Home worker headache from intermittent internet
Residents in Hamilton have complained to Virgin Media after a series of connection issues left people unable to work from home.
Locals in the Silvertonhill area of the town say customer service has been “woeful” after frantically trying to resolve internet problems in recent weeks.
Some even received emails from the telecoms giants with engineer visits arranged between 1am and 2am in the morning.
Virgin say this correspondence was sent in error and have apologised to customers who have experienced service issues recently.
Due to a technical network fault, locals experienced “intermittent services” between March 14 and 17, the firm explained.
But frustrated residents say problems have been ongoing for longer.
Paul Downie, who lives in the Silvertonhill area, said: “Virgin Media were aware of issues with our internet connection on Thursday, March 10.
“They did not communicate to anyone any plan for remediation – they assumed users would call them.
“Their recorded message and information on their website simply stated there was an issue and that they were working on it. Their communications to anyone who called were woeful – even the text/email updates we asked for told us that their engineers would be coming to our houses between 1am and 2am.
“After several missed deadlines, it took them five days to fix it, only for the connection to fail again a few days later. Again, calls to Virgin Media were fruitless.
“Finally, when several of us complained at the same time, the internet was fixed in around an hour. No compensation is possible for this as internet access was intermittent – it wasn’t completely down.
“Ironically, this all happened the week after Virgin Media increased their prices.
“I realise this is something of a first world problem, but Virgin Media – and other internet providers like them – need to recognise that they are providing important infrastructure, particularly now many of their users are working from home.
“Poor quality internet that breaks every few minutes prevents users from doing their jobs and small businesses from functioning.
“It’s time Ofcom and similar bodies held them accountable to repair faults in a timely manner and provide proper communications to paying customers, not to mention proper compensation when customers don’t receive the service they are paying for.”
Another resident in Silvertonhill who relies on internet for work calls during the day, told us: “I work from home and constantly lose connection to the cloud and other websites for nearly a month.
“It also affects TV function and mobile phone, with the reception terrible so need internet calling. An engineer was out yesterday but TV and internet still have problems.
“Contract finishes in March. Don’t want to leave, but have no option if this is not sorted.”
A third also voiced her frustrations, adding: “Intermittent availability from Friday, March 7. Apparently fixed but I’m still getting thrown out of Teams meetings today, March 21.
“Can’t get through a full call without losing connection. It has seriously affected my working from home.”
And a fourth local explained how they had problems from March 11 with a lot of disconnections, and was later forced to go into the workplace due to the issues as they were unable to work from home.
Meanwhile, one resident called the ongoing problem “unbearable”, as another agreed saying she was “losing service constantly”.
A Virgin Media spokesman told us: “We apologise to the very small number of customers in Hamilton who experienced intermittent broadband services last week.
“Full service should now be restored.”