An error at Virgin Media saw thousands of people lose access to the internet last night - seeing everything from Netflix to video calls and more stop working in homes across the country.
The issue even forced a meeting of Exeter City Council’s planning committee to halt, PlymouthLive reports.
A Virgin Media spokesman told Mirror Money: “An intermittent broadband issue that started yesterday evening was fixed in the early hours of this morning.
"This was not caused by increased usage or a lack of capacity. We know how frustrating this was for customers and we sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
But what are your rights to compensation if you were affected?
The good news is that in April last year new rules came in strengthening consumer protection for service outages and missed appointments - with watchdog Ofcom updating its guidance last month in the light of the coronavirus outbreak.
The automatic compensation scheme offers a fixed amount of money back for loss of service, missed appointments and delays to the start of a new plan - and Virgin Media is one of the firms signed up to it.
The bad news is that for compensation to be paid, the service needs to be down for two full days.
Virgin pointed out that in the case of yesterday's outage, connectivity dropped for a few minutes and then returned again on multiple occasions – so there was not a constant loss of service for customers.
When automatic compensation is paid out
According to Ofcom, if your broadband or landline service stops working, you need to report the fault to your provider.
If the service is not back after two full working days, you will start receiving compensation automatically.
You get an initial £8 after the first two days, then £8 a day it's still not fixed after that.
Compensation should be with you no later than 30 calendar days after the loss of service is resolved or the service is cancelled.
The money appears as a credit on your bill unless you agree otherwise.
Providers can offer other forms of compensation of the same or higher value, as long they make you aware of how much you could receive in the form of a credit on your bill.
