I am now back on line after five days without Virgin Media’s normally excellent broadband. It’s just a pity that a this company can leave a loyal customer without television or internet for so long. I see three systemic failures in Vigin Media’s relations with me.
- Patching up a known faulty cable for several months instead of doing the right thing and replacing it.
- Sending an apprentice who then wandered off without ensuring that I had service or asking for further assistance. This person had failed to spot that the cable was disconnected; it could have been repaired three days ago if common sense had been used.
- Not following through on an existing ticket and forcing me to start again, against great odds, to initiate another service call. Only now do I have a priority engineering line to call if there are further problems.
This afternoon, as a result of the problem being “escalated”, an older and wiser technician came along and solved the problem in thirty minutes. It was a simple issue that could have been solved five days ago: Signal ok at junction box at end of street but no signal for me. It doesn’t take Alan Turing to work out that there is a break in the cable.
Being without broadband for five days is not an experience I would want to repeat in a hurry. I was able to rely to a great extent on mobile data from Vodafone and free wifi at local coffee shops and pubs, but there is no substitute for having your own network up and running.Â
As we come to rely more on cloud storage, with large chunks of data being uploaded and downloaded every day, the sudden lack of a fast connection can be disastrous.Â
Michael –
Having worked with all the major US telecom and half a dozen international ones – this sadly is more of the norm that anyone would expect. Usually unless the customer pushes to escaltion there is only slow progress. Having the alterbative data source was key. Glad you are back online and hope your connection had been repaired properly.