Virgin Media Broadband Complaint

speedyG_2

Okay ...so I am in dispute with virgin as we are moving house and they can't give us the service we currently have, at our new address. And I don't want a 12 month BT contract in order to get virgin phone, adsl and what amounts to freeview, ie a diminshed service
One of the Customer Advisors told me this " You could cancel the direct debit, until the issue is resolved" Has anyone heard of this or understands the legal implications.
I have told Virgin I don't want to cancel the contract, (because I know they charge a cancellation fee) and they have tried very very hard, to get me to cancel. I just want them to give me the service I am already paying for.

Any advice ..thoughts ...gratefully received

buglawton

Mozkowitz wrote: »

Pretty much, it would be wonderful to eventually have the national wireless network dedicated to data transfer instead of the old wires and poles landlines we are using now.

er... we already have, it's called the national 3G network and has 4 competing companies driving prices down all the time.

cfbc

speedyG wrote: »

Okay ...so I am in dispute with virgin as we are moving house and they can't give us the service we currently have, at our new address. And I don't want a 12 month BT contract in order to get virgin phone, adsl and what amounts to freeview, ie a diminshed service
One of the Customer Advisors told me this " You could cancel the direct debit, until the issue is resolved" Has anyone heard of this or understands the legal implications.
I have told Virgin I don't want to cancel the contract, (because I know they charge a cancellation fee) and they have tried very very hard, to get me to cancel. I just want them to give me the service I am already paying for.

Any advice ..thoughts ...gratefully received

Personally they want you to cancel or cancel your DD as then VM then have an angle on you to take action... Ie - you cancelled it and so broke your agreement terms, etc....

It's a tricky one to be honest to resolve, it's a case of talking to VM and getting someone who will understand and coming to an agreement. Have you read the thread above and seen that e-mail address to the the CE or CEO of VM....

May be worth a sown-to-earth e-mail and see what you get back...

Who knows...

speedyG_2

Thanks for the reply ...yes I appreciate they would like me to cancel the contract, but I have told them I am very very happy with their service and that I am not going to do that. I suggested they might like to cancel it instead......NO THEY WOULDN'T.
The "you could cancel the DD" was a surprise and I was immediately suspicious.
Tomorrow am, I will phone and tell them that their best option is to suspend the cable contract indefinitely until I move back into an area where they can provide it.
As I have said elsewhere the T&C's don't mention signing a 12 month contract with a third party provider in order that Virgin can use that providers line to service me.
Actually the analogy works like this.
You order a taxi to take you from A to B. Half way there the taxi-driver tells you he can't drive any further. He then tells you to order another taxi from a different company and when it arrives he will jump in too, just for the ride. To add insult to injury he then tells you, that you will have to pay for both taxis until you get to B
p.s. perhaps you haven't tried talking to VM recently, you can't get past the reps and the only way is to put it all in writing and hey ho ....I am not going to do that.
I am afraid they are going to be playing my game ....not theirs.

BlameTheGame

I agree with 'claireac', VM are either very good or very bad. We moved house about 18 months ago and had the services transferred over. We set an appointment for them to come and install their cables and what not, which was confirmed via letter too but they didnt turn up. I have been a customer for 10+ years (i think) and have never really had any problems with them previously (except the time where they were charging me 3 quid for 3 way calling or something which i didnt even ask for) so i called them up and had a good 'ol rant at them. At the end of the call i was offered half price broadband and free medium TV package with free weekend calls for 12 months....and they seem to have forgot about reverting back to the original price as im still paying 21 quid for all 3 services including free weekend calls. :beer:

its.ray

I have been with Virgin Media in Leicester ever since it was started as Diamond Cable many years ago. It then became NTL and subsequently Virgin Media. I noticed the steep decline in the level and quality of service virtually as soon as it became Virgin Media - particularly with their pathetic Customer Services many of whom cannot even speak legible English, far less understand it!
After almost 20 years I am now transferring over the Sky because I have had my final run in with VM's customer services. My research has also informed me that Sky will be cheaper on the pocket too!
Considering that Virgin obtain the bulk of their broadcasted material from Sky anyway I may as well cut out the middleman and benefit from a more reliable service into the bargain. The last so called engineer that came yesterday had been given 10 minutes to do a job that would take at least an hour! Penpushers and papershufflers rule at Virgin Media and they are ruining what was once a very good company. Come on Richard Branson - hand out the serious slaps and get rid of the incompetants! Your company will then improve.

kwikbreaks

buglawton wrote: »

er... we already have, it's called the national 3G network and has 4 competing companies driving prices down all the time.

If you think the 3G network is nationwide you clearly don't travel outside of cities very much. If you think it's a viable replacement for VM cable then you clearly haven't tried that either.

terahurts

We've been with VM since 2006, and before that from 2001 to 2004. I agree their CS and tech support is either top notch or non-existent, I think some of it depends on where in the country you live.

Good points:
Every time we've needed an engineer visit they have been on time and have gotten the job done. One even came back on his way home to swap a faulty STB over, and when we moved last Nov we had one senior engineer, two engineers and one trainee turn up to do the install (3 STBs, Phone and BBand, all in different locations), plus the senior guy calling out a repair crew to pull new cable from the box in the street to our house.

The BBand speed is pretty much as advertised, at least for the bigger packages, and the 50mb service is blisteringly fast.


Bad Points:
Getting through to 2nd line tech support is almost impossible. We had an issue a year or so ago with some sites not loading due to a DNS failure, it took me about an hour on the phone to convince the guy reading from his script that rebooting either my PC or the Router "one more time" wasn't going to fix it.

Once a month, every month CS call me up two days after we've recieved the bill to ask if I'd like to pay it. And once a month, every month I explain that we pay it in five days when my son gets paid, and could you please stop calling me about it.

Installation waiting time can be looooooong, When we moved last Nov we gave VM approx 30 days notice, but still have to wait over month after we'd moved in to get re-connected. To be fair, we were credited with the loss on our next bill.

Billing. The bill is less than clear, we have 3 set top boxes, with the "Full" package of sports and movies, the BBand and phone. My son pays for the BBand as part of his rent, and my daughters pay for two of the STBs plus the premium packages, but since the "services" part of the bill is about 10 lines long, with services here, rentals there and discounts further down it's a nightmare trying to figure out exactly how much you are paying for what.

Overall though, I'd recommend Virgin over any other ISP I've used, including BT.