Virgin Media Customer Service - Okay once you get the right people!

[Dragontao]

Background. MY elderly mum lives with me. She's recently recovering from cancer and suffers from Parkinson's as well as fairly severe arthritis.

Maintain a landline for her benefit (she's no good with modern tech so a mobile has not helped).

Thursday 17th December fault occurs on line. No dial tone, can't make outgoing calls, incoming calls just get a busy tone. Checked phone and lines in house, All good.

Called Virgin. Put through to tech support, they run some tests. Agree there's a fault. Book engineer. Earliest is the following Tuesday. After some disagreement they send some snot nosed kid out on Monday 21st. Fixes phone. Works for half a day. Problem is back again.

Phone Virgin again. Explain it's the same fault, hasn't been fixed. Nope, put through to tech support again. Runs some tests again. Yep, there's a fault. Engineer booked for a week later. Earliest they can do, it's Christmas.

Engineer turns up on 28th. Fixes fault. 31st December fault is back again. Can't get through to them until Saturday the 2nd. Put through to tech support again (I may be getting somewhat irked at this point). They run tests again. Tells me someone will be out between 12 and 4 on Tuesday 5th January. Nope, nobody turns up.

I ring up and ask where they were. Engineer is booked for Thursday 7th (i.e today). I point out that there must have been a communication breakdown in that I couldn't understand the farker on the end of the phone. I wouldn't have agreed to an engineer on the 7th because there's be nobody in. I couldn't take the day off and my mum was in the oncology department of the local hospital.

Eventually after some more argy bargy, they agree to send someone out in an emergency call. They don;t come to the house. They fix the fault from elsewhere. This time the fix lasts the grand total of 1 hour.

So I'm straight on Facebook (I'd already been detailing this saga on their Facebook page. For a couple of days messages back and forth, they are sympathetic. I'm becoming less amused. Eventually one of their social media bods says e-mail twitter@virginmedia.co.uk. This is on Tuesday 5th.

I get a reply back next morning saying they'll try and sort it for me. Ask for some details and tell me the field service manager will be contacting me within 24 hours.

24 hours later - nothing. E-mail them at 18:00 this evening and tell them that I'm going to be driving up to their head office in Hook tomorrow, can they give me the name of the best person to speak to, if not that's fine. Someone will be dealing with me Face to Face because not doing so won't be one of their options. I point out that it's about a 50 minute drive from my house and will take less time than any of the phone calls I've had to make so far.

I also post this on their Facebook page and about an hour ago there's a message from "Zach" saying "Someone will be in touch ASAP".

Still not heard anything 2 hrs later.

My latest reply to the conversation on their Facebook page:

It's a good job I'm not holding my breath. Btw, is this still your CEO's correct e-mail address? tom.mockridge@virginmedia.co.uk. By the way, after 9 a.m tomorrow morning, I'll already be driving to your head office. So I won't be contactable on my mobile and I'll obviously not be in a position to read any e-mails or Facebook posts from you. If you like I'll post some pictures of my visit, I'll be filming it.

[harv]

Sorry to hear about that drags. I haven't had any issues with their Customer Service people or engineers myself but then I think I've only had them round to my place once in the last 14 years or so.

Try not to get yourself arrested lol

[Late]

Give them hell. They're quick as a flash when you want to add something expensive to your package, but ridiculously slow at fixing problems. Unforgivable.

Sorry to hear how unwell your mum is, mate.

[Dragontao]

All sorted now. Once you speak to the right people they are really helpful. Just really frustrating at the time.

Actually I'm quite glad because as far as product goes, they are far and away the best. I was dreading the thought of having to switch to BT, or even worse, Sky.

[jman]

Product is the best, but their customer service is guff (but then so are most).. plus they keep introducing price hike after price hike... nice 5.4% increase coming in February.  If I wasn't so lazy to sort out a new deal with someone else, I'd leave them... I am moving house this year though, so will be looking to shop around... not going anywhere near BT though.

[harv]

I don't mind the price increases because they always increase your speed at the same time. A 5% increase for an extra 50Mbps giving me a total of 150 Mbps. Not too shabby.

[Dragontao]

They tell us every time they are increasing the speed FOR FREE.

Soon after the price hikes happen. They aren't inflation level price rises, they are well above inflation level. They basically try and con us.

I'm at the point where the extra speed means nothing to me. For most of the day my connection is doing nothing.

Get up in the morning, download what I want from the previous night's U.S shows. A 720 HD show will download in next to no time (and I don;t even normally bother with 720 or 1080 when a standard x264 HDTV rip will do. A music album at 320 kbs will download in well under a minute.

A bit of Netflix. 100 meg is absolutely fine for this. No buffering.

I still prefer to buy box sets, films and music where I can anyway. Netflix has cut my downloading and is very reasonably priced.

Plenty of bandwidth to run multiple devices at the same time (as it's only me using them it's not an issue).

I don't play games, so have no issues there.

From what I know, BT's customer service is even more shite.

A few years back I was installing a webcam in a rehabilitation enclosure at the the wildlife conservation trust I volunteer at. This was for a TV show called ITV fixers focusing on some of the younger volunteers at the trust. The webcam was to be used on a small website they were creating.

The shows director (a very attractive young woman named Katie) was on site as she was organising a dedicated BT broadband connection for the webcam. I'd built the computer, installed the webcam. Everything was just waiting on BT to turn up and install it.

They were a no show. So she calls them up. They start making excuses and giving her the runaround. After a while of this, she gets a bit pissed off and calls her boss. It ends up with the head of ITV ringing the chairman of BT. BT engineer was there pretty quickly to get it all set up after that lol.

[jman]

Yeah exactly.. I'm at a point where extra speed doesn't really benefit me that much anymore... yet I seem to be getting at least 1-2 letters per year telling me the price is going up.. its getting to a point where its become unacceptable though...  I wouldn't go BT ever again.. but perhaps Sky.

[Dragontao]

You'll still need a BT line for Sky and some of your money will be going to BT and you'll be reliant on them to an extent even if you're with Sky.

I will never have Sky in my house again.

A few years back when I had Sky, they started ringing me up, cold calling to try and get me to upgrade. I kept saying no. It got so bad they called me 8 nights running. I was getting less and less polite with each call. Finally I said "if you call me again, I'm cancelling".

No calls for a couple of weeks, then they call again. So I tell them exactly what I think of them, tell them I am cancelling and leave it at that. Next day, straight down the bank and cancel the direct debit.

A couple of weeks later I get a letter from them telling me that I owe them the princely sum of £23.00 and that I didn't give them any notice I was cancelling".

I wrote to their head office, told them I owed them nothing, explained about the cold calling, that I was going to sue them for harassment and that I'd made it clear that if they kept calling I was going to cancel and had therefore given them plenty of notice and if their overzealous sales people were too stupid to listen, that was their lookout.

I got a letter back apologising, telling me I owed them nothing and the matter was now "fully resolved".

A month later I get a letter from a debt collection agency telling me they were sending bailiffs round if I didn't pay up the £23. I was a bit pissed off about this (something of an understatement. I phoned the debt collection agency, explained I had a letter from Sky's head office telling me I owed nothing and that they could send bailiffs round if they liked, but they'd need to book the ambulance for them in advance. Woman on the phone says "there's no need for tat, Sky directed us to do this". I told her that some people at Sky would be needing an ambulance as well (I did mention I was a bit pissed off!).

So I phone Sky, their office was in Scotland at the time, don;t know if it still is. Spoke to some junior twat on the phone who kept insisting I owed them £23 even when I pointed out the letter to him. In the end I told the fuckwit, and I'm pretty sure that's what I called him, to put me through to his supervisor as he was fucking useless.

So he puts me through to some woman, who continues to insist I owe them £23. I point out the letter says the matter is "fully resolved". She says "well you can interpret that how you want".

I said "I don't know what fucking dictionary you're using up there in lala land, but I know what fully resolved means in England and I'm pretty sure I know what a judge in this country will say too". There may have been some more expletives and insults in there as well. Phone goes quiet. Then she says hang on I need to speak to my manager.

A few minutes later she comes back and says "we are prepared to waive the money in this instance" like she's doing me a fucking favour. I just say, "whatever, and you'll be informing the debt collection agency immediately!" (it wasn't a question). She says yes. I say "you'd better" and hang up.

I have hated the company ever since, and it doesn't help that it's all part of the Murdoch empire and that needs to come tumbling down in a big way.

[jman]

So you don't recommend them then ?? 

I've had a few cold calls from Virgin trying to upsell me different packages.. they phone me and ask me for my password... I'm like.. hang on, you've just phoned me.. you tell me my password and I'll see if you're genuine.. then proceed to tell them to get f*cked regardless of what they say next.

[harv]

I wouldn't go anywhere near Sky or BT. I went with Virgin Media because they were the only broadband company at that time that you didn't need to have a BT phone line. I boycotted BT around 15 years or so ago due to a billing and services dispute. I probably owe them a few hundred quid now but moved to a new flat and went with Virgin Media.

Both Murdoch and BT can sack my cook, the wankers.

I need as high an upload speed as possible because I tend to download and upload large torrents on private torrent sites where I need to keep a decent ratio.

[jman]

Talking about Virgin and scams... don't know if any of you guys have received any SSDP vulnerability letters or emails from Virgin.. I've had two letters and an email in the past year telling me I "MAY" have SSDP vulnerabilities on my home network.. this is genuine from Virgin.. and the letters/emails have been written from quite a technical standpoint that if you didn't know much about computers you wouldn't have a scooby what was going on... but then, they still manage to be very vague in what the actual issue is or if there is an issue at all...as it doesn't really tell you exact details apart from your IP address.

They give you a web address to use virginmedia.com/ssdp to fix it yourself..

..or they say they can help... if you buy Gadget Rescue and F-Secure products.

First time I received this letter, I did the scan (they suggest on the website) and it came back all fine as I would expect... which makes me wonder why they are still sending me letters... I've re-done the test and its still fine... but they sent my dad a letter the other week and I had to reassure him that the "hackers" aren't going to get him..  ...and actually I did the test on his computer and it came back fine too... so is this scare tactics from Virgin or what - seems like a blatant scam to scare people into taking up their subscription based protection products which is pretty low to be honest.

[Dragontao]

Never had one of those letters. Have you done a google search to see if it's a scam?

Edit: Saved you some time. It's not. https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Security-matters/SSDP-letter/td-p/2893124

Probably never had one because my PC is secured up to the hilt. Double firewalls and routers. Pain to configure sometimes but that's fine.

[jman]

Yeah, like I said, its a genuine bona fide letter from Virgin.. but the whole thing seems fishy to me.   They are saying something is wrong.. every tool they ask me to try is coming back and saying there is no problem.. but this is the 3rd notification I've had from them now.  Surely if they know there is a problem.. why aren't they telling me what it is ?

The letter even suggests it is my fault for misconfiguring something lol.. misconfigured what exactly - apart from changing the password, I really haven't mucked around with the router too much.

Basically the letter is saying.. there "MAY" be something wrong with your network.. we can't be sure and we can't tell you what it is... but if you do want us to look at it.. it'll cost you money.. 

[harv]

My PC is the same. I use ESET Smart Security, you won't find a better one out there. It goes absolutely crazy when watching football and boxing streams, hate to think what I was subjecting my PC to before I started using it

The only letter I've had from them is because I've been using my bandwidth too much with torrents, but that hasn't stopped me doing anything lol. It didn't mention anything in the letter about torrents as far as I remember but that was what did it. They throttle your bandwidth during peak times if you use too much so fuck knows why they sent it.

Think I'm going to phone up Virgin and cancel my landline, I don't use it and only kept it because years ago my bill was smaller if I had it connected. Just had a look and that isn't the case any more. Will save me 8 quid or so a month I think.