Thousands of Virgin Media customers unable to watch TV after outage
VIRGIN Media has crashed following a major power outage leaving thousands of customers unable to watch TV.
TV services - including on-demand - stopped working across the UK at around 11am this morning.
According to Downdetector, there were 17,100 people reporting issues this morning after Virgin Media suffered a "major power outage".
The problem is ongoing five hours later, with around 5,000 people still unable to access live programmes and TV on-demand services.
Virgin Media said there are engineers on site trying to fix the blackout, which is affecting households across the UK.
Earlier today it managed to restore access to BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, ITV+1 and Channel 4.
But those channels may cut out again as engineers try and reconnect more services.
There are issues across the country, with hot spots in London, Birmingham, Nottingham and Manchester.
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Some customers also reported problems with their WiFi connections, but Virgin Media said internet services are not impacted.
Earlier today, one Virgin Media user said on Twitter: "Our service has completely gone down - no WiFi and no TV. Can’t access your website either."
Another said: "So no TV, no WiFi, can’t stream from the app and can’t report as website is down and your customer service won’t answer the phone.
"What a shambles can you tell me why I pay so much for nothing?"
"So I am also getting a V53 error on all channels, and don't bother asking me to check the online status because your website and app are both down too," another Twitter user said.
"One grumpy household here, how long for a repair please?"
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: “We’re aware of an issue currently affecting TV services and are working hard to resolve this as quickly as possible.”
The telecoms firm also suffered an outage last week, with more than 2,000 customers reporting a drop in their internet connection.
However, the problem was fixed within around an hour of the first issues being reported.
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Virgin Media is not the only company that has run into problems with outages affecting TV services.
Sky has gone down throughout various points this year - with a number of customers reporting issues accessing their TV, like this crash in July.
A mass outage in July meant Now TV also went down meaning customers couldn't watch their favourite shows as banks and streaming sites also went offline.
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Can I claim compensation if my TV doesn't work?
If you're a Virgin Media customer you can visit the service update website to check the service status where you live.
To find out if there are problems in your area, enter your postcode.
You could claim compensation if your internet is down for a long time, check if you're eligible here.
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Internet customers are eligible for automatic compensation, but TV services don't come under that scheme.
We've asked Virgin Media if there's compensation available for TV customers and we'll update this page when we know more.
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