Thousands of families across the Black Country were left without television for up to 18 hours after their Virgin Media system failed.

Viewers in parts of Dudley, Stourbridge, Wolverhampton, Walsall and Birmingham had to go without their daily dose of programmes after a router failed at 6pm yesterday.

Service had still not been fully restored to many homes by lunchtime today.

A statement from the company said that the continued lack of service was due to a commercial power cut.

The Virgin Media website has been inundated with complaints about the lack of communication from the company, saying that people were unable to get through on the customer helpline, and when they did, they were spoken to rudely.

Customer Mark Earp, aged 46 of New Village in Dudley Wood, has been unable to watch TV since yesterday.

He said: “It’s really frustrating, I pay good money and we couldn’t even get in touch to see what was happening.

“They’re fast enough to take money off you but I bet we won’t get a refund for all the programmes we missed.”

Telesales worker Hannah Russell, aged 27, of Snowberry Drive, Lower Gornal, said: “I’d just got my washing done and was going to chill out and watch some TV.

“To begin with the menu screen came up but then that went off.

“I rebooted lots of times and gathered it wasn’t going to happen. I was really angry, I wanted to watch Hollyoaks and True Blood.”

Virgin Media spokeswoman Rebecca Burke said that as the fault had happened out-of-hours, an impact assessment was still being carried out.

Some customers also reported experiencing problems with loss of channels since Sunday, but Virgin Media said it was not aware of any general problems.