they ditched newsgroups (because they were actually useful) and went to online support forums last year and tbh they are a waste of space afaik. Try giving them a ring and see what they say, if you can get an engineer out that would be sweet. If it is an intermittant fault ringing them when it is working won't help. Wait for your connection to die and then ring them and when they try pinging you etc it won't work and then they'll have to book an engineer.
If you don't have any luck on the phone you can always try the forums:
http://community.virginmedia.com/
I wouldn't hold my breath though