Left without broadband by Virgin media

JennyP

Our broadband stopped working on Tuesday but I had a migraine so did nothing about it till Thursday.
I rang Virgin and was told by "Michael" - doubt that was his real name as his accent didn't sound like he'd be called Michael - that it was a fault in our area and would be up and running by 8.30 that night.
On Saturday at half ten, I was told again that it was a fault in our area and would mean cables being replaced and that Virgin were waiting for our council to give permission to dig up the roads to do that. I asked how long it would take - they couldn't tell me.
As this was the second time in twelve months that we'd been let down by Virgin, I told them I wished to cancel.
Sorted out switching to Plusnet which will happen in ten days time.
Then Virgin suddenly announced that no, it wasn't our local area after all but just our house and that they would send an engineer round between 12 and 4 that very day to fix it.
We waited in all day Saturday. No engineer. When my partner phoned them, they told us that not only had they cancelled our engineer visit, but they'd cancelled our entire service too.
I am only online now thanks to a TMObile broadband dongle but it's slow.
We're both self-employed and rely on the internet for work and to send out stuff to clients so this is unbelievably difficult for us.
Any thoughts?
I wish we'd swapped last year when we had hassle.
They really are the pits when it comes to customer service.
Can we get a refund on the line rental / broadband we paid in advance for this month?

Buzby

I'm assuming you don;t have Virgin Cable, but their 'National' service (provided by BT Openreach)? If so, the nonsense with needing Council permission is nonsensical, as it would be a BT matter, and in all probability, they would not be in a position to state what work was being done.

Your comment on being self-employed is noted - but you know you only have a residential service, with no service guarantee on uptime? This means your levels of compensation for loss of business due to any outage are non-existant, and would be limited to goodwill and/or rebate for any period service was unavailable.

AS oyu have done, I have an emergency dongle in case, which is far cheaper than paying for a 5-hour repair response plan.

You are only entitled to a refund based on when your service was down and when it was restored based on your current billing period. As for going somewhere else, as an external fault - id BT provided - would require Openreach whoever you got service through.

As for cancelling the service, this confises me - they can certainly cancel an arranged visit if the supposed internal fault shows up to be external - meaning no on-site visit is required. If this is done without warning, they often provide a goodwill credit.

As for cancelling the entire service, no they cannot do this anymore - you would then enter a 30 day cancellation period IF you completed the minimum term.

lindsaygalaxy

Had similar problem - cable internet. Weeks or broken promises. Cancelled and got new interne 0 they replaced the cable the day the new one started! 3 months later they still havent attended any of the appointments to collect their equipment!

Oh, I should add, their internet is still working - even though we have had an email confirming cancellation of all services!

JennyP

We've been nearly two weeks without internet now. Virgin are useless at replying to letters, emails and answering the phone promptly if I call their call centre, but they seem remarkably fast at responding to messages on Twitter. Perhaps they employ Twitter "experts" rather than engineers or proper customer services people.
Our service with Plusnet is due to start on Tuesday but in the meantime, we've paid for services up front with Virgin that we haven't received and have had no word from them on recompense.
It annoys me that their service is so poor towards existing customers (they've given contradictory information on several occasions) yet they spend a fortune on that ad campaign with the Olympic athlete trying to attract new customers.

Pikeyp

Email the main man ... neil.berkett@virginmedia.co.uk ... this often gets a fast response apparently!!

JennyP

I have written to him but emailing is a great idea....thank you!
Have also written to Ofcom!

samwich1979

Emailing the big boss is the best idea, ive used this several times with Vodafone and it works a treat!

All i can say is good luck with Plusnet, been with them for a year and ive just got rid due to the usage being absolute rubbish, if you use the internet a lot, esp for watching iplayers or you tube or downloading you will find you go over your usage on a regular basis and they just charge you for a higher package.
What makes me laugh is you get free usage between midnight and 7 am, who the hell is up at those hours every night using the internet if you work full time and have to get up at 5.30 am!
Also the connection can be slow and very unpredictable.
They dont have an unlimited package so we have moved over to Virgin and so far so good, we actually get the full download speed which we struggled to get anywhere near with Plusnet.

Good riddance to Plusnet, id NEVER recommend them.

JennyP

Is anyone reliable?
It seems I spend hours of my life trying to sort out problems:
Firstly, problems with Vodafone.
Then problems with Virgin.
Then problems with Santander messing about over changing an account. Absolutely ridiculous - sent me a letter saying I should call them if I had a problem. The letter said the centre was open 10 - 4 on Saturdays. I called at 1 p.m. on Saturday and was told that department are closed. Why did the letter say otherwise then?
Do we just put up with too much rubbish customer service in this country?
So who IS good for internet if Plusnet aren't?

JennyP

I've had LOADS of problems with Virgin Media - already talked about in this thread:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3817659
Unbelievably, there's been MORE problems since then. Either they're hopeless or they have deliberately lied to us because we have been told contradictory things on different occasions when we've phoned.
I wrote to Ofcom, who said that issues with poor customer service aren't normally within their remit, but that if they received a lot of complaints about one company, they would look into it.
So if everyone who's had problems were to write ... well, maybe something would happen.

Ofcom
Riverside House
2a Southwark Bridge Road
London
SE1 9HA

It really irks me that as people who run small businesses, my partner and I have to get customer service absolutely spot on or we'd be out of business, but these big companies just ride roughshod all over the little people like us and get away with it because they are so big.

visidigi

whaty exactly did yo complain about? Was it the fact you had no internet service for your business? Im jusrt curious as looking at this post and the original it seems like you are running a home business and using Virgin Media for that business - which, has no service level agreement as its a home contract, or were you on one of their business services?

Complaining to ofcom is fine, but you need to make sure you are using the product for what it is intended for, otherwise ofcom simply cannot do anything.

JennyP

visidigi wrote: »

whaty exactly did yo complain about? Was it the fact you had no internet service for your business? Im jusrt curious as looking at this post and the original it seems like you are running a home business and using Virgin Media for that business - which, has no service level agreement as its a home contract, or were you on one of their business services?

Complaining to ofcom is fine, but you need to make sure you are using the product for what it is intended for, otherwise ofcom simply cannot do anything.

About poor customer service.