Moving House with Virgin Media??

lyndsyh

I'm going to be moving house soon in around 3 weeks not got a exact date from my landlord yet, but I am with Virgin Media TV, Phone and Broadband a 12 month contract that begun in February.

Just wondering what will happen when I move? I know that the street is set up to receive Virgin Media services but not sure if the house has been connected before, will they charge me for installation again and how long would it take for them to do install it? I also read somewhere that my contract will start again?

anotherbaldrick

You should be able to get a free installation with a new contract under their current deals. However if our experience was anything to go by expect Virgin to totally screw up any arrangements regarding date of installation and start of contract. We arranged 3 weeks ahead for our installation to happen and be live on 26thMay. We warned Virgin however that the installation might not be straightforward as the new house construction had left the Virgin box in the middle of the driveway. We pressed this point several times but were told "no problem, the installation crew will sort it out on the day" The 26th comes and the Virgin boys arrive, start to unpack, then say " sorry can't do it , the box is in the middle of the drive , the Engineering team will have to move it ", then they all b****r off. After 3 weeks of no TV , no broadband and no telephone and going berserk with them because my existing BT line has been left live in my vacated property they finally condescend to return and do the job.#
Message is expect the worse and you will not be dissapointed.
P.S. Wont mention the many calls to the Indian call centre where I could not understand the blokes accent and he could not understand my concern or the contracts for signing which seemed to be coming over a period of weeks from multivarious origins.

spike7451

Asking how long will it take to install it is like asking how long a peice of string is,each install is different.I've done installs that have taken as little as 30 minutes & others that have taken over 2 days.
Average install for a small house with small front garden is around 2 hours.

As to anotherbaldrick's problem with the box,blame to council's laws on street excavation,if the box is in the wrong position & has to be moved over x feet,then they have to ask the council for permission,arrange to have a civils team to dig & re-enstate the footway on the same day.
Not to mention VM now have a fraction of the 2 man install teams they had when I was doing it,and got rid of the civils teams completely.

lyndsyh

Great for another free installation but like you said who knows how long it would take for them to get it done. Are you still with Virgin Media? I've been with them for around 4 months now and had a couple of hiccups with the service.. so not sure if I really want to stay with them anyway with a new contract

spike7451

I was made redundent a couple years ago as I worked for them directly as a service engineer,but did installs before that.
Contractors do the main bulk of install work now & a lot of the problems is because they get paid per job,so if they can shave of 1/2 an hour on a couple jobs per day,they get paid more.Downside is that often created faults on the install,signal level issues on the TV/BBand are the main faults we got.

anotherbaldrick

spike7451 wrote: »

Asking how long will it take to install it is like asking how long a peice of string is,each install is different.I've done installs that have taken as little as 30 minutes & others that have taken over 2 days.
Average install for a small house with small front garden is around 2 hours.

As to anotherbaldrick's problem with the box,blame to council's laws on street excavation,if the box is in the wrong position & has to be moved over x feet,then they have to ask the council for permission,arrange to have a civils team to dig & re-enstate the footway on the same day.
Not to mention VM now have a fraction of the 2 man install teams they had when I was doing it,and got rid of the civils teams completely.

But with respect I spent a lot of time on their phone lines telling them to expect to have to move the box but it was fingers in ears yea yea tumdiddly tum , go away we are not listening we are the boys who know it all. I also felt that the issue was commission led and the only thing of interest was who got the signature on the contract . In fact one joker made an appointment to visit our house to "iron out all the details and ensure that everything went smoothly". On arriving he knew nothing of the detail arrangements, all he wanted was a signature on the contract and on getting it vamoosed in a cloud of dust.

spike7451

anotherbaldrick wrote: »

But with respect I spent a lot of time on their phone lines telling them to expect to have to move the box but it was fingers in ears yea yea tumdiddly tum , go away we are not listening we are the boys who know it all. I also felt that the issue was commission led and the only thing of interest was who got the signature on the contract . In fact one joker made an appointment to visit our house to "iron out all the details and ensure that everything went smoothly". On arriving he knew nothing of the detail arrangements, all he wanted was a signature on the contract and on getting it vamoosed in a cloud of dust.

Salesmen,I've been to a few jobs where the salesman promised the earth..."Yes madam,you wont see any cables running around the room to the TV"...Salesman sold a complete TV package to a old spinster who was half deaf & blind.I gather he later got sacked.The salesmen do get a commision,used to be only if the install was completed they got it.Engineers don't get a commision,rather just the company wide annual bonus.
What they should have done was sent either the installs manager or someone from the planning department.They're the only people who would have been able to have sorted it quickly.Unfortunatly,part of the problem is the over seas call centers,they are useless at anything more complicated than messing up!That they do with aplomb!

lyndsyh

Couldn't you have contacted a Virgin Media store to see if they could sort the problem for you? :-)

anotherbaldrick

lyndsyh wrote: »

Couldn't you have contacted a Virgin Media store to see if they could sort the problem for you? :-)

I tried that. When it gets to be a gritty question all the store do is make a call through to victim support and when connected pass the phone over to you, probably find yourself talking to one of the numpties you were getting no joy out of earlier at home. Only benefit is they have a number they can get through on a bit quicker than the customer numbers. Don't want to think of the hours I spent on my mobile listening to the fact that they were experiencing abnormal traffic and would I like to ring back some other time ??
Someone mentioned their was a number you could contact the Richmeister on if you had a problem ? but did not know what it was, go on, make my day !