V.M problem for years - refund?

06869524

Hi, We've been customers of Virgin Media since they took over Tele-west many many years ago... About 5 years ago they introduced the Fibre Optice services in our area which we were upgraded to, since then we've had non-stop problem with the Broadband and TV services. Over the last few years we've had about 50+ Tech Visits, 20 x Principal Tech Visits, tonnes of kit replaced for being broken or a possible cause of the faults and through most of this we've been treated like lunatics because of the amount of complaints we made about the services not working and they could not find the problems.... That was until the recent inspection by some Principal Techs with new kit who found that the original Cable that had been laid was done so very badly - had a knot in it which massive restricted the Power Levels... to add to that it never even ran to the correct grid which further restricted the Power Levels... that along with having more than the standard 2 or 3 devices (we have 4) meant all our TV boxes and the SuperDud would certainly have problems.... Anyways, a tech team was booked to fix this (another calamity), the guys turned up not knowing why they were at our address at all, I had to tell them what they needed to do and why... All was done and worked ok until a few days ago when all our devices (PC's, Laptops, Mobile Devices) suddenly became mysteriously faulty.... after calling V.M they said a new SuperDud 2 was on the way and during the call it arrived - I put the bad internet connection down to the fact that V.M may have changed settings ready for the SuperDud 2... so I set the thing up, got it activated.... waited a good hour and nothing... called V.M back and got the same crud all V.M customers get... lasted a good few hours and they just ended up blaming all our PC's etc... in the end though a Green Light on the DUD2 turned Blue... and we got a connection - nothing to do with our kit after all, probably just a very very very slow activation? Still has the original fault though (massive lag) - tech booked for Friday...
The guy that was handling our complaints finally called us when we were available, I had personally told him that we wanted compensation dating back to day 1 of that cable being laid as that was the cause of all the problems for all these years - he agreed but said he would arrange all of this when the "repull" was finished... now though all he has offered is 1 months free services. I'll also add that the bulk of "good gesture" refunds of £5 or £10 for days of lost service were applied to our account but also reapplied so we never got any refunds.... My partner did explain that we had been crippled with these problems for years, that technicians treated us like time wasters because their kit was not able to identify the real problem, that we had wasted probably a good few weeks due to tech as well as all the MASSIVE head aches we've had with loss of service - (University Applications being wiped out repeatedly which took forever to complete...) but the guy from V.M said we'd get 1 months free services but at the end our full account will go up to £120 per month along with an additional £2.50 per month increase - so we are livid.... :mad: we know they will not refund us for loss of service, we certainly do expect a massive credit to be applied to our account though. We worked out that over the years we paid around £4,000, most of that went in their coffers for nowt as when we wanted to watch TV it didn't work, if there was a match on - it didn't work - in fact the Cricket too - missed all of the Ashes due to V.M faults... Internet was and currently is a joke... we've actually suffered with stress because of V.M and lost money and even the most valuable asset is our time.
What can we do about this?

JJ_Egan

What can we do about this?

Take them to court if you can stand the expense .

Cannot see them paying you a massive credit .

R_P_W

Why did you not cancel your service years ago?

kwikbreaks

The best VM normally do is issue monthly account credits from when some problem or other is reported until it gets fixed. I've never heard of them issuing retroactive credit.

I seriously doubt you'd get anything from a court case other than massive costs for both parties. You should have started claiming credits from when the problems first started and then left if still not satisfied.

mnbvcxz

I don't see that the small claims court would cost you much either way.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/small-claims-court

But you would have to think very clearly about what you want, will accept and are likely to get. Its important to lay this out clearly not just expect them to come up with a compensation plan.

Presumably if you kept paying for four years then you have had some benefit from the service? Some internet and phone calls? You will need to factor this in and decide how much you have actually lost out on.

If you are sure you have been genuinely hard done by and want to take it further then lay everything out together with what you want and the threat of court might get something. If not you can take them to the small claims court and you will not risk much (I guess) though you may lose but you can at least find out...

06869524

Hi, the service in our area are limited at best, V.M offered 120meg speeds where others had 2 at best - with no guarantees... plus at the time V.M always dragged us back when we left to join other providers with promises, discounts - even life long discount promises but as you can guess they were lying...
We were due to have a tech booked in for tomorrow but they cancelled it because someone else had a fault in the area - that got fixed and they thought my fault would be fixed too... nope... so have to wait until Tuesday now. Managed to get a form filled in to Cisas and it actually sent... took a while to get the !!!!!! to load up though...
The whole point is that V.M has always led us to believe that there was nothing wrong with the service and that any problems were simply normal, even after a call to them today they said that unless the service was completely dead they would not consider any format of a refund... The fact is the cable that was laid years ago was faulty from day one and the fault amplified all the time, despite all the complaints we were stuck with it and the provider due to lack of so called BB providers in our area (2 meg was the best available in our area last year from SKY I think)
Overall with the facts being that the cable crippled the services from day 1, V.M not finding the fault and assuring us that the services were normal, trying to pursue the faults as they were constant but getting no fixes, being made out to be loonies with the constant complaints - ENDING in main fault being found which explains the years of misery, V.M fobbing us off (presumably because they know they owe us big time) and to top it off - despite a re-pull the broadband is still hugely faulty - even V.M cant connect to our hub, wi-fi crashes, loading a web page takes.... well, gave up after an hour but if you sit and click refresh for long enough then you may get lucky... would you want to do this AND pay for it? Now looking forward to finding the recorded stuff on the v+ box has not recorded, partially recorded or is a typical repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat... an extra £2.50 a month for? :mad:

Rev

Have you tried sending an email to the CEO?

06869524

Rev wrote: »

Have you tried sending an email to the CEO?

Hi, managed to get through to their Management team - like banging my head against a brick wall... despite admitting that the fault had been there all this time they would not even consider and form of compensation regardless of the many numerous faults, complaints etc over the years... all they did offer was a months free service due to the current problems and continuing problems (messing around cancelling Tech appointments forcing us to wait another 4 days with limited internet).
That aside I filed an online form via Cisas stating the nature of our complaints so hopefully they can deal with this on our behalf.
I still find it hard to believe that despite all the evidence in front of them they cannot see that for 5 years that the main feed cable to our property was deemed faulty incorrectly routed to the incorrect grid and thus caused the hundreds of complaints and tech call outs during that period... they look at it as being ok because it was not 100% dead for that entire period of time - absolute joke.
Hopefully it will be resolved soon.