Virgin TV service, emails & computers at fault centre are down

kitkat4uhaha · 22-10-2008, 15:27

As the title says!!

I lost all my channels except BBC 1 BB2, ITV & channel4, so i tried resetting the box to see if that fixes the problem but now the box dont want to boot back up.

I cant receive any emails either, tried calling 151 & got a engaged tone so i called again & someone answered the phone straight away & said there was a national problem with the TV service & all the computers have gone down in there offices.

They are hoping to have the problem fixed in a bout a hour.
They better have it fixed by tonight so i can watch the Liverpool game on TV

Arthurgray50@blu · 22-10-2008, 15:49

This doesn't happen with Sky, the last time l had this problem, the service was down for SEVEN HOURS. and they didn't give a damn, l have sent off a load of emails, looking for a new job, so they had better fix it quick, or l will shove the cable equipment somewhere, wher it hurts, this should NOT be happening.

weesteev · 22-10-2008, 16:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu

This doesn't happen with Sky, the last time l had this problem, the service was down for SEVEN HOURS. and they didn't give a damn, l have sent off a load of emails, looking for a new job, so they had better fix it quick, or l will shove the cable equipment somewhere, wher it hurts, this should NOT be happening.

No service is infalible Arthur, Sky have a "slightly" different setup to how cable TV is distributed so its not really a fair comparison. How about someone driving into the BT cabinet and you lose your phone service until they rebuild the cabinet, thats a better analogy.

Media Boy UK · 22-10-2008, 17:25

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitalt...v-service.html

The ''outage'' story this now on Digital Spy main page.

Haruchai · 22-10-2008, 19:00

I have just spoken to Virgin Customer Services and their employee was most helpful in attaching the blame squarely on the shoulders of his employers.
After waiting all day to receive a vital email and no Virgin web page I could access gave any information on the problem, I spent twenty minutes in a phone call queuing system.
The operator duly took my details and explained that the email system being down was due to a planned upgrade which should be finished by tomorrow morning !!!
If the PR department of Virgin had let me know in advance, I would have made other arrangements and not wasted my entire day.
After thanking the VM operator for his honesty, I asked that he report to his supervisor that if Virgin cannot communicate to its customers that a broadband upgrade is taking place in advance of my email being turned off then the chance of me switching to the new Fibre Optic service is, quite frankly, laughable.

---------- Post added at 17:00 ---------- Previous post was at 16:45 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by kitkat4uhaha

As the title says!!

I lost all my channels except BBC 1 BB2, ITV & channel4, so i tried resetting the box to see if that fixes the problem but now the box dont want to boot back up.

I cant receive any emails either, tried calling 151 & got a engaged tone so i called again & someone answered the phone straight away & said there was a national problem with the TV service & all the computers have gone down in there offices.

They are hoping to have the problem fixed in a bout a hour.
They better have it fixed by tonight so i can watch the Liverpool game on TV

My TV service did a very similar thing last Friday and has been intermittent ever since. During my phonecall to VM last week, I was told that they would get an engineer out to look at my box which I declined.
They are wasting their own engineers time covering up management half truths and denials.

BenMcr · 22-10-2008, 19:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Haruchai

I have just spoken to Virgin Customer Services and their employee was most helpful in attaching the blame squarely on the shoulders of his employers.
After waiting all day to receive a vital email and no Virgin web page I could access gave any information on the problem, I spent twenty minutes in a phone call queuing system.
The operator duly took my details and explained that the email system being down was due to a planned upgrade which should be finished by tomorrow morning !!!
If the PR department of Virgin had let me know in advance, I would have made other arrangements and not wasted my entire day.
After thanking the VM operator for his honesty, I asked that he report to his supervisor that if Virgin cannot communicate to its customers that a broadband upgrade is taking place in advance of my email being turned off then the chance of me switching to the new Fibre Optic service is, quite frankly, laughable.

The outage was NOT due to a planned upgrade. There was a serious power cut at one of the Headends!!!

Quote:

My TV service did a very similar thing last Friday and has been intermittent ever since. During my phonecall to VM last week, I was told that they would get an engineer out to look at my box which I declined.

They are wasting their own engineers time covering up management half truths and denials.

So Virgin offer to send an engineer to fix a fault, you say no and then complain about it?!!!!!

Arthurgray50@blu · 22-10-2008, 19:13

Hi weesteev, l thank you for your comment on this serious matter, to make a point, 'if' someone drove into a cable cabinet, the cables, should stay together, and the nearest TV centre, should KNOW, that box is out of action, and go an repair it, or doesn't VM have these signals coming from the box, to alert the company.

With Sky and BT, they have different systems, yes they do, but these are fixed quite quickly, with VM, today l have read some really stupid suggestions about why the system is down, Fire, Cable cut, and employee trouble, or the system is being upgraded, and will be off till tomorrow morning, and when you try contacting 150, you get this recorded message, ' it is a nationwide problem' why not be honest and tell us what is happening, it is a damn good job, VM don't run the London Underground, as the trains would never run, if they cannot find a fault quickly, then gord help us, some people are dependant on the internet, so when it breaks down, all hell breaks loose, l am looking for a new job, and cannot send emails to companies, so where do l go.

BenMcr · 22-10-2008, 19:40

The power went off at the headend at 11:30, TV services were back on by 1pm. I think that is pretty quick

Telephone services were not affected, and broadband services are being restored as we speak

---------- Post added at 18:40 ---------- Previous post was at 18:19 ----------

P.S I would love to see Arthur make electrical equipment work when there is no electricity

Haruchai · 22-10-2008, 20:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by BenMcr

The outage was NOT due to a planned upgrade. There was a serious power cut at one of the Headends!!!

So Virgin offer to send an engineer to fix a fault, you say no and then complain about it?!!!!!

I read the corporate excuse for incompetence but I don't believe it because I have been lied to by VM too many times before.
Apologists with an employment link to VM should be job hunting if they are wise and not trying to defend their bosses ambivalence to customers.
The TV fault that I experienced was not an equipment failure but related to upgrades where poorly trained staff carried out instructions passed from one inconsequential manager to another.
It is my right to complain if I percieve that I am being lied to and the unofficial info leaks made by this conglomerate of incompetence do not match the facts !!!

---------- Post added at 19:08 ---------- Previous post was at 19:06 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by BenMcr

The power went off at the headend at 11:30, TV services were back on by 1pm. I think that is pretty quick

Telephone services were not affected, and broadband services are being restored as we speak

---------- Post added at 18:40 ---------- Previous post was at 18:19 ----------

P.S I would love to see Arthur make electrical equipment work when there is no electricity

I would love to see Ben Mcr stop making snide comments

23-10-2008, 00:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by BenMcr

The power went off at the headend at 11:30, TV services were back on by 1pm. I think that is pretty quick

Telephone services were not affected, and broadband services are being restored as we speak

---------- Post added at 18:40 ---------- Previous post was at 18:19 ----------

P.S I would love to see Arthur make electrical equipment work when there is no electricity

Maybe they could use him as back up generator and put him in front of a wind turbine.

If the power goes down then you have to wait for the system to come back online, no IF's and no BUT's.

Digital Fanatic · 23-10-2008, 01:46

I can't believe the comments being made on this thread!

This was a national grid power surge that caused the outage.. VM did a great job getting most things back on in 1.5hrs.

And I don't believe a word of the "upgrades" story, absolute tripe!

Of course VM have network alarms and monitoring systems!! They also have a National Outage Team that also look for smaller faults that may not be picked up by alarms.

Some poeple just want to bash VM no matter what... this is the reason I left Digital Spy Forums.... now I see it spilling over to here???

moaningmags · 23-10-2008, 02:06

I worked an 8 hour shift today, log on time 7 hours and took 128 calls.
Needless to say when I finished my shift at 10pm, I was exhausted, hoarse and had a raging headache.
Bring on tomorrow

frogstamper · 23-10-2008, 02:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Digital Fanatic

I can't believe the comments being made on this thread!

This was a national grid power surge that caused the outage.. VM did a great job getting most things back on in 1.5hrs.

And I don't believe a word of the "upgrades" story, absolute tripe!

Of course VM have network alarms and monitoring systems!! They also have a National Outage Team that also look for smaller faults that may not be picked up by alarms.

Some poeple just want to bash VM no matter what... this is the reason I left Digital Spy Forums.... now I see it spilling over to here???

Some people are never happy mate

as you say a national outage put right in under two hours...what more do some people want, maybe 10mins.

---------- Post added at 01:08 ---------- Previous post was at 01:07 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by moaningmags

I worked an 8 hour shift today, log on time 7 hours and took 128 calls.
Needless to say when I finished my shift at 10pm, I was exhausted, hoarse and had a raging headache.
Bring on tomorrow

Some of us appreciate you Mags

countyexile · 23-10-2008, 10:30

There certainly seemed to be a lot of hysteria on here yesterday. Personally I have found the service pretty reliable and yesterday was a thanfully rare incident.

My one concern at the moment is possible lost emails. When the service came back on I received just two emails (including just one of three test emails I sent to each of my blueyonder email addresses) when in a normal day I would have received quite a few more than that. Also on logging on this morning I received just 4 when in a normal first log on I get 40 or more junk emails on average. Have emails disappeared during the "crash"?

Digital Fanatic · 23-10-2008, 13:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by moaningmags

I worked an 8 hour shift today, log on time 7 hours and took 128 calls.
Needless to say when I finished my shift at 10pm, I was exhausted, hoarse and had a raging headache.
Bring on tomorrow

We appreciate you guys who worked hard through the outage yesterday mate

---------- Post added at 12:38 ---------- Previous post was at 12:37 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by countyexile

There certainly seemed to be a lot of hysteria on here yesterday. Personally I have found the service pretty reliable and yesterday was a thanfully rare incident.

My one concern at the moment is possible lost emails. When the service came back on I received just two emails (including just one of three test emails I sent to each of my blueyonder email addresses) when in a normal day I would have received quite a few more than that. Also on logging on this morning I received just 4 when in a normal first log on I get 40 or more junk emails on average. Have emails disappeared during the "crash"?

My emails are still trickling in now, must be still a bit of a bocklog, but they are filtering through for me

---------- Post added at 12:40 ---------- Previous post was at 12:38 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by frogstamper

Some people are never happy mate

as you say a national outage put right in under two hours...what more do some people want, maybe 10mins.

---------- Post added at 01:08 ---------- Previous post was at 01:07 ----------

Some of us appreciate you Mags

Hahaha, yeah.. they'd still moan and say should of been 5 mins!!