Virgin Media Broadband Complaint

matt8188

Hello, any help or assistance on the below issue would be most appreciated. Apologies in advance for the long post.

My girlfriend and I signed up for VM last November at our previous house as we did not have a BT line and didn't want to pay their £125 installation fee. The installation was a nightmare (they accidentally deleted our application, missed two installation dates, general poor service etc.) We ended up moving house unexpectedly in January of this year and contacted VM to request they migrate our services to our new address.

They told us that as it was a new build property they did not offer the cabled service but they would be delighted to offer their "Beyond Cable" service which once I got to the bottom of it basically meant Virgin ADSL Broadband and a basic freeview box with no additional channels for £14.99 a month. For this service we required an active BT line which we didn't have. I asked the rude and inept VM customer service lady if there were any other options and she said the only other thing was to pay the termination fee (10 months x £20). Not wanting to pay money for nothing we requested the "beyond cable service".

Nothing happened for two weeks, no welcome letter or any sign of the equipment so I rang them up. The original account was in my partners name as I have bad credit but we requested they put a note on their system that I could speak to them as she works long hours without access to a phone. When I rang them they told me they had to speak to my girlfriend as it was not my account, despite speaking to the exact same person two weeks before about the same issue! Katy rang them up and they said they had no record of the application but when they looked into it they had received one but it had been declined because her credit rating was not high enough. This is crazy because it was fine for us to pay £40 a month for the cable service but apparently the "Beyond Cable" service was a different contract that used different credit scoring criteria!!

They did say the could however offer us the basic month by month ADSL service which didn't include their (amazing!) Virgin freeview box but this was £17.99 a month (less services for more money). We decided having weighed up the options to take this rather than pay the £200 termination fee from our previous cable contract.

We were told we could cancel after the 10 months we would have had remaining on our old contract had expired if we wanted to, but they were confident we would be impressed with their service!! For this Virgin ADSL we also had to get a BT line (£125) and line rental (£11 a month). I wish we had just got these at our old house in the first place instead of rubbish Virgin. After over a month we finally received the modem and filter and it worked correctly, however my girlfriend did not receive a welcome letter, contract to sign or a new account number.

We've had the ADSL line since February now and it is rubbish. Suppose to be up to 8mb but I'm lucky if I get downloads at 80kb/s. Twice it has gone off for unknown reasons the most recent been yesterday when I received the error "0721 The remote computer did not respond". I googled the problem without much luck so contacted VM. They told me I must ring their (premium rate) tech line!! I told them we had enough of their rubbish service and wanted to cancel now we had gone over the 12 months since our original contract. He said my girlfriend had agreed to a 12 month contract in February and couldn't cancel until then!! We have never received an account number or contract to sign. We were put on the month by month ADSL service because she allegedly failed their credit score. They are making things up. I'm sick of their terrible service and want to complain. I've read that their complaints procedure is very also very poor, stories of not following complaints, ignoring letters etc.

Does anyone know what I can do about these problems and also does anyone have an e-mail complaints address for Virgin Media. Sorry for all the rambling but just getting very tire and frustrated.

claireac

I can't really help, but I feel your pain!

We've been with VM for about 2/3 years now. They're very good or very bad! We had a right saga when we moved into our house 6 months ago, took ages and lots of phone calls to get it sorted. The trick is to get through to someone in Scotland, they seem much more helpful!

My dp had to hang up on someone who hardly spoke any English, and just kept asking what we wanted him to do about it. Eventually I got through to a chap in Scotland who was incredibly helpful, sorted everything out and phoned me back on 3 seperate occasions to check how things were going. He even arranged for our bill to credited for the time we were without broadband, landline and tv.

Good luck!

PaulyB71

claireac wrote: »

I can't really help, but I feel your pain!

We've been with VM for about 2/3 years now. They're very good or very bad! We had a right saga when we moved into our house 6 months ago, took ages and lots of phone calls to get it sorted. The trick is to get through to someone in Scotland, they seem much more helpful!

My dp had to hang up on someone who hardly spoke any English, and just kept asking what we wanted him to do about it. Eventually I got through to a chap in Scotland who was incredibly helpful, sorted everything out and phoned me back on 3 seperate occasions to check how things were going. He even arranged for our bill to credited for the time we were without broadband, landline and tv.

Good luck!

I agree - I've been with Virgin (or NTL as it was then) for 5 years and their customer service has gone from bad to worse. As per the previous post, the best thing to do is to keep ringing them until you get a Scottish accent (and I am not being racist) as you are more likely to get a result. When I was going to move to an area which had no Cable, It was agreed that no termination fee would have to be paid, so it does pay to be persistent with the right person.

XDA

Good old Virgin media customer service. One of the worst out there!

My advice - Cancel your contract with them as soon as can!

Email [EMAIL="neil.berkett@virginmedia.co.uk"]neil.berkett@virginmedia.co.uk[/EMAIL] who's the CEO of Virgin Media. You'll get a response from someone in his office (His PA usually). If you include a contact number then they usually call you back.

Hope that helps.

buglawton

IMHO ADSL broadband is bound to be rubbish, using 50 year old wooden poles and wire strung upon them does demand superb aftercare while custom-built modern internet cables underground do not need quite the same backup. Consider going wireless in a 3gb/month package, these days you can put the 3G kit in your loft and have a wireless router distribute it in your house.

CHR15

I've emailed Neil Burkett in the past, I had an almost immediate response and satisfactory outcome a few days later (even a bunch of flowers for my mum!!!).

shame it has to go so high to get a decent response.

inspace

I had the very same problem years ago with VM adsl when I moved into a house with no cable connection - for months I was bounced from pillar to post with no one sorting out the connection problems. Eventually I gave up cancelled direct debit - when they rang me to ask for money I told them the story about 20 times or more to different poeple all who felt sorry about it and would get it sorted and get back to me but never did.

Then it went to bad debt collection company - I stayed calm and told them all about it - and said I wouldnt pay as It was NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE (use these words). I said take me to court as I cant wait.

They then said they would send it back to VM as they would never win.

A few months later another call from some bigwig at VM asking for the dosh - held it together again and said no way.

Debt cancelled and all sorted - took about a year though and lots of stress.

Good luck.

BillScarab

I've always foudn the best way to get a repsonse is via the Virgn Media newsgroups.

They've been there since the Blueyonder days and you get the actual trchnical staff on there answering questions.

It's far easier to book engineer visits or sort out problems than phoning up.

Details on how to set up nesgroups can be found here

Conor_3

If you go with a company whose primary business is selling DVDs and CDs, you'll get exactly the level of internet access any reasonable person would expect from a company whose core business is not internet access.

What is common amongst most of the companies who have nothing but complaints about poor speeds, poor service etc? Their core business is something else and they tacked on internet access as a gimmick, whether it be a mobile phone company, mobile phone shop, CD and DVD seller, satellite TV company.
If you want decent internet access, go with a company whose sole business is that.

alanrowell

Conor wrote: »

If you go with a company whose primary business is selling DVDs and CDs, you'll get exactly the level of internet access any reasonable person would expect from a company whose core business is not internet access.

Virgin don't sell DVDs & CDs - so what was the point of your rant?

Perhaps you should have said that Virgin's principle business is selling air tickets...

But then if you extend your rant, then you shouldn't deal with any company that has diversified into multiple areas - don't take out Tesco insurance because itr isn't their primary business

Joe_Bloggs

NTL bought Virgin Mobile and then acquired the rights to use the Virgin Media brand name, given certain consumer quality control measures. This is according to this article here.
Perhaps you can be a jack of all trades ?
J_B.