Virgin Media broadband customer service experience

johnnybaloney

Hello,

My Internet has been broken for 4 days since Virgin Media experienced an issue in the area and then 'fixed' it. Well, they didn't fix it enough as my connection is still unusable. If you are considering using Virgin Media here is what you can expect from their customer service.

First, what is the customer service number? I was looking everywhere on their website and could not find it at any location where you would expect it to be shown, 'my account' pages, troubleshooting pages, help pages... It turns out it is well hidden on the complaints page! Try searching the Internet for this number (which by the way is 0345 454 1111), it is nowhere to be found. The website is designed in such a way that it will keep sending you in circles making you come back to the same spot over and over until you either give up or try to make a complaint. That must be Virgin Media's way to reduce the number of calls. Oh, you may also end up on the 'community' pages, which is an online forum presumably run by volunteers (for a paid service!) where you can get help with turning your modem on not to report faults really. At any rate, I didn't get any answers there.

There is also a chat available from the Virgin mobile app. There must be because I used it but I cannot find it any more, no idea where the link is... Anyway, if you somehow do find it you will have to wrangle with a robot first giving you useless advice or sending you away to run a test (which test doesn't work). Again, designed to make you give up before you can reach anyone. It will shut the conversation when it determines that everything is ok even if it isn't. I don't know how I got to a human in the end but it was an exhausting experience. And then... the human tells you that they only deal with billing and cannot help you! They totally understand that this is a poor customer experience (honestly, that's what I was told) but that's the way it is and they cannot help. What a joke.

Finally, the phone call experience. You call, again a robot first. Similar experience to the chat, just quicker because it actually realises something doesn't work. It runs some tests (that again don't work but at least it realises that), determines that there is a problem and texts you a link that you can use to book an engineer. But.... you can only use that link after 24 hours! Meanwhile, they tell you, "monitor the issue"! What does that even mean? I've been experiencing it for 3 days now! Imagine you get your car from a garage, it keeps stalling, and they tell you, go away, monitor the issue and come back in 24 hours. Well, that's what I'm going to tell my employer on Monday, that I cannot do any work because I'm 'monitoring' my broken Internet...

To summarise, if you think about choosing Virgin as your broadband provider good luck if anything goes wrong! I can understand that things break occasionally but the way this is dealt with by Virgin is shocking. Until the renewal time...

JJ_Egan

( Well, that's what I'm going to tell my employer on Monday, that I cannot do any work because I'm 'monitoring' my broken Internet..)

Should be up to your employer to provide you with your work tools .

ann_droid

Hi
https://www.virginmedia.com/corporate/contact-us/office-locations
Then you can go and "knock politely".
Numbers I have are historic, however.........
0800 064 3836   Sales Team
0800 052 4570  Active Team

Both still connect.

smpNWI

Virgin Media's customer service is truly abysmal.
In addition to all the above, their complaints form will only return cookie-cutter responses and automatically assume you don't
want to challenge their decision.

Had a similar experience, but at least I've now found the way to speak to a person via live chat – it's hidden away on the 'make a complaints' page BUT but the button will not show if you have an adblocker activated, so make sure you turn that off.