Woodlands Virgin Media Broadband Outage Update.
As you may be aware, following concerns raised by residents about recent broadband disruption in the Woodlands area, I contacted Virgin Media on your behalf. I wanted to share a quick update from Virgin and what I plan to do next.
After my email to Virgin Media, they escalated the issue and have confirmed there was a network fault affecting parts of Woodlands, which was fully resolved by 9pm on 31 January. They say services in the area are now stable with no further issues expected.
However, they also confirmed that affected residents were not eligible for automatic compensation because the outage lasted under 24 hours, which falls below Ofcom’s 48-hour threshold before compensation kicks in.
Many of you told me how disruptive this outage was, and I have real concerns about both the compensation threshold and the way broadband providers communicate with customers during outages. This is not an isolated issue – residents across the constituency have been in touch with me about disruption from a number of different providers. That’s why I am now writing to Ofcom to raise these issues as a matter of broader concern, and to push for improvements that protect all customers, regardless of their provider.
Virgin Media have said that affected customers can raise the impact this had on their services, by contacting their customer service team on 0345 454 1111. If you’re not satisfied with their response, you can also make a formal complaint at virginmedia.com/help/complaints.
If you need further assistance with this matter, please write to me at ed.miliband.mp@parliament.uk