Virgin Media website down: Customers complain as provider denies broadband outage
Virgin Media broadband customers complained after being left without internet today, but the company denied it has suffered a major outage.
Virgin Media’s status checker, which allows users to check the level of service in their local area, was inaccessible, with the company saying it was undertaking “essential work on our systems”.
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Hundreds of customers complained about the issues, with 75 per cent reporting problems with their Wi-Fi and 19 per cent citing issues connecting on their mobile phones, according to Down Detector, a site that tracks social media complaints about outages.
Customers vented their frustration on Twitter, with Kirsten Mairi calling the situation “ridiculous”.
She added: “Internet off. Service status page down. I try calling and apparently the service is actually down ON PURPOSE for fictional ‘improvements’? No service is NOT an improvement and we received no notice of this planned outage. Absolutely unacceptable.”
Steven Alcock added: “After half an hour of hanging on to phones and waiting for Chat bots to become human I am giving up on #virginmedia. Does anyone actually work there?”
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Virgin Media had not acknowledged an issue on its Twitter account, but replied to one user, Sue Grant: “I’m sorry to know your broadband is down and can’t check our service page as it is down as well Sue. I know how frustrating this can be on your end since you work from home and needs a reliable connection. Did rebooting makes any difference?”
A spokesperson denied there has been a national broadband outage, however.
“Our broadband services are running as normal – there is no national broadband outage affecting our network,” they said.
“Right now, our national network is running well and there is not a widespread issue with our broadband services,” they added.
Virgin Media has instead said that it is “carrying out essential maintenance” to its website, meaning “some pages may not be working as usual”.
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“We’re working hard to get these updated as soon as possible but this does not affect customer’s broadband services,” the spokesperson added.
“Of course outages can occur at a local level – this is all part of having a UK wide broadband network – but there is no major issue impacting our broadband services right now.”