Virgin Media - They SUCK!

[Rich]

Hi Guys

So, right now, I'm absolutely ****ed with Virgin Media, totally furious, angry to the point of wanting to punch one of them!

Dissapointed would be at least acceptable, but Im way past that point...

I've had Virgin Media services now for around 6 months'ish and I have to say, the level of competency is far below that of any human being on planet earth and their so called "policis" are meant for only them and not in any way for helping the smooth delivery of services to their customers...

Let me explain...

Incompetency #1:

Day of installation 6 months ago....

I wont go into too much detail because it was 6 months ago.

Engineer turns up from "kelly's contractors", doesnt even work for Virgin, so he starts with his install, lays the ourdoor cable 3" under the grass in my front lawn, which is far too shallow, and what do you think happens to it, it sticks up, and the grass wont regrow over the top of it, even now 6 months later.

Comes to feeding the cable through the wall into my house...

I already had a nicely drilled and prepared hole where my Sky TV cable was going to be removed from as part of this entire isntall, but the engineer in all his dumb ass wisdon though it would be an even better idea to drill a fresh new second hole in my wall, from the inside/outwards, and doesnt bother to check for pipes or wires first, and doesnt even ask if its ok to drill a hole in my wall to start with...

Obviously my own intelligence here of assuming this guy would be awake enough to remove the sky cable with the virgin able taped to the end of it to pull it through, but sadly I was far too ahead of his way of thinking...

So, I'm out of the room, upstairs and I hear drilling from the room underneath, knowing where its coming from, I go downstairs, and before I even reach the bottom of the stairs, this chimp has drilled right through the heating pipes buried in the walls, soaking my oak wooden flooring with lovely black/brown sludge from all my radiators, thus emptying my entire heating pipes onto my living room floor, not 2ft away from my recently new TV.

Another thing that really ****ed me off was their lack of any willing to cover anything up while drilling into walls, no dust sheets with them, no vacuum cleaner, nothing, just a dustpan and brush!

What the hell are you going to do with a dustpan and brush when your knocking holes into 10" thick cavity walls with hammer drills, and your stomping about on my wooden floor in filthy work boots.

The guy was dressed like he had been diggin a hole in the road for a mains gas pipe or something...

So, with water everywhere, I had to go shut off the water and give them towels to mop up the mess AQAP, and left it to this guy to call his boss and arrange a plumber to come out that day.

Luckily for me, they have an emergency plumber on file for just such occassions who turned up within 2 hours and repaired the damage, and 6 days later they sent a decorator round to re-plaster and repaint the mess they made.

So, although they screwed up, they put it right eventually, but for people doing this job, these simple screw ups totally should not happen, and what Virgin still wont admit is the damage done to my flooring, as its generally considered a really bad idea to empty your heating system onto a newly laid oak floor and soak your underlay with it too...

Not recommended! :mad: :mad:

Thats **** up number 1, right on the first day.

[Rich]

ok, Screw up #2:

Could get that number right....

So, my entire Virgin kit is all installed, and on the back of the glossy leaflets they leave you with, they give you your new telephone number...

Well, sadly, it seems they were incapable of getting this right too, as the number they left me with was not the number I had on my phone line.

I called them to check, and they were insistent I had the correct number and that everything worked, despite me asking them to call me back on the number I had, and then on the number they though it should be, they refused.

So, with them not budging, I settled for the number I actually had....

A few days later I had to call them due to a lot of intereference on the line and hearing voices on the line, only to be told that the number I had was not mine and that I should have a different number!!!

No **** sherlock, been trying to tell you that for 4 days....

(Given my 20yr background in I.T and corporate experience in telecoms, I wasnt just taking a guess either)

So it then took them 2 days to get an engineer round to fix it, and total fix time, 5 mins to swap round the connections at the junction box down the road!....

4 Days of trying to explain to them I have the wrong number only to be told I dont, and they didnt even want to call me back to prove the number was wrong, then finally for them to say "Oh, by the way, you have the wrong number, thats why your phone is faulty!"

Absolute bloody idiots....

[Rich]

1 Entire weeks worth of downtime!

About 3 months ago, my broadband went down completely giving total loss of internet service. So, I call Virgin, and yet again, try to speak to one of their call centre staff in India, with a huge language barrier problem....

The woman on the phone tells me it will be at least 5 days before they can get onto fixing the problem.

Not 5 days until they "get it fixed", but 5 days until they can get started on it. So, I called them every day and guess what, for the first 3 days, they told me the exact same thing, "5 days until they can look into it", so that now makes it 8 full days????

So, this meant having to go out and purchase 3 mobile internet USB sticks to work from, from our office, and calling Virgin several times a day had zero affect on them getting to the problem any quicker, at all.

In the end, we ended up with 9 days total downtime, which they fixed within 2 hours of starting work on, leaving a LOT customers without internet services for 9 full days to repair something that took 2 hours to fix!

We were told this problem was not isolated to just us either, it affected many customers on this same exchange.

My problem is, what company in their right mind leaves customers hanging for 9 days before even looking into a problem, especially given these are all 50Mbps customers paying a LOT of money for their broadband service!

[Rich]

The very latest problem this week from Virgin "Nomedia"

Well, we have an alarm system installed that dials-out whenever a fault is detected, or an alarm is set off, and last week, we had a new system installed to replace an older one on the 18th Feb..

Well, something was done incorrectly with the alarm by the engineer, and as a result, the alarm was constantly "trying" to dial the alarm centre for 3 days solid, non-stop...

Got the engineer back in on the saturday night to fix it, and then discovered that our phone line could not dial out at all, to any number other than Virgin's 150, so I called them to tell them something was wrong with my phone, only to be told a block had been put on the line due to extremely high call charges on the line.

Well, having discussed this at some length, VIRGIN "REFUSED" to tell me any of the numbers MY phone line had dialed at all, claiming they cant tell me what numbers MY line had dialed due to the data protection act!

So, these muppets cant tell me any numbers MY line has dialled, but have blocked my line of all outgoing calls telling me there was

[Rich]

Well, I've just submitted a further complaint to Virgin via their website and have given them the link to this thread, to save me repeating myself over-and-over, and received their "auto-reply" saying they "should" get back to me within 3 days....

The page is also called "Broadband slow speed form" Laughing out loud!

3 days to answer a complaint alone is seriously sad!

Enough said, Will call BT first thing in the morning...

In all our years in I.T and telecoms, we have NEVER had this level of incompetence from BT, EVER! Sure they had their faults, but all ISP's do, its how BT dealt with them that make them better.

[Rich]

Heres another incompetence...

I just called Virgin 10 minutes ago to be told my bill was raised on the 26th, so I "could have" been sent it 4 days ago when I had asked for it (For the umpteenth time)

I've honestly never come across such gross, widely syncronised bull**** incompetence..

I'm amazed how they can stay in business...

[Rich]

ok, so on Monday 1st, Virgin sent me this email back, in response to this thread here:

Hi,

Thanks for emailing us and explaining your issues in full detail, I'm sorry to hear that you've not enjoyed our service.

From reading your blog it looks like you've had a few issues since your installation and its not good to read that each one has been difficult. I hope that my email explains everything in full for you and if I should miss something off, feel free to email me direct to this address so I can cover all issues.

Starting with your latest blog about not being able to get your bill, I would be happy to email to you if you still require it. Sending via post would not really be effective, as your normal bill will have already reached you.

The major issue I saw is the next blog regarding the suspension of your account, never a good thing to happen especially when it's not your fault. The information you were given from our customer service team is correct and we cant give telephone numbers over the phone.

The problem we have is that our customer service staff cant send out emails to customers, as we can send numbers out via email.

I know you mention that B.T can send out a bill at anytime which is a great option, we would love to be able to do that but our bills include your other services. Sending a bill out early would only create more issues in the long run, however I appreciate your feedback and will take that on board.

I do understand where you're coming from in that we should judge each account on an individual basis, however I also understand that the customer service guys are just trying to protect you. Once the restriction is removed from your account you will be reimbursed for the time your service was downgraded. I'm more than happy to speed things along for you by sending out your bill via email and arranging for someone to take payment, so once that's sorted your service will resume.

In regards to the 9 days downtime you had due to an outage, I can assure you our engineers would have been right on the case. As soon as an area outage is spotted, a team of engineers is assigned and they get to work, as the issue is more widespread it does take longer to fix. I do believe that regular updates should be given, just so you are fully aware of what is happening and when your service will resume. Just looking at your account its difficult to see if you were reimbursed, if you are not aware of any credit I will gladly apply that for you.

The first two posts you blogged seem to both be install related and from what I see the damage issue was resolved apart from your flooring. I'm intrigued to know if there is any damage to your floor and why this wasn't highlighted at the same time as your heating pipes?

I've taken time to feed back your telephone issue as I feel this could have been handled much better, even though we are going back a while its best we all know our mistakes. From what I can see this has all been resolved now and you've not had any issues since.

I'm hoping that covers everything for you and as I say if I've missed anything off please ask. Again I appreciate you taking the time to note your frustrations, fingers crossed your latest blog is almost resolved.

Kind Regards

Billy McDermott

Twitter Team | Customer Complaints

Virgin Media - Concord Business Park, Threapwood Road, Wythenshawe, Manchester, M22 0EY

[Dougie221]

They messed me around so much with indian callcentres and empty promises, the only soltuioon was to speak to cancellations every time.

[JohnKay]

OK this topic is nearly 3 years old, and I'm not a Virgin custiomer, but - It must have been about the time of the first post, one of Virgin's manhole covers in the footpath was stolen. The hole was coned off, and Virgin notified. It took Virgin a few days under a full year to repace it, despite a number of letters sent to them by highways dep't of the council, none of which was answered, as I since learnt. So they don't even move if there's a danger to the public.

[Rich]

Bloody hell John... That's nuts...

 

I must say, once I got all my issues eventually resolved, things were fairly smooth from then on, although I have had a few instances of 7+ days downtime where nobody seems to be in a hurry to sort things out.

 

They recently upgraded my account to 100mb broadband too, which didn't work for the first month.. I spent just over an hour on the phone to them trying to explain the problem was with my router, not the modem, and they flat out refused that the router was faulty (I wouldn't do port forwarding correctly at all, which was known issue for that router and firmware) so I had to speak to somebody in cancellations, or as they call it "Customer relations", which I have to say, the lady I spoke to was absolutely brilliant... UK staff, and although she did say she was not a technical person, she took the time to listen and understand the faults I explained to her, agreed that the problem sounded like the router and within 48hrs, I had not 1, but 2 new routers arrive :-)

 

All is now working perfectly, port forwarding all resolved, 100mb working perfectly and, I got to keep them both, so have used the second router as a wifi-booster for the upstairs..

 

So, despite all the hiccups, I'm still happy with them overall.. Definitely the quickest broadband, and only 2 lots of downtime in the 3+ years I been with them so far, even if they are somewhat slow to resolve issues, but I still don't like the "Off-shore" call centres.