Virgin Media - how to get it cheap

Virgin Media are still in my bad books and they are digging deeper holes for themselves. After my recent encounter with Virgin Media I had hoped that the relationship would improve. On Tuesday 7th August Paula rang again to complain that the cable modem had stopped receiving and after a long talk it was agreed that they would send an engineer out to us to check the line and fit a new cable mode but we had to wait for a whole week as a lot of their engineers were off sick. So we booked the afternoon slot between 12:00 and 16:00 - they could not give us a precise time. Paula wanted me at home to deal with this so I had to take the whole day off as a half day would not cover the hours that Virgin Media IT department could turn up.

16:03 on the day I phoned Virgin to enquire why their engineer had not arrived yet - was he late or stuck on another client? No. The very nice lady told me that there was actually no Worksheet for us on her system and then she read out to me the last calls notes where Virgin Media had agreed to send somebody on the 7th. So she asked me to ring the Virgin Media IT department to find out what was happening - I politely suggested that she was the customer service rep and perhaps she should do that. After 10 mins she came back to me and the engineers had told her that there had been a mistake and that someone had forgotten to add this into their worksheets.
I was not happy.
They did however also notice from their records that I had a router and suggested that I remove the Lan cable and plug it directly into the cable modem.
I exploded with unhappiness (for those of you that have not read the first instalment - we have done this sooo many times already and proved sooo many times that its the signal from Virgin Media).

I calmed down , apologised about my outburst and asked to be put through to the IT department which the very nice lady subsequently did. IT cut me off. I am not saying it was deliberate but it felt like it.

So I phoned back - but this time I choose the option "If your moving house or thinking of leaving Virgin Media, press 4" - this is a good option as you will get to talk to a person who has been trained to understand that you are not a happy customer and if you complain enough they are empowered to give you a reduction in your monthly fee. We had nearly 30% knocked off our monthly bill - just like that no quibbles just a quick would you like your bill reduced? They call this a loyalty bonus - but strangely only offered it to me when I wanted to be disloyal and leave.

This time I got through to a very friendly young chap who couldn't do enough for me. But he couldn't get me a cable modem delivered that day - not even if I was standing on the pavement waiting to catch it as they drove past - I did offer. He listed to my story of woah and neglect and felt heart broken for me and then he spoke to the IT department to sort things out. He was a different man when he rang me back, more timid, more like a youth that knows he done wrong. He told me the following: Apparently there had been a major outage in my area and they cannot install modems when there is no signal. I pointed out that I had been in all day using the web and had not noticed one moment of service problems - which was unusual in itself. the nice young Virgin Media man then told me that it might not have affected my particular post code but it was large and they had not been able to phone me to let me know they would not be visiting as they had this major issue to deal with. I asked when the fault had actually been and the Virgin Media guy told me the 10th... - 4 days ago. What a lie. What absolute bare faced lies I have been fed. Virgin Media have asset stripped Telewest and NTL to sell it on. The customers and staff are suffering. Not funny.

The money that Virgin Media have knocked off my bill for being a loyal customer has gone on a BT Home Broadband set-up that arrives next week and its faster and cheaper than what I have with Virgin.

Update!

Saturday 18th August. A Virgin Engineer popped round with a new Modem. I installed it while he was on the phone activating it. Took three minutes and we have a new modem. The engineer took one look at the old modem and said that must be the very first batch of modems we ever installed.

Everything is working perfectly -of course it is, our BT home hub arrives Tuesday.

Posted by Simon at August 16, 2007 1:10 PM

Social Bookmarks:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.