Virgin Media Home Phone Line Nightmare! Please Advise

ps124

Hi All,

My home phone line provided by Virgin Media has been down for over 5 weeks now. I've called them approximately 10-11 times (1 hour plus on the phone each time), I've had approximately 6 engineer visits and they still haven't fixed the fault. The process is an engineer would come out to my house, say its a line fault in the cabinet and needs to be logged with the network team. Each time I would call Virgin to complain, they would say they've logged a fault with their "networks" team who are investigating and will resolve. The networks team answer to no one and you never hear from them again. Each time, I hear nothing from them, I have to chase only for the process to repeat again.

I've looked into the complaints procedure and you can only call Virgin and they log it as a verbal complaint. I do have one logged but there is nothing is in writing which I find strange. They refuse to email you.

I don't really want to change providers (Before someone recommends that ;-) ), so what are my options? How can I get them to treat this with priority? A landline is essential to a home business so I'm struggling without one.

Has anyone had any similar experiences with Virgin Media? Any advice would be useful.

JJ_Egan

Is this VM business line ??
If so you should have service level agreements in place .

JB162

Hi ps124

There is a couple of things you can do here.

First off under no circumstances tell them you need the phone line for business purposes, as it's a residential line and is not to be used for business purposes. They will just drag there feet.

I know it's rather low, but simply say you have a family member who lives with you and have health issues and need the phone line for medical emergencies. They have to by law respond a lot quicker.

With regards regard the complaint. Virgin don't actually have such a thing as a complaints department. Under the complaint policy anyone who works for the company has to take a complaint onboard. Its called there "Customer Ownership Policy". Therefore over the telephone is the best way to complain.

However if you are unhappy with the agent's response to your complaint, under the policy they are duty bound to escalate the complaint to there line manager. This mean they will put you through to there manager and there manager has to resolve your complaint for you.

Again the final stage is, if your unhappy with the Managers response, the last port of call is there manager, known as the Operations Manager. However based on experience and your issue, the team manager will get it resolved for you.

With regards the issue with the Network Team. Yes they are a law upon themselves however at present, they are in the process of being made redundant with there jobs being offshored to Manila. So at present they really and honestly do not care.

Honestly, would you not be the same? The average person on the Network Team in Manchester are sitting at a average of 10 years service, so have been royally kicked in the balls by Liberty Global (they own Virgin).

Anyways get back on the phone and get your complaint escalated to a manager and do not tell them your business replies on the phone line.

Good Luck!

ps124

Hey, thanks for ther response...really useful. Sounds like you know a lot about Virgin! ;-)

Yea bad news about the networks team being offshored, I can understand...i went through something similar so can't blame them.

Going back to the problem, on two seperate occassions, I have spoken to a team manager but it's always been the same outcome. All the team manager does is pretend to take ownership of the problem but all they are doing is the same process as above but only calling me back to say it will get resolved in 24 hours, thank you and goodbye.

This time, they are saying they know what the fault is, ran out of some lines on the new cabinet or something and it will get fixed within 24 hours, and the chap will call me back tomorrow.

If it doesn't get fixed tomorrow, can I ask to speak to the operations manager?

JB162

ps124 wrote: »

Hey, thanks for ther response...really useful. Sounds like you know a lot about Virgin! ;-)

Yea bad news about the networks team being offshored, I can understand...i went through something similar so can't blame them.

Going back to the problem, on two seperate occassions, I have spoken to a team manager but it's always been the same outcome. All the team manager does is pretend to take ownership of the problem but all they are doing is the same process as above but only calling me back to say it will get resolved in 24 hours, thank you and goodbye.

This time, they are saying they know what the fault is, ran out of some lines on the new cabinet or something and it will get fixed within 24 hours, and the chap will call me back tomorrow.

If it doesn't get fixed tomorrow, can I ask to speak to the operations manager?

Yeah, you can say your not happy with the Team Managers response any at any time and ask to speak to a Operations Manager, however that will prob be a call back.

Good Luck!