Virgin Media - disabled priority repair

There are only four Network Operators, O2, EE, Vodafone and Three. All the service providers use one of those, for example GiffGaff are on O2, Asda Mobile and (old) TPO on EE. Do a bit of home work on which network(s) your SIM operators are using...

Three doesn't surprise me. EE has an indoor signal here but it's not good enough to make a phone call. EE are the only network to offer

A mast with a cell from the relevant network operator?

Other posts have it as a spade straight through, should be easy to do with a length of CW1308 "telephone cable". I'd reveal enough of the virgin cable to have it on the surface and join the two ends, wire for wire, by simply striping and twisting together to the CW1308. Bit of insulation tape and stuff the lot into an open plastic bag to keep the rain off. Keep the bag open otherwise condensation will be a probelm.

"Nearest mast" might not be the one you want, you want the one giving the best signal and data rate for the relevant network operator. Note "and data rate", I have feeling that not all cells from a given network provider that can be received from a given location all offer the same data service.

Long term I'd serously look at BT, for at least landline provision. BT Total Care is £4/month extra but offers faults fixed within 24 hours of reporting 365/days/year, daytime only so you won't get an enginer knocking on the door at 0230 (but you can get that if you want it). In my experience they do jump and fix things within the 24 hours. They've even pulled an engineer off another job 40 miles away when the 1st one couldn't fix one fault... Depending on how ill/housebound your friend is this might be available for free via "Free Priority Fault Repair Scheme".

BT keep quiet about the Line Rental Save Discount, pay up front for

BT also offer other reduced line rentals, try looking for BT Basic. Donno if you can get Total Care on BT Basic though, you can get broadband though, which ought to be from any ISP not just BT Internet (which is what BT push of course).

Indeed ! That's exactly the point I'm making . Why isn't that spelled out in the T'Cs ?

As with anything to do with Branson the T&C's are deliberately opaque,

So that all the non intellectuals out there, unlike yourself obviously, despite having landlines might wrongly assume that because their landline is bundled with Broadband and TV the condotion might also apply to them.

Richard Branson's whole fortune is based on people making such incorrect assumptions. So that in the early days when they bought a record in Virgin they assumed the price included purchase tax which Branson passed on to the Govt. When in fact it went straight into Branson's pocket. As he'd fooled MHC into believing he'd already exported all the records he was selling in his shops basically by booking into Dover Customs filling out all the forms and then driving out again and back to London. The fact that daddy was a barrister came in very useful to Richard at this point.

As it happens Jeff you're the second person posting on this NG using the name "Jeff".

Howver the posting headers might seem to suggest that you're not the same person.

Not that that other poster is actually "Jeff" either.

As a matter of interest have you posted much on this NG before ?

michael adams

...

HTF do you expect Virgin to pay for someone else's cockup? At the very least, the subscriber will get charged for it.

I am generally tolerant of all opinions, just not outright stupidity, but really the above is just too offensive

Consider yourself plonked.

Now must be the time to change to BT, then. If they offer a better service for your relation's needs.

I pay something like £1 a month to get priority repairs from BT. It se ems worth it to me.

Jonathan

It's actually £12 a quarter these days. But worth it.

Shame its got nothing to do with Branson though.

Other than licensing the brand from the brand holding company.

Umm .. had this mail from one of our customers the other day amusing reading;!..

Tony

Broadband now back with us after nightmare 36 hours! Openreach pulled a wire out that they couldn't replace when fixing someone else's fault and then pushed off saying we need to report a fault. Words fail me.

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

FWIW we've had Virgin formerly Comcast here sine 1996 in all that time prolly been off once a year but apart from Two occasions been fixed back online within less than an hour.

Other occasions are when they had some big router fail and good old Padrig went over the top with his digger and buggered a mains cable that put most of the area out so no power anyway..

Apart from that 220 Meg down here always seems faster than the other VDSL services we have at some other locations...

As to service their a Telco - what more do you need to know;?.

Total Care is £4/month (£12/qtr) which gets you the fixed in 24 hour s

They also offer "Line Rental Plus" at £2/month more than the standard line rental (£20.99 v £18.99). LRP has more options for payment, "free" paper bills and some form of improved repair time. It was 24 hours less than the normal residential Standard Care but I can't actually find what the service level is on LRP these days.

Standard care is by midnight of the second weekday after the day the report was made. Reports made between 2100 and 0800 weekdays, all weekend and on public/bank holidays are treated as being made at

I wonder what "pulled a wire out" means? Did POTS stay working? if they pulled the jumpers looping the line through the fibre cabinet and reused that VDSL port for some one elses broadband, they'd have to find and get configured another VDSL port. That would require things going through the proper channels. Bit more than what happens here when the line goes off.

More than once I've got in the car driven the 1/2 mile or so that covers the section of ali cable that always gives problems, found Openreach chap, had a gentle word and the line comes back. Once or twice they've lent me thier tone sender to plug in to make it easier to find the jelly bean with fractured wire. That sort of depends on how many of the half dozen or more joint posts/chambers they've been into in that half mile.

Round here on a good day they break one working circuit for every four that they try to mend and failures are common. It used to be worse. The old copper is fragile but the regular engineers are more careful now.

At one point they had to *bus* extra engineers in from Lancashire (shock horror) to fix a large number of line faults round here.

The actual £12 a quarter for priority repairs may be worth it, but it' s only offered retail by BT, and their package prices are often rather unco mpetitive.

I'm paying equivalent of £16.50 for EE line and standard broadband.

The cheapest from BT is equivalent to £22.77.

(checked today on MSE broadband comparison)

I wonder if it's uncompetitive for only BT to offer what appears to be a st andard Openreach wholesale product?

Owain

Voodofone are doing some good deals at the moment if you are a customer and or have a Vodafone and they do fast or slow fibre services no line rent ,well sort of!...

I don't know exactly but the inference is they cocked up added in another fault and that had to be reported to BT why they couldn't have done that or sorted it beggars belief except i have had that happen before!:(

They made the fault they should fix it!

Well out in the wild west of Cumbria that sort of activity might be well necessary but you expect the average Joe to know what a tone sender is;?...

My ISP (AAISP) offers the BT enhanced care at £12 a month on the BT lines they sell.

Another possible explanation is that other telcos don't offer it as it's not profitable. A few years ago Openreach charged several hundred pounds for a priority repair.

In any event, it's meant to be separate and distinct from *free* priority fault repair for vulnerable users which all telcos have to offer. But the criteria for that are pretty strict and the OP doesn't indicate if the customer had already established with VM that they were met.

Brian is correct. There is no need for fibre to the home as the coax distribution system was built to carry high quality TV signals up to 750MHz and the internet uses 8MHz wide channels, as used for TV, with several channels 'bonded' to get the higher speeds - up to 100Mb but increasing to 200Mb.