, but I once was having a bad time with virgin media broadband. My internet connection was intermittent and I couldn't even reach full speeds, although I never got hours of disconnections. I eventually found out that it seems the cable modem can receive interference from other nearby devices. I had a snom m3 wireless handset base right next to the modem which I believe uses the 2.4Ghz range of frequencies. This somehow inteferred and cause mayhem! Maybe you could try isolating the modem. Hope this helps!
It'd also be nice to see your modem stats
I've been to a customer with a similar situation, his upstream is fine and downstream is fine and I called that number and they said the power levels fluctuate. I'd be very interested in the final outcome of this as I couldn't diagnose it as all we have is a signal meter
For what it is worth, I had similar issues earlier this year. Had also been complaining on and off for several years about the same thing. Got new modems which fixed it for a while them back to the same again. Ready light flashing on the modem indicating upstream issues.
I eventually got a network guy out who had a thorough look at the issue over a period of days and found a problem in the street cabinet. The amplifier had an intermittent issue that was causing power fluctuations but not causing a fault condition on the amplifier.
He swapped out the amp and hey presto all is well again.
pip08456
05-09-2010, 11:14
That email should get you a reply, don't forget to keep us posted on the outcome.
That email should get you a reply, don't forget to keep us posted on the outcome.
yes i got an reply saying either he should contact me or i should and resolve this ASAP!!
now i will phone tomorrow and let you know what happens thanks guys for helping me out here.
Go the CISAS route if that appeals and you are willing to wait, which I think you don't, nor should you.
I would recommend you send an email to Neil Berkett the CEO. He will not answer personally but a member of his staff will and they will take over your case. You will have one point of contact within VM until your problem is resolved.
Just to correct this for anyone else thinking of what to do on a long running dispute.
Lodging a long running complaint (and this one is since Dec 2009!) with CISAS does not involve any wait. When I lodged mine I got a phone call the very next day from a very nice lady called Susan in the CEOs office who remained my point of contact throughout the case.
The other reasons I would recommend CISAS over simply an email to the CEOs office are:-
1) They are then locked in to a time framework.
2) This also appears on their offical stats so they have more of an incentive to get you to sign off that you are happy with their solution
3) You get to add a financial compensation claim
4) CISAS get to make a ruling in two parts - the first is what VM must do, and the second is what they recommend VM do in the future (which they don't seem to take any notice of).
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