I knew I shouldn’t, I’d heard hundreds of tales of woe, but I did it. I switched to Virgin Media.

My main reason for switching to digital TV was because the aerial reception in our home is atrocious – boosters etc simply make no difference. Virgin was the only option, because I didn’t want a satellite dish on the front of our Victorian terrace house.

Anyway – my expections were dashed early on, when (having taken the morning off work at my expense) the installation engineer turned up late, and was then unable to install the telephone line. Broadband and TV work fine, though. “Okay”, I thought; “My ADSL line still works, I’ll stick with that until they can fix it”.

A further installation date was scheduled for a weekend. A Saturday afternoon. I was impressed. “Finally, they’re making an effort” I thought.

Until it reached 7pm and no-one had arrived.

After speaking with nine different people (I counted them) I was told that the visit had been cancelled. I asked why. They said they didn’t know. I asked for a supervisor to call me back. They said someone would call within an hour.

Needless to say, no-one called, so I telephoned again that evening. This time I was transferred through eight people, before being promised a callback the following day.

No callback.

*Sigh*

Then I called again. I stayed on the line for 27 minutes, while a very nice young man named Manoj adamantly promised a supervisor would call be back, and promised that the cost of the telephone service would be credited to my account until such time as it was reinstated.

Amazingly, Manoj called me back, and told me it took 24h to register a request for a callback to arrange another installation. He promised someone would call back the next day. This was 4 December 2007.

I am still waiting.

I had a reminder letter asking me to sign the contract and send it back. Not on your nellie, buckeroo! Provide me with the service I’ve paid for, and then I’ll think about it.

I’m seriously considering cancelling the direct debit, but don’t want to risk the harm it could do to my credit rating.

Oh well – looks like I’ve got to spend yet more money calling them again, and got to take yet another day off work, at my expense, before they can be bothered to actually provide me with the service I’ve paid for.

And who said British customer service was dead?

Read my rather contrary post here.

Couldn’t agree more – this is a huge challenge for large corporations – more about it here:

Customers ARE the service

Regards,

Tom O’Brien
MotiveQuest LLC

Doesn’t give you any confidence at all.

I had great hopes for NTL under Virgin ownership and was persuaded to try and re-add the telephone service that had never worked since it was installed by NTL two years ago.

It was not a good experience. I was away for 2 weeks after the re-installation, I made and rcvd no calls, but the day after I made the first call ( to customer service to ask what tariff I was on, they not communicated at all after the engineer came ) I got a stream of automated sales calls from all and sundry, not Virgin. ( one started, “Have you recently been bereaved…” I put the phone down at that point) So I rang CS and they said “That sometimes happens”. I rang again as the bill was wrong when I rcvd it (charged for the re-installation, when I wastold it was free), they said “that happens, we will credit you next month.”

Then I got a call from someone identifying themselves as a Virgin Rep (which I tried to verify) saying I could have TV service for only £47. I said every bus stop in the area has an advert saying get “4 for £40″ the 4 being BB,TV,phone,and mobile, so why would I pay £47 for 3.?
The rep said she was not in the UK, and was working for a 3rd party subcontractor to Virgin. She told me that I was already paying £35, and £47 was a good price. I told her that I was not paying £35, but much less than that, and the phone then went dead.

I don’t know that she was from Virgin, but she had my account details. She was very aggressive and I feel even more poorly inclined toward Virgin after her call.

As Neville says when buying a service one should not have to spend hours on the phone to “get it straight”, it is inefficient for the Company and the customer.

I say to all companies “Just set expectations, meet them and if you can’t COMMUNICATE!”

Phew, that feels better.
Mike

A ‘prejudiced view,’ John? A subjective one, perhaps, based on my own experiences, but prejudiced? I don’t think so.

And what are those ‘huge, visible improvements’ you mention? I see no evidence of that.