Virgin Media was down: here is everything we know about today’s interruption

The interruption now (hopefully)

A spokesman for Virgin Media has just told us: “Now we have restored the services totally for all customers, after a previous interruption. We would like to apologize again with the clients who were affected by any inconvenience caused.”

So, that is, or is it? Downetector still shows hundreds of problem reports, at the time of writing. Now that Virgin Media solved the problems, however, these residual problems should be clarified soon. And with that, we say goodbye to this Live blog, as long as those problems remain solved, that is.

Virgin Media is back to the “vast majority”

The good news is that, according to the Virgin Media social media team, it has now “restored services for the vast majority of customers who were affected by an earlier interruption.”

The bad news? If you have reached this page, we assume that does not include it, and Virgin Media still tries to solve some residual problems. He says that “our teams are working tirelessly to completely restore services for all the remaining customers, and we apologize again for any inconvenience caused.”

Virgin Media has not yet commented on the root cause on the issues, which have affected companies and individuals: the Student Loan Refund company (above), for example, said at 2 PM GMT that it could only offer general guidance in place of full service.

Complaints rumble …

While Virgin Media’s Internet problems seem to have decreased for most, they certainly have not disappeared according to Downetector, with complaints in a stable 500 or less during the last two hours, which is well above the typical baseline .

That is much less than the peak of around 10,000 that we saw before, but suggests that the problems are demonstrating to be third in some areas, with the access points that continue to be London, Manchester, Birmingham and Belfast. Virgin Media has not yet commented on the root cause of the problems, but we will update it as soon as we hear something else.

Virgin is half of the table for broadband complaints

While Virgin Media customers may not be in love with their service today, which seems to be in repair, according to Downetector, it could be a small comfort to know that in no way is the worst for complaints.

According to the ofcom data published two weeks ago, it is an explosion in the middle of the “complaints per 100,000” broadband boards (Cue the Top of the Pops Countdown music). At the top is Talktalk, followed by the US and now.

Virgin Media, who was once in Talktalk’s shoes, is now in fourth place, ahead of Vodafone, BT, Plusnet and Sky, who had the least number of complaints in the period from July to September 2024.

Of course, all that could change in 2025, and the clients of Virgin Media will wait for today’s problems to be rare, otherwise it could be moving in the wrong direction in the table of broadband shame of ofcom.

Recovery signs?

The good news for Virgin Media customers is that Downetector reports have now collapsed to around 1,500 at the time of writing (from a 10,000 peak to 11.10 AM GMT).

That does not necessarily mean that all problems have been solved, only that there are no waves of new clients that add to the pile of complaints. But this is usually a good sign, and anecdotally some in the Techradar team have discovered that their Internet connection has returned to full aptitude.

We have asked Virgin Media to tell us in a statement when the problems are officially resolved and (hopefully) will bring that soon.

Could you get compensation?

If you are working from home and still fight with the internet problems of Virgin Media, your thoughts could be resorting to compensation.

For your credit, Virgin Media is quite clear about it on its compensation page (even if some could affirm that this is because it is down so often). Under his ‘automatic compensation scheme’, he is apparently eligible for “£ 9.76 per day for a total loss of service after 2 complete working days when registering the loss of service.”

On the negative side, the problems must be a “total loss of service” and must register the problems with Virgin Media, either on the phone or using their service verifier, which many in the Techradar equipment have found very scummous today.

So, while compensation is possible, there is the possibility that today’s problems (currently are directed by three hours) may not qualify, and even if they do, to affirm that it could be more problems than it is worth.

It is not just half Virgin …

Although Virgin Media has been the most affected this morning, Downetector also shows smaller but notable peaks in other services, including BT, Xbox, Microsoft 365 and more.

Sometimes, these parallel peaks are simply reduced to the ways in which people report problems (for example, registering it as a team problem instead of Virgin Media). But it also suggests that problems could be related to DNS (or domain names system), which means that it cannot connect to the server to access websites.

When community fiber Internet fell in the United Kingdom last week, many reported that you log in to its router and choose a different DNS (such as ‘8.8.8.8’) temporarily solved their problems, as it did using a VPN. Although there is still no evidence that doing this will help with the interruption of today’s Virgin …

A Virgin statement

Virgin Media has just responded to the following statement: “We are aware that some clients are experiencing intermittent problems with their services. We apologize for any inconvenience and we are working to solve this as a priority.”

There is currently no estimated time scale for the solution, but it is good to get some recognition that Virgin is working on it. Meanwhile, return to the telephone connection for many, or perhaps testing one of the best VPN in case the problems are related to DNS problems …

And … Virgin’s service voucher is down

As if Virgin Media customers need their blood pressure to increase today, the company’s service tracker, which should inform you about known problems in your area, has currently decreased for many.

However, when observing the map of Virgin Media’s reports in Downetector, it is safe to say that this is a national problem, with problems reported from Plymouth to Dundee. We are currently bothering Virgin for an explanation and we will update it as soon as we receive backward.

Welcome to an unfortunate beginning of the week …

Hello, and the compensation if you are a client of Virgin Media who has Internet problems this morning. He is not alone: ​​almost 10,000 clients have reported fixed Internet problems this morning in Downetector (above).

That includes several people in Techradar. We communicate with Virgin Media to comment on what is causing the problems and we will inform as soon as we listen, but hopefully that fall in the previous graph suggests that there are already signs of recovery (for some) …