We are restored

We are finally back online at home.  It has been a strange week, feeling disconnected but also we have got lots more done!  What does that tell you, too much time on the laptop!  I for one plan to try and limit my online time, ha ha who am I kidding, though now that summer has finally arrived in the UK, who wants to be indoors.

So what was wrong with our connection?  I got home on Monday to find a card from Virgin Media to say there was a problem and to call their team and quote a code and they would know how to help me.  This I did...... and they didn't.  When I finally got the nice man in India to understand what I wanted, he went off, then came back and told me there was a problem in our area and they were working on it and it wouldn't be fixed til July 4th!!!  He then offered to reduce my bill by 3 days by way of compensation.

4 July dawned, whilst at work I checked Virgin's website for an update (I should have done this on Tuesday) to find that the broadband for our area was working fine ?!?  Got home, still off.  So called again, got a nice lady in India, same scenario, though this time she offers to reduce our bill by a week.  This of course isn't getting us back online.  I then told her that I worked from home and that a connection was vital, she said she would look into it further and call me back, but offered to send out an engineer, just in case. Well.............. still waiting for her call, but the engineer came out yesterday.  I showed him the card, he knew straight away what was wrong and had us back online in 15 minutes.  It turns out that they get reports back daily of noise faults in their cabinet further down our street and go out to investigate they then block the signal to the offending house.  What should have happened was the the code I gave when calling should have alerted them make an engineers appointment!!   It turns out we had a faulty cable into the router, this has been replaced along with some other new bits for good measure.

So Virgin I have a few things to say.  Train your "help line staff" to know your codes, get a UK based call centre - call centres in India may well be cheap, but it must be hard for them as well as us with regional accents.  I for one, could hardly understand what the first person was saying to me as he talked so fast and the line kept fading in and out. Don't be so quick to offer compensation, just get the work done!! What really made me cross was to be told I would be called back and I wasn't, just very bad manners.  I would like to say though, that the engineer who came out was lovely, very helpful and very knowledgeable, thanks.

Ok rant over.......  I have updated our Garden Page with some new flower pictures, which include a square poppy and a visitor