Virgin Media unreliability

There is a fault on VM's network that has resulted in some customers being disconnected since Friday August 13th. According to posts on VM's own community forums, they expect to resolve this issue by August 29th.
Is this lengthy service downtime acceptable?

VM fault noted on their forums

It seems a remarkable length of time for downtime if quite a number of people are affected. Any idea what area is covered by this fault?

It depends. If a residential service, there is unlikely to be any service level agreement (SLA) or uptime guarantee.

You'd most probably be able to claim your fees back for the period of no service but if connectivity is critical, having a backup option is a must.

During my days at Telewest, I recall that people would be offered a free dialup service (without charges) until the fault was resolved. Not sure if they now offer a backup 3G dongle service as that would seem more appropriate.. but might be worth a try if you don't have service.

Matt

In reply to a post by john2007:

It seems a remarkable length of time for downtime if quite a number of people are affected. Any idea what area is covered by this fault?

From the thread I linked, I gather that it covers several Manchester postcodes and affects VM users on their 10, 20 and 50mb services.

In reply to a post by uno:

It depends. If a residential service, there is unlikely to be any service level agreement (SLA) or uptime guarantee.

You'd most probably be able to claim your fees back for the period of no service but if connectivity is critical, having a backup option is a must.

During my days at Telewest, I recall that people would be offered a free dialup service (without charges) until the fault was resolved. Not sure if they now offer a backup 3G dongle service as that would seem more appropriate.. but might be worth a try if you don't have service.

Matt

Thanks for the reply. It is a residential service, and so far VM have offered a £15 credit for the loss of service. In the absence of any SLA,a refund is probably all I can hope for then? Roll on when my contract ends.

I'd say yes, a refund is all you could really expect.

Even if you moved to a non-cable service, most, if not all consumer grade broadband works the same way. If there is an outage, all you can really expect is a refund for the service not received.

Matt

Cheers uno, obviously I would prefer contract cancellation as compensation.

Something you'd need to raise with them. I'd do it in writing to...

NCLC
PO Box 50
Wythenshawe
Manchester
M22 0BA

Matt

Thanks for that.

And some companies won't give a refund either. Business services that include proper clauses around downtime tend to be very expensive.