Virgin Media power cabinet open to the rain

Does anybody know how rapidly Virgin Media respond to online reports of cabinet problems? There is a phone number available, but as VM don't see fit to make it a toll-free number, I'm not sure how seriously they take this stuff.

I've reported that the doors on both cabinets near my house are hanging off (one completely). A common sight around time I might add. However, this one is more concerning as it's clearly a power cabinet with mains. Much of the equipment inside it is clearly not designed for external use. I rather think that switched mode power supply won't like the forecast rain. The entire cabinet is rather shoddy, with some electrical fittings I'd be reluctant to have in my house.

I've yet to have even an automated response from VM. I'm also surprised that there is no active cabinet integrity monitoring, at least for things like power cabinets, which are clearly critical items with an obvious safety element. (I believe OpenReach cabinets do have integrity monitoring).

I'll see if VM pick this up. I think they might take rather more notice if rain gets into that switched mode power supply.

VM power cabinet - with autumn leaves.

As it's just started pouring with rain I've gone and put the door back on and wrapped some duct tape round the cabinet to hold it on. I hope VM appreciate me going out and getting wet doing this...

Try a tweet to a VM account - doors off the cable cabs is common but to have indoor mains open to elements is not good.

Still no response. However, ironically, VM have chosen today to drop one of their bits of junk mail through my letterbox. To be fair, they are relatively rare these days. Maybe only once a month. At one time they managed two drops a week.

Maybe I'll try that twitter account. Of possibly see how long my duct tape fix works.It's noticable that most of the open cabinets I see (I passed three today) contain what I assume at the fibre/coax nodes, and they seem to be fairly robust. Die-cast assemblies which look like they laugh at a bit of rain (although some contain IDC knock-down blocks, which I assume are for phone - they don't look so good). A few cabinets aren't open, but they have rust-holes in the manner of a 1970s Vauxhall Viva.

As any home owner knows, if you don't keep up on maintenance, life gets very expensive.

He probably does but he probably doesn't have the gear needed to fix it

http://tinyurl.com/pa2u6e3 has a landline number and link to the online form.

The doors fallen off though in this post though. To be honest though its Virgin and most of their engineers couldn't give a damn about doing their primary job properly.

Edited by deleted (Sun 12-Oct-14 10:44:40)

As you say, doors off VM cabinets seems incredibly common - I dunno if it's more prevalent in some areas compared to others, thinking back to the various different companies that installed the cable networks in the first place, and the varying build quality there was - did some use better cabinets than others?

Quite a comparison to BT, whose cabinets are almost always securely locked.

There dosnt seem to be any coax or copper connections in the cabinet so probably nothing that a typical installer would need to get involved with. Looks to be all power/ mains so probably down to network or power engineers if they have such people.
Openreach operate in a similar way with FTTC where the installers only touch the PCP but the Fibre cab is out of bounds except to their power and network engineers.
BTW, do virgin have any engineers or are they outsourced/contractors?

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

Well an engineer was across the road today. When he was done I approached him, said I had no reply from VM over it and asked if he could secure it - only to be told it was nothing to do with him.

Which was odd. Does he never go to these things when installing people?

It's not a case of that. The engineers get performance related salery. So even if they took 10 minutes fixing it.... It will go against them. In their eyes why should they do it and have time added onto the job they are there for. Once a report for a broken cab is picked up it would be allocated as a job.

Also the service techs would not be going round fixing cabs that is a job for the construction team.


Loads of the cabs are broken by rogue installers and contractors who just don't care.

In reply to a post by Ribble:

There dosnt seem to be any coax or copper connections in the cabinet so probably nothing that a typical installer would need to get involved with. Looks to be all power/ mains so probably down to network or power engineers if they have such people.
Openreach operate in a similar way with FTTC where the installers only touch the PCP but the Fibre cab is out of bounds except to their power and network engineers.
BTW, do virgin have any engineers or are they outsourced/contractors?

Yes but not as many these days. They used to use Kelly's who BT are now using.