ANGRY: Manchester / Oldham broadband down since Tuesday (OL8 + SK6 areas)

[johnlfitz]

After moving to Manchester 11 months ago, there's been a seemingly never ending bout of internet service being lost. I'm in the OL8 postcode area.

I'm not talking about something specific to me, I mean the "unforeseen faults" and local outages that seem to happen every few weeks, often resulting in internet connection being lost for several hours.

Over the past 11 months, when the connection is lost, I must have made 15-20 phone calls to ask for updates as to when service will be restored. Each time I get the same "canned" / scripted response from someone in an Indian call centre along the lines of "I can confirm there is a fault in your area and service will be restored as soon as possible" ...... obviously this is of little help.

The latest outage was Tue 23rd September at around 5pm (sync light constant and ready light flashing on cable modem) - just as I was about to send a really important email. Thinking it would be a few hours of outage whilst it was fixed, I left it until 10pm ..... and it was still not working then. Frustrated, I went to bed thinking that service would be restored by the morning. Still nothing in the morning (Wednesday).

Called so called customer services, guess what, another canned response of "I can confirm that there is a fault in your area, and service will be resumed as soon as possible" - after he asked me to switch cable modem off and on again. Come home from work Wednesday night, still same. 24 hours of no internet service. Still having the important email in my Outlook outbox, I was praying that normal service would resume soon. Nothing. I sit down to watch football on Sky Sports (that I'm paying for) and the picture breaks up intermittently! The phone was at least working .... :mad:

I phone up again, there's a message stating that OL8 and SK6 areas have a fault, and that "our engineers are aware, and service will be resumed as soon as possible". No service again for Wednesday evening.

I wake up this morning (Thursday), still no connection. I phone India again and I'm asked to turn the modem off and on again (I've now done this 30+ times over the past 2 days) and then when this didn't achieve anything (surprise surprise) I am then told "I can confirm that there is a fault in your area, and service will be resumed as soon as possible". At this point I am livid - so I ask if there's any information about when service will be restored. I am told "I can confirm that there is a fault in your area, and service will be resumed as soon as possible". I state that this is not an acceptable level of service and repeat my question. Response, wait for it, was "I can confirm that there is a fault in your area, and service will be resumed as soon as possible". I then slammed the phone down.

I've been without an internet connection now for what will be 2 full days come 5pm this afternoon (which I'm sure will still be down when I return from work). How long does it take to fix a fault ??!!!?

I'm forking out just short of £100 a month across the Virgin Media phone, broadband and TV services. Paying £37 per month for a shoddy 20Mb service that constantly has "local faults". Seriously fed up with being ripped off. I don't want money back or anything .... I just want the service I'm paying for.

Been with Virgin Media since during the NTL days and Cable & Wireless days .... probably 12 years all told. How can I keep being charged so much and not given a decent & reliable service ?!?!?

I'm seriously considering leaving.

Can anybody shed any light into the current issues in the OL8 and SK6 areas, and advise when this will be fixed?

Cheers

John

[Kymmy]

Normally internet faults are rectified in 5 days, that I believe is thier normal internal SLA time (I'm sure that someone will confirm that)

[maevvy]

Hi.

Had pretty much similar problems and had same responses since the same time as you. Except I'm in the L23, Liverpool area!

Net went dead at 1210am Wendesday (So very late "tuesday" like you).. Phoned VM 6 times last night. Spoke to a few helpful people, and net is now just very intermittant.

Got a phone call this morning saying that the cable light on the modem was flashing (again).. So I'm guessing it's lost it's lock (again).. So whether they are working on the issue who knows lol. Been through the whole there is a major server problem conversation with them... Someone gave me a 16hr fix quote lol.. Right. Helpful. Well 16 hours are up now and it's still not fixed :D. When the internet was working incidentally, I was using nslookup fine (though wouldnt connect to any websites) and tracert was fine... Though ping was INCREDIBLY high on VM routing servers. Every 5 minutes for 30 seconds or so the internet was usuable so I could surf a website. Not too helpful :(.

Persevere with them, I got some discount for my troubles :D.

But yes, will be phoning them again tonight if I still have an issue/no internet. I have recently started an OU course, so naturally the internet is a necessity!

In general I find the Indian call centres to be 50/50. Sometimes they are determined not to listen to you (very important thing being part of customer service) and start going through a script. I had the guy on the other end of the phone last night try to explain to me what upstream and downstream is (This was because I was telling him I had downstream lock and no upstream lock).. There was no need for it, but that's just their script - just say yep yep yep.. hang up, phone again, which is what i did (and ended up speaking to one guy TWICE). Other times though, I can't fault them and they have been very helpful.. Most of it I get the feeling is a language barrier and they tend to misunderstand what you say or just have very poor English so they follow their script so it crosses the T's and dots the I's and just listen out for keywords.

[johnlfitz]

yes echoing your comments maevvy ....... just sick and tired of an unreliable service, and no likely chance of ever speaking to somebody that will give an answer to a question.

Kymmy - so, there's nothing we can do with this kind of constant outage, as long as each incident is fixed within 5 days !?!?! That's an absolute joke !! :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

Can a tech or someone that can give some resemblance of an answer from Virgin please:


PLEASE advise when this current outage in Oldham (OL8 area) is to be fixed. Don't say "I can confirm that there is a fault in your area, and service will be resumed as soon as possible" or I will be phoning cancellations.
confirm whether outages can be within a 5-day SLA for each incident? If so, I'll be getting a BT line and ADSL, and get rid of Virgin Media because this is so ridiculous it's untrue

Many thanks

John

---------- Post added at 10:30 ---------- Previous post was at 10:29 ----------

Anybody know of a facility within this site to IM a VM techie or someone in the management team ?

[Kymmy]

You'll find the 5 (working)day SLA (or even longer) standard across most ISP's,

Normally though the more people involved in the outage the faster they try to fix it...

Even on the business product the 5 days stands, currently I'm waiting for thier domain transfer servers to work which went down friday.

If you want a faster fix then you'll have to pay a hell of a lot more for something like a managed/lease line

[Mick Fisher]

You can deal with UK support via the newsgroup

viginmedia.support.broadband.cable

[maevvy]

Kymmy is right. I'm positive it wouldn't be any better anywhere else. The real issue is the CS I think which at some points does lack.

[Kymmy]

Seen this though in lots and lots of posts, people ringing up CS instead of talking to TS...

As suggested use the newsgroups as the more people who get through to TS the more likely they are to escalate the fault

[maevvy]

Seen this though in lots and lots of posts, people ringing up CS instead of talking to TS...

As suggested use the newsgroups as the more people who get through to TS the more likely they are to escalate the fault

Yes, but the problem is *I* can't do that because I simply have no internet.

Simple as.. And I'm not willing to do it from work, unless there is a way I can do it web based without downloading a news reader.

Oh sorry, misread your post unless you meant the newsgroups.

Nope, I talked to tech support last night :). CS skills are still required for TS :).

[johnlfitz]

If is true that the 5-day SLA is average (or better than average), then the issue here then is the frequency of outages.

This kind of thing is happening every couple of weeks and whichever way this is painted, it's poor service.

Having had VM (previously NTL) broadband for around 7 years previously (in Burnley) in can count on one hand the number of times that the internet connection was down. 11 months in Manchester and it's down every few weeks, ranging from hours to days (as per the current outage).

I'm paying for a service that I'm not getting. It's not acceptable and VM need to realise this.

[johnlfitz]

same here maevvy - can't get to newsgroups because .... no access to internet.

I've enough on at work to be looking to do it there . . . . best I can manage is quick reply on here :(

[maevvy]

Bright idea here.. But I'll get my pal to post on the tech support newsgroup.. that'll do it :D.

I'll get him to post about both issues.. Just link him to this thread..

[slowcoach]

I'm in the OL8 area and have had no issues since the last network upgrade when it went down for 2 hours in the small hours (on schedule), in fact since then I have been getting 19Mb at all times of day and night.
The current problem is obviously only affecting certain parts of OL8.

[johnlfitz]

Looks like some areas of Liverpool are having the same / similar problem?

See http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33639052-more-liverpool-problems.html

[craig5320]

OL9 here, I was experiencing 404's on major websites which a refresh sorted instantly, these would happen randomly. Went away yesterday happened for a couple of days, but no other issues.

Sorry about your issues, but I can confirm CS is crap at a lot of ISP's I was dealing with my girlfriends account with AOL Broadband and the service was terrible. My friends and family often have me call if they're having problems because in their words "I know what they're talking about" and it's just sad the way things are dealt with.

[johnlfitz]

I'm beside myself now ....... going on for 3 days without internet access.

I'm paying £37 a month for a service I'm not getting :mad::mad::mad::mad:

Latest calls last night (Wednesday 5pm) I heard the same automated message "There is an outage in the OL8 and SK6 areas, our engineers are aware of the problem and hope to rectify the error as soon as possible". Then I got through to someone. This time, it wasn't somebody in an Indian call centre ..... she had an English accent. Not much better to be honest, because when I asked if she could tell me how much long the issue was going to take to be fixed, I got a stuttering, mumbling mess of a response. Embarrasingly had to ask her to repeat herself on several occasions. She said they have two systems, one system told her that there was a local fault in my area, and the other said there wasn't a fault in my area. I replied "so, what does that mean". An awkward 10 second silence ensued.

She had no idea ..... that was obvious. She said she would speak to one of the "heads in technical" and that she would call me back in 5-10 mins. To her credit, she did. Aparently, the "head of technical" suggested that an engineer should come out to look at it.

I then advised her that there was a message played to me before I got through to her that said "there is an outage in the OL8 and SK6 areas, our engineers are aware of the problem and hope to rectify the error as soon as possible", but she was hinged on the words from her "head of technical" and wanted to book the engineer. So, the engineer is coming between 12-4pm today (Friday).

I have no faith that an engineer will be able to come to my house and fix what appears to be a "local outage" - which from what I've heard is apparently causing this issue. Unless it's a case of the "local outage" has been fixed, and that they've not updated the phone message, and that also there is coincidentally an issue with my cable modem or similar. Can't see it somehow.

PLEASE can somebody from Virgin Media respond with some concrete response to what is going on here, along with some indication of when this ridiculous situation is going to be resolved.

[maevvy]

I'd be happy that at least they're saying there's a problem there.

There no was ticket or support message for the Liverpool mishap and the closest I've seen is the outage in Southport L37..

Well, I'm trying to get on the newsgroups now via Outlook now. Can't access virgin media news server as work use BT... lol.

Tried a free news server but that was pants and didn't show the virginmedia group.

[johnlfitz]

Anyone else in OL8 postcode (Oldham) or SK6 (Stockport) lost their connection ?

[whydoIneedatech]

Anyone else in OL8 postcode (Oldham) or SK6 (Stockport) lost their connection ?
You really will need to call in and speak to someone who actually knows what they are supposed to be doing.

[Kymmy]

Begs the question is there a direct line to TS from a non-VM phone???

[maevvy]

Begs the question is there a direct line to TS from a non-VM phone???

We've both phoned up VM numerous amounts of times :P. Yes.. From a VM phone...

[whydoIneedatech]

Begs the question is there a direct line to TS from a non-VM phone???
0845 454 1111 option 3 which takes you to the same queue as 151 option 3.

[johnlfitz]

You really will need to call in and speak to someone who actually knows what they are supposed to be doing.

That's been my intention each time I've phoned ..... but never managed to get through to someone that did ! :)

---------- Post added at 13:19 ---------- Previous post was at 13:08 ----------

Just had call from 'the wife' - Virgin Media engineer has fixed it !

She actually put the engineer on the phone and he advised that the signal was weak and that he'd gotten it boosted. He also changed something on the pipe in the house (lessen the signal) and all working now.

I asked the engineer whether he thought it was red herring or a big coincidence that the voice message on the VM broadband fault line stating the OL8 region having a fault seemed to coincide with my connection not working at all since Tuesday ......... he said that there may be been a small blip in the area on Tuesday but that 'they' often don't change the message frequently enough when it's fixed. Seems too coincidental to me ........

On the other hand, fair play to VM, they've come out and fixed the issue. My only beef is that the call centre staff don't seem to be informed enough / often enough to be able to actually help customers.

Cheers

John

[whydoIneedatech]

That's been my intention each time I've phoned ..... but never managed to get through to someone that did ! :)

---------- Post added at 13:19 ---------- Previous post was at 13:08 ----------

Just had call from 'the wife' - Virgin Media engineer has fixed it !

She actually put the engineer on the phone and he advised that the signal was weak and that he'd gotten it boosted. He also changed something on the pipe in the house (lessen the signal) and all working now.

I asked the engineer whether he thought it was red herring or a big coincidence that the voice message on the VM broadband fault line stating the OL8 region having a fault seemed to coincide with my connection not working at all since Tuesday ......... he said that there may be been a small blip in the area on Tuesday but that 'they' often don't change the message frequently enough when it's fixed. Seems too coincidental to me ........

On the other hand, fair play to VM, they've come out and fixed the issue. My only beef is that the call centre staff don't seem to be informed enough / often enough to be able to actually help customers.

Cheers

John
It just depends on who is on the other end of the phone when you call in.

[monkey2468]

Glad you got it sorted. :tu: