Absolute nightmare with Virgin Media

Bibibirdie

Hi new here so hope I get this right

I've been with VM for two years,we moved from talk talk as they weren't able to supply our address.
We've had many issues in the last year since recontracting in August 2018.
Firstly, we received emails saying we had illegally streamed or downloaded films, this happened twice and both times they stated dates and times where we could prove we were not at home and the house was empty. The first email was sent as a warning and when I emailed to explain they were incorrect they sent a standard email back. The second time they said they were aware we had been "caught" before and were making a case to send to the relevant authorities for us to be fined under copyright law. At that point I emailed again and was called a liar, even though I provided them with proof we were not home. They said we must have allowed someone, such as a neighbour access to our password, but I have a WiFi checker on my phone which proved it was secure.
I was very anxious for weeks as I was awaiting a huge fine or police at my door, so I used their online complaints form to ask what on earth they were doing. I then received a call from their customer care team admitting it was a well known fault in areas where lots of households have virgin media, yet he refused to confirm this via email.
Then, in late March, our net and TV service started to drop out every day, sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes up to an hour. This was reported to their tech team who said there was no fault. They refused to acknowledge an error suggesting I was turning it off myself at the plug(!)
Mid April and the day before my daughter's online gaming party and it died for 6 hours. I demanded an engineer visit as this was getting ridiculous.
Engineer turned up (not before they had cancelled him at first, he was outside my home in his van and was told to go as we had phoned and said it was now fine, this was not the case at all), said there may be a fault in the area but he got the hub back on. He said he would call me that evening to check it was fine. He never did. Ten minutes before my daughter's party the day after, it dropped out again, so we had to cancel the whole thing as we had no TV or net and had to deal yet again with their phone team. They were totally lacking in empathy at how awful this was for a kid, one even put the phone down as I said imagine how you'd feel if it was your child. That time it went off for 8 hours, then again the next morning from 9am until 10pm. Finally an Engineer came out on the Monday (despite being priority customers due to our son being disabled and being promised weekend call outs for faults) and said the hub was broken and it was simply a case of swapping it. He said he didn't get why no one had done that straight away as after a few years their signal dies. I made a complaint which was fobbed off and they said my bill would be credited automatically.
It never was, in fact it never has been, despite chasing.
In July, I received an email saying my bill was in arrears and I had not paid in June. I checked my bank and showed their missing payments team that it had been via bank statement. They refused to accept this saying their team would investigate and "decide if they agreed I had paid". I was also told to pay again or my services would be stopped, which I refused to do.
After a fortnight and my service being switched off that day, I was called and told they had in fact found my payment. No apology though.
I was then told in August I was being charged a late payment fee for June, for the payment I had paid. I have since sent three complaints via their online form, all of which have been ignored. So on the 5th August I called to give my 30 days notice as they had emailed that my bills would be increased from £35 to £56. The guy was very forceful and demanded to know why I wanted to leave, then called me a liar about all the issues above. He was horrible actually! I suffer anxiety so I'm not great on the phone. He then said they would agree to my paying £40 instead of £56 but I again said no, as I said I could go to sky and pay £4 more for 300 extra channels (I currently have Freeview channels only on Virgin).
Unbeknownst to me, he didn't register it as a cancellation but has said I agreed to this. So when I called yesterday to chase up my complaint and because they have now sent me a bill for £106 (as they have still not updated that my bill was paid in June and including a late fee and the £56 for next month) they said I have not cancelled and am now a customer until the end of September at which point I will have to pay a contract early cancellation fee!

I'm at my wit's end. I have been to resolver but have a month to wait until escalation, I've now supposed to be going to sky on the 9/9 but no doubt they will block it. I'm unable to find any head office numbers to bypass their abhorrent call centre and when I tried to email their CEO they emailed snuggly back and said he no longer worked for them and never replied when I asked them to forward to the new CEO.

Has anyone got any ideas? I'm close to tears with them. I spent 45 minutes on the phone to them in which time the girl I spoke to forgot to mute the call and I could hear her being abusive about me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Bibibirdie

Anyone at all?

JJ_Egan

Sorry to difficult to read a huge wall of text.
I fail to find the problem/s or even the sequence of events.
Can you post the actual problem you have now and want sorting now .


If you are out of VM contract or near it suggest you leave.

Bibibirdie

Is there any need to be so rude?

My problem is that they owe my compensation, they now say I owe them a ridiculous sum of money, they've lied and said I agreed to recontract when I didn't,they don't respond to multiple complaints and when I call I get nowhere.
I'm desperate to find out a CEO email (the one listed on CEO finder is incorrect) or phone number. I suffer from anxiety and just want to leave, I'd even forget they owe me money to get rid.

Please I'd appreciate politeness, as I say I'm new and thought I should explain exactly what has gone on so as not to drip feed.

littleboo

VM cannot block your transfer to Sky, two completely different systems so they can co-exist without any problems, VM will have no visibility of your contract with Sky

JJ_Egan

Bibibirdie wrote: »

Is there any need to be so rude?

Who is being RUDe only you .
Fact is your post is just a long unreadable jumble .

The_Fat_Controller

If you don't want to transfer a phone number, you can order any FTTC provider such as SKY, TalkTalk etc and carry on with your spat with Virgin alongside your new service.

The OP is VERY difficult to read !

Bradden

Is it just me? I can't help but think that the OP is either one of the unluckiest people on the planet or this is a work of fiction.

I'm not having a go ... you just seem to be really really really unlucky.

garth549

I can empathize about Virgin, their customer service is the absolute pits now. I opted to pay slightly more for Virgin Business broadband a few years ago purely because their business call centre was still in the UK. Now this has moved to Manilla and is a joke. When you call you have to explain everything 5 times and ask them to repeat everything 10 times. Most of them don't understand anything technical whatsoever. Why they thought this was a good idea is beyond me.

I would write a formal complaint to Virgin and the Comms Ombudsman regarding being falsely accused of illegally downloading copyrighted content. That is absolutely disgraceful. Even if it was your IP address logged at the time that doesn't prove in the slightest that it was you or anyone else in your household.

All it takes is one of your computers to unknowingly have a virus that establishes you as a TOR node or proxy and suddenly all sorts of illegal material is being downloaded via your IP address by anyone in the world without you easily knowing.

Bibibirdie

I wish it was fiction but that's exactly what has happened, hence why I put the lot down to show I wasn't just moaning for no good reason they have indeed treated us appallingly and never once properly apologised.

Bibibirdie

I have a complaint logged with Resolver, unfortunately they give Virgin two months to respond, which they've yet to do and I have just under a month until I can escalate