[pjo123]

As posted by me on Virgins Feedback newsgroup

Hi, had my 50MB BB, XL TV and Phone installed on Saturday 3rd Oct by a Virgin engineer that said he usually does faults but was the only guy authorised to install the 50MB service in the area (Virgin, not Kellys)

Was really impressed with the install, very very neat tidy and thourgh job.

About 3 days ago I received a survey from Virgin asking what I thought of everything and I gave it all 10 out of 10.

However, I was watching TV at 4am Sun night/Mon morning when the box froze. It went off at spot on 4am, so I presumed they might be doing some sort of overnight update so went to sleep.

Monday, no BB, no TV. Phoned 150 and there was a message saying people in the NR31 area might be having a loss of TV and BB and their engineers are working on it.

A few hours later, phoned again, got through to the Uk and was told that on their screen it's estimated to be back up by 8:30 pm.

At 10pm I phoned again, got through to overseas call centre and simply got told it will be fixed in 24 hrs.

Tuesday (today) I got up, still no BB and TV. Phoned 150, got through to overseas, again was told it would be fixed in 24 hrs and while I've received good service from Indian call centres in the past, was a futile conversation.

Phoned back 1 hr later and got through to the UK. They said it was estimated to be fixed by 12:30 (which was around the time it came back)

Then I get a knock on the door. It's the guy that did my install, going out of his way to let me know that my services are down, as he did my install 10 days ago, he didn't want me worrying and wanted me to know that he had been called out, found the fault (amplifier dead) and that he'd called in the network team and it should be fixed within the next few hours. Again, 10 out of 10 for that.

Where I get annoyed is when I asked him when he was called out.

Him: "Only got told about it a couple of hours ago, when did it go off then?"

me: "30 hrs ago"

him: "Did you phone up and report it, as far as I'm aware, it's only been reported today"

me: "There was a recorded message on 150 telling me they're aware of the problem, plus I got through to the call centre a few times"

him: "odd, first I was told about it was today"


That looks to me like the fault was reported yesterday, they simply put a standard "engineers are working to repair the problem as soon as possible" and didn't even send anyone out until 30 hrs later?????

Two streets without BB and TV for 32hrs in total for something that was fixed within 3 hrs of the engineer turning up.

Cant say I'm impressed.

Was with Sky, BT and LLU BB provider and only ever lost my BB service after a maintenance warning and that was for 2 hrs.

I've only had Virgin for 10 days including today and in that short time, have already been without TV and BB for 30 hrs.

I hope this is a rare occurrence?.

I know it doesn't amount to much, but I'm tempted to ask for a days money back. I appreciate problems happen, but had an engineer been sent out yesterday, for example, we wouldn't have missed the new series of two and a half men.

rant over.