Virgin Media UK Customers Annoyed by TV Price Hike and TiVo Rebooting

An unspecified number of Virgin Media’s broadband bundle customers, specifically those who take one of the cable operators TiVo set-top-boxes, have been unable to watch their favourite shows because the kit keeps rebooting itself. Also there’s a +£3 TV price rise coming in September, hurray?

The unusual fault appears to have cropped up early on Thursday morning and subsequently left subscribers unable to view their favourite TV shows for most of the day. According to Virgin Media’s fault reference (F003809631): “You might find that your Virgin TV service is not working at the moment. Boxes may also be constantly rebooting or getting a network availability error message.”

The fault itself, which is reflected in this VM Community Forum post, was initially showing up as a national issue and had an estimated fix time of around 9pm last night after being delayed several times during the day.

However this morning the problem has vanished from the operators Service Status page and so we assume it’s been fixed, although it’s hard to tell as Virgin Media doesn’t provide a useful history log or explanation for what went wrong. Elsewhere some “Customers may find that the TV Anywhere App may be intermittent & timing out.”

At least subscribers can comfort themselves with the knowledge that the “price of your TV package is going up so we can bring you bigger, better entertainment,” with users set to pay an extra +£3 per month from 1st September 2015 and it’s all so that VM can lump the new BTSport EU HD footy channel into the mix.. whether you like it or not.

Yes indeed, that’s proving to be an EXTREMELY POPULAR decision (*tongue firmly in cheek*). Ed the Sofa Bear, VMs latest vaguely comical marketing mascot of choice, should at least be happy with the news.

A Virgin Media Customer, rcullen1964, summed it up:

“Thanks muchly but I don’t want sport channels. This is not bigger better entertainment

Can somebody please tell all of the TV distribution companies, Virgin, BT, Sky or whoever has excessively deep pockets that I don’t have those deep pockets. I don’t in any way want to be seen to be assisting the funding of the overpaid prima donnas that call themselves footballers or whatever.

Sports channels are not an inducement to everyone to get digital TV subscriptions. If we want such premium channels they should be an add on, so we don’t all fund the cost.”

But customers take note, unexpected mid-contract price hikes give you the right to exit your contract penalty free (provided you have one of Virgin Media’s TV packages that includes BTSport and don’t take it as an optional add-on).