Virgin Media are Cr*p!

ninja2302

bungle4by4 wrote: »

to give a little balance, i've just had VM install my house, they turned up exactly when they said, the installers did a faultless job, very clean, professional, ran the cable neatly, and found a great hidden run through the house for the extra box.

the Tivo box is excellent, and all for less than sky. broadband is coming in exactly as it should at 30 meg. no problems at all.

oh and i got 56 quid for my sky box on ebay

I've read this thread out of interest - I also had a similar experience to bungle4by4. Turned up on time, even called 15 mins before, came in did the job, tidied up, no problems at all.

I also have the Tivo and the 30meg line - Usually get the full 30meg and had no problems with the 'superhub' - based on netgear kit if I remember right. Also Tivo has been fine.

spike7451

80% of VM installers,including those who did the OP's install,are contractors.VM have a small number of in-house install & repair engineers who do one man installs & also fix faults.VM have no 2 man install crews working for them directly as far as I'm aware.
Reading thru the posts on this thread,it reads that in most cases of shoddy workmanship,it's been contractors that did the jobs.The istallers get their jobs in the morning & it's not until you get to the job,you realize how big or small the job is.I've been to jobs that I've been in & out of in under 30 minutes & others that have taken over a day.Problem is,the contractors get paif by the job so the more jobs they can bang in per day,the bigger the pay whereas in-house bods get paid a set salary. (Part of the reason I suppose that when I was an in-house installer for VM,we constantly beat the contractors on KPI targets.
And I have seen some shoddy installs in my time,worse one was white internal catv & telco,not siamese,running about 5 foot across the front of a red brick house under the downstairs living room window then HORIZONTALLY up to the small box room over the porch! (That I reported to my manager,who QA'd the crews jobs & then fired them on the spot)
To the OP,sorry about your troubles,jobs like that reflect badly on the engineers as a whole,I know a lot of contractors & in-house engineers & they/we are very good at our job & give a good standard of service,it only takes a couple of bad ones to tar us all & it reflects badly on us all.

fosheezy

Grovis, as bad as it seems, you still dodged a bullet. I stuck it out with VM on their 50Mb package and I really wish I hadn't. Both the installer and the engineer (who had to come out to fix it a couple weeks later) were both late and completely incompetent. The connection has been barely usable ever since it was installed... download speeds during "peak time" (ie. whenever you're not asleep) dropping as low as 0.02Mb on a 50Mb package, plus jitter and packet loss out the wazoo. Skype calls keep dropping out. Streaming video keeps dropping out. Connecting to your work computer, or trying to play an online game? Forget it. And apparently there are hundreds of customers right across the country with the same issues... just check out their official tech support forums or search the web for "virgin media high utilisation"...

I just wish I'd pulled the plug during my initial 28-day cooling off period, because there's a real battle coming now.

Grovis

@Fosheezy - Yes that did cross my mind as I saw no end of complaints on Twitter (every 20 mins), numerous websites dedicated to pure hate for VM and of course the community forums you mention. It does certainly seem some areas / installs are worse affected than others.

Well a little update ref my story. So far my complaints have been ignored via email / phone. I will send an official letter for what good it will do. Still thinking of mentioning that I am going to the press about the state they left my garden in, and blatantly disregarding my instruction to not carry out the install.

To add insult to injury I got a bill just before XMAS for a few quid. Apparently this was for usage from the install / activation date which, of course never happened, thankfully I was able to sort this out on the phone so no further action required by myself..... hopefully......

Grovis

Update. Virgin called me 2 days ago from their complaints department and discussed my complaint with me. I was then promised a call from the Area Install Manager by a certain time. He called way within the time period and told me they had some contractors on their books and it seemed they were to blame. He was disappointed and mentioned he would have to take formal action and offered to try and assist with the turf (I refused as it was an offer to remove the cable). I am pretty sure he came to my property as the entry point on the pavement appeared to be fixed back into the pavement.

However I am still counting my blessings as a guy from work in my area had it installed a week ago (fibre BB on 30mb package) and his wireless hub has failed completed. Once he got it going it appeared he was barely getting 1mb during peak times. There were frequent drop outs and he is trying to resolve...

spike7451

Grovis wrote: »

Update. Virgin called me 2 days ago from their complaints department and discussed my complaint with me. I was then promised a call from the Area Install Manager by a certain time. He called way within the time period and told me they had some contractors on their books and it seemed they were to blame. He was disappointed and mentioned he would have to take formal action and offered to try and assist with the turf (I refused as it was an offer to remove the cable). I am pretty sure he came to my property as the entry point on the pavement appeared to be fixed back into the pavement.

However I am still counting my blessings as a guy from work in my area had it installed a week ago (fibre BB on 30mb package) and his wireless hub has failed completed. Once he got it going it appeared he was barely getting 1mb during peak times. There were frequent drop outs and he is trying to resolve...

Pavement has to be re-instated as per local council rules,VM have no option in that.

As to the guy who has the superhub,I've heard a lot of bad reports about them (Google VM Superhub) If it's a desktop PC & his hub is downstairs,his best bet would be to call a 7 day fault into VM & get it hardwired to the PC.
Or ask for a cable modem & buy a non vm cable router.

Grovis

Spike7451 100% correct. They did mention this. I think they had just pushed the metal box back in somehow. The crack is going to be dealt with by the council. Thanks for the advice ref the router/hub. I will pass this on.

C_Mababejive

As one who calls on customers i too am quite surprised at the lack of what i call house training and socail skills of other callers.

I witness people grunting,sounding slightly aggressive, off hand,not being very tidy, effing and cursing etc.

I can understand the whole issue of broken appointments. Often organisations pile way too much work onto people and somehow just leave them to get on with it.

Having said that, if i were attending a broken appointment i would have at least apologised...not that i accept responsibility,but simply to acknowledge that the customer had been inconvenienced.

Some employees are treated like crap so it is no wonder that by the time they pitch up at the customers doorstep,they dont feel particular engaged.

debrag

bungle4by4 wrote: »

to give a little balance, i've just had VM install my house, they turned up exactly when they said, the installers did a faultless job, very clean, professional, ran the cable neatly, and found a great hidden run through the house for the extra box.

the Tivo box is excellent, and all for less than sky. broadband is coming in exactly as it should at 30 meg. no problems at all.

oh and i got 56 quid for my sky box on ebay

ninja2302 wrote: »

I've read this thread out of interest - I also had a similar experience to bungle4by4. Turned up on time, even called 15 mins before, came in did the job, tidied up, no problems at all.

I also have the Tivo and the 30meg line - Usually get the full 30meg and had no problems with the 'superhub' - based on netgear kit if I remember right. Also Tivo has been fine.

I too have had no problems with VM. Installers have come when they say they would, when we had a faulty box it was exchanged quickly. Wednesday we got TiVo and the installer called the day before to confirm then once when on way and once when near by. They've all appeared friendly and cleared up after themselfs.
We've had no problems with internet or phone just sometimes a signal problem for TV.

Grovis

Grovis wrote: »

However I am still counting my blessings as a guy from work in my area had it installed a week ago (fibre BB on 30mb package) and his wireless hub has failed completed. Once he got it going it appeared he was barely getting 1mb during peak times. There were frequent drop outs and he is trying to resolve...

Just an update on this. My colleague has been let down twice by VM now with engineers not showing up. As per my experiences there was no phone calls ever to advise! We tweaked the hub and got it to work wirelessly after some research but the drop outs are still persistent.