General : £3000 spent and Virgin can't connect me

[bluebaron]

Hi all,

i'm new to the forum and looking for some advice.

A few months ago I looked at upgrading my Broadband and settled on Virgin Media who have a box about 300m from my front door. However i'm set back on a private road by 150m. They told me if I dug up the lane and installed ducting for cabling to the end on the private road they would connect me up.

I signed up and they supplied me with 600m cable roll and I dug up the road laid the ducting and placed 300m of cable in the duct ready for them to connect to the Box.

Today they came out to connect it, having done so the engineer informed me that 300m is too far to reach from a box and that the signal it not strong enough at the House end for service. (max is about 200m).

Hence i'm now out £3000 (cost of digging up and tarmacing lane).which I never would have laid out if connection wouldn't be possible.

Do I have any recourse with Virgin Media who did the site survey for reimbursement?

Any had this happen before?

Thanks

BB

[Grimpy]

Have you got paperwork detailing what needed to be done from Virgin Media?

Citizens Advice / Solicitor would be the way to go but may end up costing quite a bit.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Grimpy

Have you got paperwork detailing what needed to be done from Virgin Media?

Citizens Advice / Solicitor would be the way to go but may end up costing quite a bit.

CISAS may prove helpful too and it's free:

https://www.cedr.com/consumer/cisas/

Signal boosters ? Optical cable ?
Surely there must be ways to send a signal 300 M.

[joglynne]

Originally Posted by Paul

Signal boosters ? Optical cable ?
Surely there must be ways to send a signal 300 M.

Maybe one of the VM guys can help. Weesteev comes to mind.

[General Maximus]

You will definitely have recourse either way because the fact that VM supplied you with equipment AND scheduled an engineer means that they intended to connect your premises. The fact that they failed to show due diligence and perform a proper site survey is not your problem. They can either make it right by installing a street cab at the end of your drive with the necessary bits in to boost the signal or they can refund your costs. Unfortunately they will try and drag the issue out as long as poss and you will throw fits every time you try and ring up and speak to somebody who knows what is going on. The best thing you can do is contact the team you did before to arrange installation and try and get an answer from them in writing stating that they cannot connect you and once you get that I would go down the solicitor route and let them handle it. VM can connect you if they want to, they just choose not to because of the added expense on their part and that is their fault because they should have known what was involved to start off with.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

You will definitely have recourse either way because the fact that VM supplied you with equipment AND scheduled an engineer means that they intended to connect your premises. The fact that they failed to show due diligence and perform a proper site survey is not your problem. They can either make it right by installing a street cab at the end of your drive with the necessary bits in to boost the signal or they can refund your costs. Unfortunately they will try and drag the issue out as long as poss and you will throw fits every time you try and ring up and speak to somebody who knows what is going on. The best thing you can do is contact the team you did before to arrange installation and try and get an answer from them in writing stating that they cannot connect you and once you get that I would go down the solicitor route and let them handle it. VM can connect you if they want to, they just choose not to because of the added expense on their part and that is their fault because they should have known what was involved to start off with.

[Sephiroth]

The VM surveyor should have known about the 200m rule. So anything you've got in writing will help your case enormously.

The problem is that the nearest green cabinet (assuming it to be coax not fibre) isn't powered other than by a 60V supply (I think) powered from a launch cabinet not too much further away. That's what's driving the signal down the coax. Now that they're using 700+ MHz in the downstream, that quickly gets attenuated over distance.

VM have a duty to compensate you or go the extra mile to make it work. Making it work would be complicated as they won't find it easy to bring mains power to your nearest cabinet so that they can provide an additional launch facility which would then require another 60V cabinet by your house. Something like that.

Nor would it be easy to give you a fibre link to the nearest active node (also not very far away). It would be easy to pull right to your house but the connection into their network would not be straightforward.

I'm ready to stand corrected by the VM bods who are members of CF.

[bluebaron]

Thanks for the advice so far.

Unfortunately I don't have much of a paper trail. I have some emails but nothing really laid out as was largely discussed on the phone.

They did make me sign up for a service before they supplied me with the necessary cable. I then installed it as they told me to. I suppose I could argue that they shouldn't have provided the cable and asked me to install it unless it would work? There will also be a record somewhere of the pre site visits.

I've put in an initial complaint and will see where that leads. If necessary I will escalate it first to CISAS then legally.

BB

[nomadking]

Possible misunderstanding over the 2 distances involved?
The 300m to the front door and the 150m from the road.
Looking at advice to builders of new developments, it specifies a maximum of 150m from L4 Cabinet to the premises whether by fibre or coaxial, and then a maximum of 30m cable from there.
Link to pdf(page 27)

[Pierre]

I’m by no means an expert on the HFC network, but I recall the rule of thumb being RG6 Max drop up to 120m, RG11 Max drop up to 160m. (Rule of thumb could possibly be extended)

So there is no way anyone, with even a little knowledge, would or should agree to a 300m drop.

Did anyone actually come out and look at the job before they sent you ? Or was it all done over the phone?

It’s a pretty big mistake to make!

[Foo Fighter]

Would it be possible to put your own cabinet on the drive and then run power and fibre from the house. Virgin should be able to put the modem in the cab.

Good excuse to add some lighting/cctv too via the ducting

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Foo Fighter

Would it be possible to put your own cabinet on the drive and then run power and fibre from the house. Virgin should be able to put the modem in the cab.

Good excuse to add some lighting/cctv too via the ducting

Please see post #8.

Additionally, VM won't get involved with any customer equipment that isn't inside the premises, let alone allow the customer to expose an LV electricity supply to VM's network!

[Foo Fighter]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Please see post #8.

Additionally, VM won't get involved with any customer equipment that isn't inside the premises, let alone allow the customer to expose an LV electricity supply to VM's network!

Just a box to house the modem on your boundry is want im talking about, then run your own fibre and media converter from the house to the box and plug into the lan port.

e.g https://www.gatesandfencesuk.co.uk/e...-motor-box.jpg

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Foo Fighter

Just a box to house the modem on your boundry is want im talking about, then run your own fibre and media converter from the house to the box and plug into the lan port.

e.g https://www.gatesandfencesuk.co.uk/e...-motor-box.jpg

You can’t run a fibre from a copper termination, well not without a lot of expensive equipment that doesn’t really exist for this application.