Virgin call centres....

sparrer

....abroad. What a complete waste of 3 hours this afternoon, screwed up my broadband, lost connection completely, tried to fix it, eventually admitted she didn't know how to do it and put me through to tech help who have to send an engineer, and a new router, and all I wanted was assistance to increase my speed of 0.49mbps to something a little nearer the speed I'm paying for. Unbelieveable :mad::mad::mad:. Am looking into alternative providers as I type...

maninthestreet

There's no way their call centre could have damaged your router to such an extent that it would need replacement.

chewynut

When we were with Virgin, our broadband was kind of...temperamental. The wireless router did its own thing so sometimes it reached the dizzying heights of a whole 2mbs, but mostly it didn't want to work. We'd have connection for a few hours, then it'd crash for a few hours, reboot and crash, etc. My dad tried everything but nothing seemed to make a difference.

fluffnutter

So is it Virgin support that's bothered you? Or the fact that their support is based abroad?

sparrer

maninthestreet I totally agree Virgin couldn't damage the router. I said they're having to send me a new router - to explain further my speed is so slow that the cause, according to their UK tech dept, seems to be the 9 y/o router hence they're providing me with a new one. The engineer is coming to check the wired connection, the router is not in his brief. All with the object of improving the abysmal speed the tech says I have - his words, not mine.

fluffnutter I said 'abroad', which I hope answers your query. Have never once had any problems if I get routed to a UK centre, it's the overseas ones who don't seem to understand what you say and on occasion, like yesterday, think they know the answer before asking the question. Having taken control of the laptop she tried to change the channel but had to admit halfway through she'd forgotten the sequence. Before sending me back to UK tech dept she told me I'd have to pay for their premium service of £10 a month which I refused to agree to. She connected me back to UK and once there it was plain sailing. And free.

fluffnutter

sparrer wrote: »

maninthestreet I totally agree Virgin couldn't damage the router. I said they're having to send me a new router - to explain further my speed is so slow that the cause, according to their UK tech dept, seems to be the 9 y/o router hence they're providing me with a new one. The engineer is coming to check the wired connection, the router is not in his brief. All with the object of improving the abysmal speed the tech says I have - his words, not mine.

fluffnutter I said 'abroad', which I hope answers your query. Have never once had any problems if I get routed to a UK centre, it's the overseas ones who don't seem to understand what you say and on occasion, like yesterday, think they know the answer before asking the question. Having taken control of the laptop she tried to change the channel but had to admit halfway through she'd forgotten the sequence. Before sending me back to UK tech dept she told me I'd have to pay for their premium service of £10 a month which I refused to agree to. She connected me back to UK and once there it was plain sailing. And free.

Do you think it was a language barrier problem? Or that the agent was a bit rubbish/not trained properly?

jackieblack

fluffnutter wrote: »

Do you think it was a language barrier problem? Or that the agent was a bit rubbish/not trained properly?

or all of the above?

fluffnutter

Call centres as a concept are pretty much derided, particularly when there's a language barrier, be that India or Glasgow(!). It's not unreasonable really, is it - it makes things incredibly difficult if two people struggle to understand one another.

That's one of the main complaints (particularly for overseas call centres) but the model itself is intensely disliked. Call centres are frustrating, inhuman, people don't like the automated call direction ('Press 1 for this, 2 for that...), when they finally get to speak to an agent, they often feel their question hasn't been answered properly.

Basically though.... they're cheap and it seems we're stuck with them. I feel routinely surprised and disappointed that such a bad and universally hated model of customer service is forced upon consumers purely because it's cheaper. One could argue that lower overheads force down prices and the consumer benefits. But I'd rather pay a bit more and have decent service, frankly. But it's too late - they all use the same flawed model now.

sparrer

I can't accuse anyone of those things, only assume. I assume she'd passed an English language test, and I assume she'd completed a competence course to become a call operator. However I am aware that such tests are conducted to the standards of the country they live/work in which isn't necessarily the same as Uk ones.

Dave_C_2

OP, don't move to BT if you dislike offshore call centres.

<Rant>
I have had many calls to the India technical help and although they do try hard, there is always a language difficulty.

Also the BT India call centre will work to a script and will not deviate from it. It takes me ages to tell them, yes I have tried my broadband in the test socket, yes I have tried it with a different filter and so on. This is just to get to the meat of the problem.

If your problem falls within their script, then it will be fixed, but I have found that they cannot deal with or understand intermittent problems that can't be reproduced when you call them. These are the ones that most of us are frustrated with.

I stress that this is not the fault of the engineers at the call centre, some have been incredibly helpful. It's just that there is a language and cultural barrier that shouldn't be there in a customer service operation.

If you ring BT sales you will not get put through to an Indian call centre, so they are well aware of the problem.
</Rant>

And breathe...

Sally42

I came across this thread and laughed ~ a few weeks ago, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you (I'm the woman who threatened to jam a call centre manager's gonads between two bricks when he accused me of simply being out to get money off the company, when my broadband was crashing on average about 15 times a day....I later learnt that my phone call had been recorded and played back to some 'higher' managers......), but after calling tech support on Monday for some help, I'm not so sure. I was dealt with by a wonderful lady, who spent an hour on the phone, remotely connected to my pc, cleared up a myriad of problems, made me laugh and brightened my day!