VIRGIN Media’s TV services went down yesterday and it caused an afternoon of frustration for the thousands who were left in front of blank screens.
But the sad news for those customers is they won’t be in line for any compensation after the outage.
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When things go awry with your broadband at home, you’re entitled to a bit of cash under the automatic compensation scheme.
You get £8.06 if the faulty service you’re experiencing isn’t fixed two full working days after you report it, and then installments of £8.06 for each full day it’s still not fixed after that.
They also pay £25 for missed appointments, or for appointments cancelled with less than 24 hours’ notice, plus another £5 for each calendar day delay to the start of a new service.
As it was the telly service that went down yesterday though, Virgin Media won’t be issuing any compensation to customers.
This isn’t covered by the same scheme and it’s not something Virgin Media is implementing in reaction to the problems that were experienced yesterday.
The issues didn’t persist for long enough anyway, if Virgin Media was to roll out compensation under the same formula as the broadband rules – problems were quickly corrected and channels returned before the end of the day.
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: “We sincerely apologise for the issues with our TV service yesterday.
“This was caused by a major power issue and our engineers worked flat out throughout the day to get things back up and running.”
As many as 17,100 people reported issues at the peak of the outage.
A large number of front rooms across the UK will have had no telly services whatsoever as they lost access to major channels like BBC One, ITV and Channel 4.
Problems appeared to start at 11am but it was a few hours wait before everything was back up and running again.
Things began to return to normal throughout the afternoon and all the channels were available once more by the evening.
It’s not the first instance of tariff troubles that Virgin Media customers have faced though.
The telecoms firm also suffered an outage last week, as more than 2,000 customers reported a drop in their internet connection.
What can I do to complain to Virgin?
If you’re not happy with your service you can make a complaint.
That’s not a route to guarantee you any money back that you may feel you’re owed either, but it’s always worth trying just in case you can haggle any kind of discount for your dissatisfaction.
You can complain to Virgin via phone, online or by post.
Make sure you’re equipped with details about the issue, your account number, and email or phone number for them to contact you.
You can find out more about making a complaint on Virgin Media’s website.
Viewer haggles to save £740 on their Virgin Media bill
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