Broadband woes cause misery for Wigan couple working from home

Chris Tucker has been working from his home in Shevington due to the coronavirus pandemic, but that his been hindered by the ongoing outage.

The problem began on Tuesday, October 20 and has not yet been resolved by his internet provider Virgin Media.

Chris, 52, said: “I’m an IT contractor on a rolling contract and using my phone is just not sustainable to go on. I don’t know if my contracts will be renewed. I can’t get any work done.”

His wife Juliette, who works as a customer account manager for an energy firm, has had to go to her father’s home in Appley Bridge to get internet access.

The problem has affected other properties in the area, but appears to be intermittent.

Chris said: “My neighbour immediately next to me isn’t affected but on Twitter there are a few people complaining in WN6. Our television is alright, but other people have lost everything or got broadband and no TV. I don’t know what’s going on with them.”

To make matters worse, Chris has had a frustrating experiencing dealing with Virgin Media’s customer services team.

Both he and his wife have phoned the firm many times, faced a long wait to speak to someone and finally managed to arrange for an engineer to look at the problem - only for that to be cancelled shortly afterwards with Virgin saying they were aware of the problem and it would be fixed.

Chris has also emailed and tweeted Virgin to no avail, with one Twitter exchange even seeing the firm suggest he go to a coffee shop for internet access.

In one response on a message forum he was told the problem could be fixed by Monday, but he continues to wait to see what happens.

Chris said: “I assume they are going to send a text message when it is fixed, because they said they would send one where there’s an update.

“I’m sick of the router flashing red lights at me every day, so I switched it off, but I turn it on every morning to see if it’s working and it isn’t.”

Chris is becoming increasingly fed up and hopes the problem does get fixed soon.

He said: “I’m angry and frustrated. It’s not doing my mental health any good because I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to work in a week or so.”

A Virgin Media spokesman said: “We’d like to apologise for the issues that Mr Tucker has experienced over the past week. We’ve made contact with him and are now speaking with him directly to fix his services as soon as possible.”

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