Virgin ADSL Broadband

thetargetarcher

[FONT=&quot]We were informed of a free speed upgrade taking place on the 20th November 2008. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Nothing happened on that day but from the 21st of November until the 7th January 2009 we had no ADSL broadband service from Virgin.

We made several telephone calls to their customer services 0870 number over the weeks. After 5 weeks I demanded a MAC code from them and signed up with another ISP. On the day our new ISP connected us (7th Jan 2009) we had a phone call from Virgin asking if we would like to close the fault that they had on file!

Virgin continued to bill us when we had no service from the 21st November 2008 until 7th January 2009. On the 29th January we called Virgin as they had again charged my Dad's credit card (the Virgin account was in his name). After a long time on the phone and being transferred a couple of times it transpired that they had failed to star something on their system and that is why my Dad had been charged even though we were no longer with them.

I wrote to the Virgin Complaints address on the 23rd January 2009 to seek compensation for the lack of service, together with a reclaim for the billings that they made when we were not able to receive the service and as of today 16th February 2009 I have not received a reply from them.
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[FONT=&quot]The above is a cut down version of the events as I could write a lot more detail about our dealings with Virgin ADSL Broadband regarding this issue.

In my experience their customer services has been utterly appalling. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]I cannot believe that they have not even had the decency to respond to my letter of [/FONT][FONT=&quot]complaint.[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

Pound

Don't worry, Virgin are planning to axe 2,200 jobs soon. This is apparently part of a plan to improve customer service. I'm sure problems like this won't happen when there's less people employed to reply to your letter.

supermezzo

I'd give up with them - you'll only waste more money in calling them and still get noweher in my experience.
Both Mum and I are with them and recently, I had to call them and advise them to change the name on the account as my Father had passed away. They put me through to the dept which deals with this, they took the name, address and details of the executor of Dad's will so that they could send the final bill there, took Mum's bank account details to transfer the account to her name and all seemed fine. Then she got a final demand addressed to her for the amount outstanding in Dad's name, swiftly followed by a lack of connection which when she called them was attributed to the outstanding bill on her account. She was too upset to argue and paid it even though by rights it needed to come out of the estate, but no connection was resumed. When I eventually rang them and played merry h*ll, seems that the broadband hadn't actually been cut off at all ( turned out to be an update/firewall issue but you can see how the coincidence would lead you to believe otherwise). I complained in writing - they gave her half a months line rental back (£7).

Monday evening my broadband disappeared - still no sign Tuesday so I ran the usual checks on the machine and my 'puter is happily doing what it should but is getting no reply from the server. Nothing unusual and the entire reason we were in the process of moving providers as I spend more time off the internet than on it with Virgin. By the afternoon I rang them and they insist that the problem is with my 'puter - In the meantime, Mum has looked at my emails at her house and there is one from Virgin saying that BT are cutting me off and so they have withdrawn the broadband service (which begs the question of how I was supposed to know this info sent via email?). Anyway....I then rang BT who, as I suspected to be the case, tell me that a) I am well in credit and b) as I pay by DD there would be no need to cut me off anyway.
There was a phone number on the email which I rang, only to find a plastic voice telling me that the number is no longer valid! When I eventually got through to a person, he checked my account within minutes, and asked me for the router model I was using. I told him and he said ' yes we've had a lot of problems like this. We sent an upgrade to certain areas on Monday night and lots of the routers either can't handle it or the lines have 'blown', unable to handle the bandwidth'.

Fortunately, I have a modem and the capability to switch from wireless to wire - But I also have a phone bill to pay given the 20-odd mins I spent on the 0870 number to try and sort it all out.

Bl**dy useless they are..good riddance.

upsadaisy

Try to claim back the money for the phone call. I always did when i was with ntl. If the fault is theirs and I had to call then I shouldn't have to pay. They usually gave me my money back.

thetargetarcher

I finally received a letter from the Virgin Complaints department. It was dated the 12th February 2009 but was post marked as the 17th February 2009! Quite a delay in leaving their department. Anyway, the letter basically said that having looked into the matter their customer service representatives had done their job and therefore they are only prepared to reimburse the line fee and not for the cost of the phone calls, the cost of having to use an internet cafe or any compensation for the grief that was caused. Not being able to fix a fault within 7 weeks is not exactly a reasonable amount of time. Strange that when our current ISP (O2) connected us in January, there was no problems with our connection, isn't it and yet Virgin still had the fault unresolved on the same day?!

I think I will be sending a reply. Virgin make it extremely difficult as the complaints department is a PO Box address and their customer services cannot transfer you to speak to someone in their complaints team.

so2006

I am currently with virgin, stuck on a 12 month contract. The internet is the slowest in the world. I was going to get the 50MB option but there not worth it. I just want to go back with BT.