“Virgin Media? A Steaming Pile Of…”
First there was NTL, then Telewest, Blueyonder was thrown into the mix and now it’s Virgin Media. And a friend of ours reckons the service has got worse and worse every time the internet-TV-phone provider changes hands.
The transition from Telewest to Virgin Media has by far been the worst yet, he says. Virgin’s falling out with Sky meant all his favourite shows like Lost and the Simpsons went south so he was left with meagre pickings… and that was when the service worked.
Only recently he lost his TV, Broadband and phone for almost two weeks! He was on the phone to Virgin two or three times a day. And he was not amused. One person told him one thing, another told him something else. One customer services agent promised to do something, only for another to tell him it hadn’t happened. The fault was in his flat… then it was local… then regional… engineers were booked, then cancelled without him being informed so he took time off work only to sit there drumming his fingers.
The whole thing was a farce and Virgin Media handled it about as badly as they could. When he said he sometimes worked from home and relied on his Broadband connection, he was told – believe it or not – that he should have got the Business Package, “then he’d be more of a priority”. Nice.
Finally the issue was resolved and incredibly turned out to be Virgin Media’s fault. They’d installed some new equipment locally and botched the job.
He was told once the issue was resolved he could arrange compensation. He’d been offered £35 already, which he quite rightly said was a joke. So he was told to call back to negotiate more.
But before he got the chance Virgin Media had sent him a letter, saying they’d be charging him £10 because his bill was overdue by a week, and they’d decided to award him the £35 – just assumed, he said, that was acceptable.
So he called them up and after waiting for what seemed an eternity, got through to their customer services department. He was then told that £35 was ‘more than adequate’ and above and beyond Virgin Media policy, which would have reimbursed him just £15!
He’s writing to their complaints department and plans on ditching them as soon as he can. So we’ll keep you updated.
But incredibly Virgin Media is now on the market. So yet again the set-up that was NTL, then Telewest and now Virgin Media is about to change hands.
If our friend’s experience is anything to go by, then any prospective buyers might want to give it a miss. Because it sounds like there might not be any customers left to profit from…
Filed under: Top Tips, Sound Advice
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