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 ....
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