Virgin Media Complaint

FaloolaChong

Sorry if this doesn't go in here, I'm not really sure where to put it...

I've recently had a major issue with Virgin's billing department and am incensed at the way I've been treated. I've never had that much of a problem with the service itself, but more the way it has been run. Basically, to cut a long story very short, my housemate has gone abroad temporarily and I've taken over paying the Virgin bills, though it remains in her name. Before she left, she instructed Virgin to remove us from "ebilling" and send me paper bills. They did this for a month and then stopped. The next thing I knew, I was being charged for a late payment fee for a bill I'd never received! I entered into a dialogue with them about this, and less than 2 days after raising the query and to which they hadn't actually properly responded to me, they cut off my entire media package without warning for non payment of bills and refused to enter into any discussion until I paid! I've complained (and will post my letter in the next post, but want to keep it concise if you can't be bothered reading it all!) about this and, quite brilliantly, they've replied with a "Sorry, our complaint means a lot to us and we are investigating" letter addressed not to me, but the absent housemate...

The thing is, has anyone else had experience of these "bullyboy" tactics, do you actually think I'm in the right and if so, what should I expect Virgin to do? I don't particularly want to leave them as I've been quite happy with the actual service itself and I don't really want to have get a BT line in, which is obviously the alternative, but believe me, I will if this nonsense continues!

Thanks

FaloolaChong

And the full story if anyone can be bothered reading quite this much...

I am writing with regard to the above referenced account. I have been a Virgin customer for a considerable time and have always been impressed by the customer service offered by your company in the past. It is therefore with sincere regret that I feel I must complain about disappointing service I have received from Virgin Media over the past 7 days.

I share a flat with the account holder on this account, a Miss XXX XXX, who recently accepted a work opportunity abroad and is currently in the middle of an extended trip, not returning until mid 2010. Realising our contract was not due to expire until December 2009, and as we had no intention of leaving Virgin, we decided to leave the contract in XXX’s name during her temporary absence. In September, XXX contacted Virgin to request that our invoicing be altered from ebilling to paper billing, as I obviously have no access to Miss XXX’s email account and she herself would be having very occasional access only. We duly received a paper bill in September, but this had the additional fee of £10 for late payment of a previous invoice. I was disappointed to note this, but duly paid the fee in its entirety as I presumed there had been some mix up in the “crossover” period between XXX leaving and myself taking over the sole payment of the bills.

However, the next communication I had from Virgin was a reminder letter for an outstanding bill, again applying a late fee. I duly telephoned Virgin on Thursday 26th November to query this and was told I could not discuss the account as I was not the account holder. I managed to get hold of XXX and acquire the password protecting the account and so was thus able to talk to one of your advisors about the issue. I was told the account was overdue (and I am quite happy to concede this) but that the account was being invoiced via ebilling, which is why I was yet to receive a bill! I explained the situation and that this was a mistake on Virgin’s part and was told that it was no matter, I could not request now that it was changed to paper billing as I was not the account holder and that only the account holder could make such a change. I explained the situation, that XXX could not rightly call from Ecuador to a Virgin helpline which, at the best of times, involves serious delays in being answered and offered to get XXX to send an email confirming a change in the details. I was told that this was not possible and that the ebilling would have to continue. I was obviously concerned that I would therefore allow the account to go overdue again. I asked Virgin to send me a copy on paper of the outstanding amounts and was advised that in this situation that the outstanding late fee would be removed from my account, though nothing could be done about the one already paid. Despite this, I then received two phone calls chasing the debt on Friday 27th November and explained the situation to both operatives who apologised for contacting me. On Monday 30th November, the letter was received, but the additional late fee remained on the account. I decided to contact Virgin the following day and ask AGAIN for the fee to be removed.

However, on 1st December, around 8am, I noticed that our service had been suspended! I find it outrageous that at no point this was mentioned and particularly considering I had entered into a dialogue with Virgin about the bill and no chance had been given to come to a satisfactory resolution. I telephoned your offices AGAIN and the instant I had confirmed the account number (and nothing more), I was reminded my account had been suspended and asked how I wanted to pay, by credit or debit card? I am disgusted that despite the fact I seemingly was unable to discuss the account with anyone previously as I’m not an account holder, Virgin were quite happy to take money off me without going through any security procedures! I repeated again the problems I had and your operative told me that, although I could downgrade and upgrade the account (and even cancel it if I wished!), I could not change the billing from ebilling. So incensed by the sheer idiocy of this policy, I gave up and hung up.

I rang Virgin the day after, explained everything to another operative and that I was willing to pay the bill but wanted to cancel my Virgin contract. I wish to commend the response from an operative I know only as XXX on Ext XXX in your Swansea Call Centre. He was polite, helpful and really willing to listen to my problems. He is a credit to your company and should be commended for the way he dealt with a difficult caller! He instantly processed my request to revert to paper billing, could not understand why this had not been handled in this way previously and removed the outstanding £10 late fee (again, he could do nothing about the earlier issue) and I duly paid the amount outstanding. The service was restored within the hour.

To conclude, I find your procedures are in serious need of review. Whilst I appreciate fully the need for security on your accounts, I feel there is a need for human evaluation in cases such as this and find that it beggars belief that Virgin will allow third parties to increase a billholder’s liability but cannot alter a simple billing method in order to pay the bill on their behalf! Had I not contacted Virgin, I would understand the suspension of service, but whilst in the middle of a dialogue about an invoicing issue and without warning is a complete disgrace. I rely on the use of the internet for work purposes and I am outraged that this course of action was taken.

I am now paid until the end of my contract, which expires on 31st December 2009, but I am yet to decide whether, after this experience, I wish to stay with Virgin Media as my media supplier in the future after this experience and I trust your response will ensure that nothing of this sort will happen again.

I look forward to hearing your swift response on these matters.

FaloolaChong

And my response then to the nonsensical letter I received from Alexa Collinson, Customer Complaints Manager at Virgin, saying my complaint was important to them and being thoroughly investigated...

Dear Ms Collinson,

With reference to your letter dated 09 December 2009, I wish to express my disgust that my complaint is clearly so unimportant to Virgin that my original letter was clearly not even read before sending a reply. The letter was addressed to the account holder, Miss XXX, not myself, and given the content of the complaint letter I sent and I now ask you to refer to, I find this totally unacceptable. I have to say I fail to see how I “can be sure of your commitment to resolving my concerns in full” when you can’t even address a letter correctly and it leaves me somewhat concerned that a company clearly so inept at administration can provide me with my media needs successfully.

Furthermore, should you decide to contact me via telephone, it might be an idea not to use a telephone number registered to XXX as she is, as I explained in my original letter, had your staff actually bothered to read it, currently residing in Ecuador. I would ask that I be contacted on XXX as soon as possible by someone in a supervisory position to explain why this situation has occurred.

woody01

FaloolaChong wrote: »

Sorry if this doesn't go in here, I'm not really sure where to put it...

I've recently had a major issue with Virgin's billing department and am incensed at the way I've been treated. I've never had that much of a problem with the service itself, but more the way it has been run. Basically, to cut a long story very short, my housemate has gone abroad temporarily and I've taken over paying the Virgin bills, though it remains in her name. Before she left, she instructed Virgin to remove us from "ebilling" and send me paper bills. They did this for a month and then stopped. The next thing I knew, I was being charged for a late payment fee for a bill I'd never received! I entered into a dialogue with them about this, and less than 2 days after raising the query and to which they hadn't actually properly responded to me, they cut off my entire media package without warning for non payment of bills and refused to enter into any discussion until I paid! I've complained (and will post my letter in the next post, but want to keep it concise if you can't be bothered reading it all!) about this and, quite brilliantly, they've replied with a "Sorry, our complaint means a lot to us and we are investigating" letter addressed not to me, but the absent housemate...

The thing is, has anyone else had experience of these "bullyboy" tactics, do you actually think I'm in the right and if so, what should I expect Virgin to do? I don't particularly want to leave them as I've been quite happy with the actual service itself and I don't really want to have get a BT line in, which is obviously the alternative, but believe me, I will if this nonsense continues!

Thanks

So you haven't paid the bill and then decide to complain when they cut your service off.

What did you expect to happen?

FaloolaChong

woody01 wrote: »

So you haven't paid the bill and then decide to complain when they cut your service off.

What did you expect to happen?

Did you actually read what happened? I had had no notification of needing to pay a bill when I expected one and then was being billed more than I was supposed to be...when you enter into a dispute with a company and are waiting on THEM to reply to you, surely you are entitled to expect service to continue until the matter is resolved...?

Maybe I'm being naive, but considering the matter and the fact I had contacted Virgin and was ready and willing to resolve the matter, I don't understand how it is acceptable for that to happen...

collis

Virgin Media billing department... arn't they the best?
infact if you really want fun it's what they did to me... sold me a package that never existed, £21 per month for phone and broadband unyet there is no package relating to this. needless to say after a sturn chat with the op i got the acount to be correct for the remainder of the contract.

enfieldgal

My house phone has not been working for over 3 months! In fact it is 98 days! Virgin medias customer service department are the worst i have ever come across. In the last 98 days i have made over 70 calls to virgin media trying to get my phone line working again. I have had 32 engineer appointments booked. 25 of which the engineer never even bothered to turn up and 7 where they made some stupid excuse why it cannot be fixed. In the meantime they are continuing to charge me for a service which i am not recieving and when i ring up and ask why i have been charged they tell me they will credit my account as a"goodwill gesture". It is not a goodwill gesture why would they expect anyone to pay for a service they do not recieve? I pay my bill on time by direct debit and have been with them for over 6 years! I have written five letters of complaint sent by recorded delivery to which i have still not recieved a reply!
The only reason i have not changed service provider is because i do not want to pay over £100 when i am moving in March! Seriously in my experience don't expect any joy when you have a complaint because it is like banging your head against a brick wall!!!
Rant over lol

sop1974

I had the same when i was with them , i called to see why my bill was getting higher and higher every month they could say so i asked to disconnect my services but the person i had spoke to the second time did no dpa with me but cancelled my services with them. Please be careful with Virgin media. I am now with sky and pay half of what i use to pay with them.

daniejacobs

Hi,

I had similar problems and managed to speak to people at the CEOs office. Here is the direct number and it is manned by 10 people, hope this will help. 08009522283

Good luck,
Daniel

bonders99

This company is a lying and utterly deceitful outfit. Had it not been for the fact that I can't get more than 3mb through my phone line I would have got shot of them. I wrote to their CEO, who passed my complaint to one of his underlings who, in short, said he could not do anything for me. Absolute disgrace. Those who want to read my tale of woe here goes, this is the email I sent him:

Dear Sirs,

It is with regret that I have to write direct to you, but sadly the Virgin Media customer service has left me no option but to do so. I have been a long-standing Virgin Media customer of over a decade (previously NTL). My issue is as follows:

Date: 15/01/2010 - Time: 20:02

I rang Virgin Media and spoke to a customer service adviser call Anil about upgrading my package to the following bundle.

Broadband XXL (50mb) + TV (L) + Phone (M)

He said as I was a long standing customer as he could see from the system, he could offer me £41 (inclusive of the £11 phone line rental) for the above package + a one-off £20 broadband activation fee + a £35 Installation charge and for any additional premium channels I would have to pay whatever the price was. I agreed to this as it seemed a reasonable offer. The Installation date was confirmed for Saturday 30th January 2010.

Date: 20/01/2010 - Time: 18:45

On this date I got the welcome letter, thanking me for signing up to a 12 month contract and detailing the charges going forward. Upon examination of this letter, the package price reflected was £49 per month. So I rang your customer service team again and spoke to a gentleman by the name of Ronnie, who went onto inform me that he did not know how the offer was worked out initially and that he would escalate this with his line manager and try to resolve the matter. He said if the offer was made, then, there would possibly be a way of setting up a "rolling credit" or something to honour the offer. I told him I would like someone to call me back on my mobile number to confirm this is done. He made a note on the account and said this would be done.

Result = Nothing happened, No one called back

Date: 21/01/2010 - Time: 18:55

As no one had called me back, I rang again to find out if a resolution was made to my case. I spoke with a female customer service advisor called Harlin, who informed me that an email had already been passed on 20/01/2010 to the customer service rep who made the offer and that he would call me back within 48 hours.

Result = Nothing happened, No one called back

Date: 23/01/2010 - Time: 08:40

Again, as no one had called back, I rang yet once more and spoke to a male customer service rep called Pranee, and he promised that he would look into the case and would personally call me back before 18:00.

Result = Nothing happened, No one called back

Date: 23/01/2010 - Time: 17:55

I called yet again to find out what had happened and spoke to a female customer service advisor called Al, she went onto inform me absolutely NOTHING, as after I had explained the story so far and informed her that new customers taking out a 12 month contract would be paying £42.66 with FREE installation, she went onto say looking at my system the best offer for new customers is £47. when I pointed out to her, that with 2 months FREE it actually worked out at £42.66 per month for the SAME PACKAGE when you factor in the 2 free month she seemed lost and wanted to get rid of me as soon as she could by telling me she would put me through to retentions. By this time it was 18:15. The call looped back to the customer care centre, where another operative went onto inform me that, she did not understand what her colleague was trying to do by putting me through to retentions, when the department closes at 17:00. She asked me to call back on Monday. As you can imagine I was rather annoyed with this.

Date: 25/01/2010 - Time: 08:06

I called and got straight through to the retentions department and spoke to a lady called Natalie Bennet. I explained the whole sorry saga to her. After which, she said the best offer is still £49 per month. When I pointed out that new customers signing up for a minimum 12 month contract would pay £42.66 after factoring in the 2 free months and not paying any installation charge, she went onto gleefully tell me: "It's not fair for you to make a comparison on offers for new customers, what about all the discounts you have had in the past ?", which by insinuation I found rather insulting, when I have been a customer for over a decade, what is it to stop new customers who sign up now for a 12 month contract to walk away after the 12 months are up ?. I asked her to cancel the upgrade and the installation and leave my current package as it stands. to which she said "ok I will do that straight away".

I am now contemplating leaving virgin media within the next month or so as soon as I have signed up with an alternate service provider.

It's not so much the price of the offer, but the way I have been lied to constantly and consistently by your customer service outfit that has made me consider moving. If I would have been told upfront the real offer, I would not have minded so much, but to try and hoodwink me under a false pretence to sign up to another 12 months is nothing short of scandalous.

I would be very interested in hearing your views.



The CEO's response was:
I'm sorry to have messed you around. I will ask my office to help

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Then after being given the short shrift by his underling. This was my email response to him and his reply:


Dear Sir,
I would like to thank you very much for personally getting your office to follow this up.

On Tuesday morning 26th January I got a call from Mr Ken Dougdale who informed me that as it was a 3rd party call centre that took my call he would have to retrieve the transcript of the call and should it confirm my discussion with the customer service representative then Virgin Media would honour the offer. He also said as it was a 3rd party centre it could take anything upto 4 weeks to get the transcript. I was happy with this.

This morning Friday 29th January, I got another call from Ken Dougdale, who said, that he had bad news. “As it is a 3rd party call centre, the call was not recorded, and I’m afraid we cannot do anything for you”. Sadly this did not offer me the opportunity to verify my call discussion with the customer service representative on the 15th January.

May I humbly be bold enough to make a suggestion, that in future Virgin Media have measures in place with your 3rd party call centres to record calls for the security and benefit of both customers and Virgin Media in order to avoid such problems as I have faced.

Once again thank you for trying your best.


The CEO's reply was:
Thx for your feedback and thx for being a customer.

textnorm

This is what I sent to Virgin via their on-line complaint service:

"Where do I start.... Firstly my name is spelt incorrectly. Second, you didn't port my phone, you even managed to put a note on your system that said I had requested it NOT to happen, which is untrue. When I asked you to port my number I immediately (once it had ported) noticed that the phone would not make incoming or outgoing calls. I rang a person in India, who had trouble understanding me and had to keep repeating anything. Eventually (using a mobile phone at a high cost and for a long time - 13 minutes to be precise) I was told that a specialist team would monitor my number over 24 hours to assess what the fault was, but that my line would be working within that time period. We went a way for a couple of days before that 24 hour period had ended. When we got back last night, surprise, surprise, it wasn't working. The fault was identical. I rang you again on my mobile and although I put my phone number into your system via the handset keypad, the first thing I was asked was "what was my phone number?" I find that very annoying. Then to annoy me further another very nice Indian person came on the phone and yet again we had trouble communicating, I was then asked to unplug my answer machine, fax & anything else plugged into the socket - I don't have any. I was asked more inanely obvious questions like "was my battery charged"? and "had I tried another hanset?". I could understand being asked these questions the first time I called, but as this was a follow up call to an existing on-going fault, I felt it insulting. Most times my experience with the Virgin brand has been positive and I moved to you from Sky without a second thought, I won't be doing that again. This has seriously tarnished the Virgin brand in my eyes."

And that wasn't all. When I went on line to complain their form required so many details (among them date & amount of last bill; account number; passwords; address; name & so on) it was obviously, just a way of ensuring that you just couldn't do it without searching out you last bill, ie making it so difficult that you gave up and Virgin could claim that their complaints were lower than they should be.