Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

In answer to Shan42...no, most of us cannot get Virgin Media in Swansea as they didn't bother putting down enough cable.

'Call center staff have no concept of what channels are available on Virgin, UK or India, if a channel is faulty or a program is missing out of On Demand they have no idea what channel you are on about or what program, does this mean Virgin staff don't have Virgin!!'

I am a member of staff so I don't appreciate that, I constantly clean up the MESS left behind after an offshore agent doesn't leave any notes why the VoD system doesn't work for a customer, but even so...do you really expect a human being to remember EVERYTHING on the VoD system (in regards to what programmes are there)? It gets updated every day...even when if you have virgin, that's a stupid comment.

CAN ANYONE HERE HONESTLY SAY THEY REMEMBER THE ORDER OF EVERY CHANNEL ON THE VIRGIN EPG? AND WHAT CHANNEL EACH NUMBER REPRESENTS?

Christ sake.

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

I would expect the staff to be able to see on-screen a list of channels, what packages they are in and which parts of the network can get them.

Similarly with VOD.

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

We don't have a system on PC that works correctly, let alone provide us with that information!!

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

I have had cable Internet since 2000 seen the companies come and go worked my way through tech support..

For me I had the best service from the UK tech support, all my India call center ones were unhelpful. I would only phone if I had no Internet for over 2 hours in the end mainly prayingf it would come back and save me calling them.

Few years on and still using the modem they constantly said was faulty when every time it was the network, green box at fault. Lost days of work for engineers that failed to arrive due the them either not booking him or forgetting to say he wouldn't be coming since it wasn't the modem. This was after I explained they do it every time blame the modem and book an engineer who never comes. Finally promised a call if he wasn't coming but no I wait in most of the day lose pay and he doesn't come. Had I gone to work and he arrived I would have been charged so I was in a no win situation.

Now getting really cheesed of with the route NTL/telewest=Virgin are going they are killing the goose that could lay them the golden egg. They need to backtrack and see what customers main complaints are then try to improve.. Nothing has changed it is still the blind leading the blind milking the bank balance and run with large bonuses for failing to improve our service.

Shame Richard Branson did want to improve things and get our call centers back over here instead he is leaving the sinking ship as they will not let him improve our service. As for being charged for tech support if this is there way of ripping us of more then I will be looking out for the next offer from BT to have a BT line back and moving to ADSL at least I can choose who I go with and only shortlist those with UK call centers.

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

Phoned CS on 150 the other day to ask about paying the £100 up front for V+ box and then £5 a month offer. Despite the advisor having not heard of the offer and having to ask a supervisor before taking my payment and applying the discount to my bill, I was on the phone for a total of 8 minutes.......Is this some kind of a record? It is for me!!

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

I had had about 6 months of issues regarding daily dropped broadband connections and connection errors with On demand. I had a total of 7 engineers out, the 6th engineer called after I had to write to the CEO's office and complain as "Ryan" from complaints just loved sending standard text letters back thanking me for my complaint letters. That engineers diagnosed a REPULL was needed which was done by the 7th engineer which has cured my problems. Why this wasn't spotted earlier by the Agents on the desk or more importantly the engineers I don't know. I even had the STB and modem changed by them, seems that was just a throw away fix. Frustration? ...tell me about it!
A. :mad:

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

UK call centre has been ok, India....................waste of time and put me through to wrong dept, held in queue for 30min, then put transferred to another queue for 30 min.

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

Been there too. Months of aggro and frustration, VM inaction, no replies to e-mails, Indian call centres telling me my PC had a virus led to me finally losing patience. I cancelled ALL services. They then requested to send an engineer out prior to me cancelling (after other engineers had been out and said nothings wrong). Anyway, new engy also diagnosed that a repull was needed which was quickly done and service is now better but not great.
Despite this I am still going ahead with the cancellation because i will not pay an overpriced rate for a second rate broadband service and third rate customer service.
It may be better but wayyyyyy too late - I'm gone to adsl2 and a bit more stability.
VM appear adept at trying to arrange deckchairs on the sinking monolith that is VM - they just don't see it.

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

Apart from India the customer services is excelent. I feel sorry for the customer services people. They must take a lot of abuse. I am not unhappy with customer services I am unhappy with the services I pay for that are always going off. It seems to me like the company thinks if customer services lick my but enough I will not be upset that my internet has gone off for the third time this month. I do not care how nice the customer services poeple are to me I will still be upset my Internet has gone off again.

The problem with Virgin is they take too long to repair area faults. According to technical support we had a signal issue for 3 months before it got fixed. A mate of mine has had intermittent issues in his area for 6 months and it is still not fixed. Now that is what upsets me.

If the services did not go off so often and when they did go off they were fixed quickly I would be happy. I know things breakdown or go wrong but should it take months to fix them? One time my phone line went down and I was asked to wait nine days for a technician to call at my house. My phone is very important to me. I suppose Virgin assume I have a mobile phone so it is ok for me to wait nine days?

So for me my customer dissatisfaction is not with customer services but with the services themselves. They go off too often and are not fixed quickley enough. Change that and I will be happy.

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

Watching the BBC's "Watchdog" programme tonight (10/10/07) I think it just confirmed that Virgin Media's customer service is absolutely rubbish......as if we didn't know that.

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

I haven't had a reason to call them for a while, but called a couple of days ago to advise of a fault I thought might be an area fault (but had been going on a few hours). Called 3x - first to see if there was a logged fault (they said there wasn't). 2nd to report the fault (as it was another couple of hours on and still going on) to which they tested and said it was likely an area fault but booked the tech just in case. 3rd time was to cancel the tech as it was resolved (so must have been an area fault). They answered straight away every time and I was shocked there was no queue! All in all - it seems to be getting better

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

I have to say, since virgin took over it's been the worse I have known any company ever. I am 45 years old, and I have never dealt with such poorly trained and badly informed staff. It is clear that each department does not share information.

I thought Virgin were are great company, and maybe they took over something that was already going sour, but do me a favour please. 25p per min tech support plus 10p connection charge when it's your fault! something wrong there. Something very wrong. Also it would be a great help if I could actually understand what the person on the other end of the line was saying. Maybe it is English, but that accent is so thick, I feel i may as well be talking about what to order to eat.

When the support was in Wales it was fantastic, why has it been changed to this ramshackle of an excuse?

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

I posted on a thread here about a month ago on the disgraceful issues I've had with VM and trying to migrate to the XL VIP package for £85. I've been on cable since it was Nynex then C&W who ran the franchise, through to NTL before VM. Despite several painful and very long and fruitless phone calls over several months where all I got was Indian call centre staff and subsequent diversions to incorrect or unknown departments, they still hadn't "merged" my apparently separate phone and TV accounts. Apparently this was down to NTL who moved the physical TV and phone cable when I moved in 2000 but never adjusted the billing info. So, my phone was left registered at my previous address and my TV pack was registered at my current address. Funny how they always managed to bill me for the phone, but apparently I was being billed at my current address for a phone they had located at my previous address!

Anyway, after some initial sympathy and help from a member here I then sent the full unexpurgated version to VM via the Contact Us section on their web site. No word of a lie, within 15 minutes I had received a call from a lovely lady at the Chief exec's office, firstly sympathising with me, then taking a full detailed account of everything and then promising me solemnly to get the whole issue fixed. She then rang back within a further hour and asked me for some technical details on my set up (V+ Box and 2 normal STB's) and the asset/serial numbers on boxes and cards. Then she disappeared into the ether saying she would call back no later than a week afterwards. For one week I heard nothing, but she had stated she would call me when things were being fixed. Of course 5 days into the week I assumed the whole thing had gone down the usual black hole. However, she had left me her details and personal contact number and email, so I bided my time, storing up my departure speech for the week anniversary of her call. One week to the day, and almost the hour i got a call from my better half saying the whole TV had gone mental with channels disappearing and re-appearing and blue screens etc. Before I could call this lady though she called me and explained that the account merger and upgrade was happening there and then and that she was with the engineers doing the work! One hour later and all the services were back. My first bill arrived, fully merged and for the first time since getting the V+ box and going on the XL pack in February I had the right bill!

My point here is that nothing can replace such personalised service in changing the perspective of a customer undergoing the customer service hell that I had. I have always been happy with the package and quality of the products/services I get from VM, even to the point of being fully supportive of them in their spat with Murdoch International! This one person, by taking time to listen and understand, has turned my perception of VM the full 180! I work for a big mobile phone company and we have learnt the value of UK based call centres and excellent customer service. Lets hope VM stop looking at the bottom line and return to UK call centres and genuine customer care.

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

Now if only everyone like me could get that kind of service we'd be on to a winner. My problem is with my broadband constantly thinking I'm a brand new user and my having to enter PID numbers all the time. On Sunday I had to do this four times. I too have had someone call me. I took the time to actually write in, but it still has not been resolved. If I did not rely on them for my TV, Phone and Broadband I wouldn't even be having this chat, I'd be long gone down the road.

Re: Virgin Media Customer Service- Your Personal Experience
 

Just to add my experience from the past week:

I've had an intermittant fault on my broadband where it would just cut out for a few seconds, then come back. This went on for a couple of weeks before I phoned the support line on Saturday.

I'd expected some annoying response along the lines of "have you tried disabling your firewall?" but to my absolute surprise the lady I spoke to tried none of that. She had me make the token gesture of unplugging and reconnecting all the cables on the back of the modem, but basically just booked an engineer to come around. Also no issue refunding the call charge, she just did it.

What was an intermittant fault became a permanent fault, so I phoned back on Monday to ask if there was an appointment available sooner than the one I'd already arranged. There was, and the chap I spoke to just rearranged it with no hassle.

The engineer came yesterday morning, sometime between 10 and 10:30 and within 5 minutes or so had swapped out my old ntl:100 modem for a new Virgin 255 model. I was a bit suspicious when he said that it needed an hour to work it's way through Virgin's systems before it would work, but I left it and went to work. Got back from work, reset the router as the engineer had said I'd have to, and all sorted.

Not only did my broadband start working again, I'm also now getting the full 4Mb of the L package, rather than the 3Mb that the old modem was giving me.

So, happy customer here. Thank you Virgin.

:)