Virgin Media has been criticised for offering just £4.25 compensation to a Finsbury Park customer when wi-fi, TV and phone services were down for 11 days.

The firm refused to disclose how many of its customers around Green Lanes, Manor House and Blackstock Road were affected by the fault with the main power feed cable which lasted from January 11 to 22.

It has now come under fire for its “dire” customer services, lack of communication and “lack of urgency” to fix the outage, on top of its refusal to compensate customers for the “inconvenience, wasted time, and overall stress” caused.

One of those affected, Peter Stone, told the Gazette: “These days we all build our lives around having constant internet and email, whether for work or our personal lives, and it has become as important to us all as other services such as water.

“Yet there seemed to be no urgency on Virgin’s part to reconnect us. And they didn’t seem to have any back-up plan – we were left to put our own measures in place.

“The telephone support was just a recorded message that gave a deadline that was continually pushed back each day.”

Mr Stone has only been offered a refund for the days his service was down, and nothing for inconvenience or out of pocket expenses.

Beverley Morris hit the same brick wall: “I spoke to customer services and they offered me £4.25 for loss of service,” she said.

“Virgin just kept pushing the time back for repair. It went down at 10am on Friday morning and said it would be fixed by 12, then it went to 5pm, then 8pm, then we went into Saturday and the same thing again.

“By the evening it said Monday morning at 10am. We went through that whole cycle for over 10 days.”

A Virgin Media spokesperson said they tried to fix the problem as quickly as possible: “We’re aware a power issue caused an outage of our services to some customers in the N4 postcode area. We apologise to residents for any inconvenience.”

Last month the Gazette reported customers in Stoke Newington missed out on the whole Christmas TV schedule because of a six-day blackout.