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

[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

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 ?

Originally Posted by johnlfitz

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]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

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...

Originally Posted by Kymmy

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]

Originally Posted by whydoIneedatech

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

Originally Posted by johnlfitz

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.