TiVo Virgin Media London outage?

nialli · 09-12-2015, 10:34

I'm not sure how widespread this is (Virgin won't tell me) but in SE London we have had no broadband or TV services now for over 24 hours and still no definite fix time.
My 'compensation' for the loss of a day's work (and pay)? £4.13.
Also yesterday morning VM customers in the area received notification of the price rises in February. Nice one, marketing dept.
Does anyone else in London have issues?

Bofrok · 09-12-2015, 21:31

For the record I'm in North London - Enfield area and all has been ok here.

Stuart · 10-12-2015, 10:18

No problems in Bromley..

spiderplant · 10-12-2015, 13:23

About 1800 customers are/were affected. Somebody (not VM) dug through a bundle of fibres. The fibres are currently being respliced but it sounds like a big and messy job due to the nature of the damage. It's hard to predict a fix time for particular customers as it depends on which fibre you happen to be on.

nialli · 10-12-2015, 21:25

Whole of Area 21 down (Greenwich, etc). How come you have this info Spiderplant and CS don't? And why are Virgin posting revised fix times every few hours rather than explaining like you have? Major fail for CS. Latest fix promised for 10 tonight? Doesn't seem likely. No doubt we will see the same empty 9am then noon then 5pm and 10pm promises of a fix tomorrow, too.

---------- Post added at 20:25 ---------- Previous post was at 18:42 ----------

Spiderplant
vmbusiness apparently saying that London outage caused by a developer in Lewisham and on private property. Access not poss until 12th! If this is true, why are us home customers being told we will get a fix tonight?

spiderplant · 11-12-2015, 02:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by nialli

Whole of Area 21 down (Greenwich, etc).

Not at all true. Only a small part of Lewisham is affected. Area 21 covers Acton and Southampton as well as Lewisham. Not that that's any consolation to you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nialli

How come you have this info Spiderplant and CS don't?

Coz I work in engineering.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nialli

And why are Virgin posting revised fix times every few hours rather than explaining like you have? Major fail for CS. Latest fix promised for 10 tonight? Doesn't seem likely. No doubt we will see the same empty 9am then noon then 5pm and 10pm promises of a fix tomorrow, too.

Sorry, but nobody knows how exactly long it'll take to fix. The estimates are continually refined as the work progresses.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nialli

vmbusiness apparently saying that London outage caused by a developer in Lewisham and on private property. Access not poss until 12th! If this is true, why are us home customers being told we will get a fix tonight?

That's out of date information. It is true that access to the original site of the break isn't available until the 12th, but VM are setting up alternative fibre routes instead.

nialli · 11-12-2015, 09:35

Thanks for the info, sir.
What Virgin Media calls "Lewisham" because that's where the Head End is the rest of the world calls "Greenwich". No services further afield across SE London (see Twitter, where it was trending last night).
So why can't Customer Services just tell the thousands impacted the truth rather than stringing us along with a new lie about fix times every few hours? That's Incident Management 101 (I'm ITIL literate) and would cause a lot less angst and fewer departures to other suppliers.
It's technology- **** happens, everyone knows that. Incident Management calms it, **** Incident Management fans the flames.

---------- Post added at 08:35 ---------- Previous post was at 07:29 ----------

TV service back in Greenwich this morning. No broadband yet. Well done VM engineering. Customer Services hit a new low though

nialli · 11-12-2015, 19:36

All services resumed and stable by mid-afternoon. Mr Spiderplant sir - the people of Greenwich send their gratitude to the engineers involved in sorting this out for us.
However, a curse on the road digging morons working in Lewisham and a plea to those in Customer Services to get their communications skills brushed up big time!

Arthurgray50@blu · 11-12-2015, 23:08

Really and truly, this is extremely poor by VM. We have had problems before with VM, they should have a back up system.

Its look in major companies, if a system goes down, they switch to another until it is good.

VM is supposed to be a 'major' company, that they claim and then they insult you with a meagre couple of quid.

You wouldn't get this Sky

Ignitionnet · 11-12-2015, 23:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu

Really and truly, this is extremely poor by VM. We have had problems before with VM, they should have a back up system.

Its look in major companies, if a system goes down, they switch to another until it is good.

VM is supposed to be a 'major' company, that they claim and then they insult you with a meagre couple of quid.

You wouldn't get this Sky

You reckon fibre breaks don't affect Sky Broadband or telephone?

The only thing you wouldn't lose is normal TV.

nialli · 11-12-2015, 23:23

I have never been a Sky customer so can't comment from experience but there are customer horror stories about all of these companies (VM, Sky, BT, TalkTalk etc) and none is perfect.

muppetman11 · 12-12-2015, 01:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

You reckon fibre breaks don't affect Sky Broadband or telephone?

The only thing you wouldn't lose is normal TV.

Agreed all providers have these kind of issues and in a lot of cases the problem arises when third party contractors dig through them.

Just for Arthur
http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/new...he_north_west/

nialli · 16-12-2015, 10:04

As a postscript to this, I've discovered that Virgin customers who were impacted by this (and similar) outages don't automatically get credited for the loss of service but have to ring the call centre and request it.
If they valued us they would do it automatically, surely?