Sunday, May 31, 2009

Virgin Media – The Emperor has no clothes?

It seems like a rite of passage that bloggers will post angry rants about their ISP’s from time to time. Now this is my turn. On Friday my Virgin Media broadband went down. I phoned up and was told that there was an area problem and that it will be fixed as soon as possible. Fair enough, these things happen.

Saturday afternoon, still no connection. I ring up again and am now told it’s my (Virgin Media) cable modem that is at fault. They need to send an engineer and the earliest is Wednesday. Fair enough, not very happy waiting until Wednesday but after all - these things happen.

The real fun started when I asked to use my laptop modem to access the Virgin Media “dial up” Internet service. They refused saying that Virgin Media would not open any more new “dial up” accounts for customers. I pointed out that I was not a new customer (in fact if you include their predecessor companies NTL and Cable and Wireless customer – I have been a loyal customer for at least 10 years or more).

This is apparently irreverent. Due to a Virgin Media fault I will be without any Internet access for some 6 days. I asked was there any possible technical reason why I cannot have a "dial up" account. Nope – I just must wait until Wednesday. I then asked to speak to a supervisor. Nope – they are all busy and someone will ring me within 48 hours.

Not good enough I argued and told them that I will make a formal complaint and cancel my account unless someone could give me a good reason why I cannot use the “dial up” service.

Then I was told to ring a 0906 premium rate telephone number as they may be able to help. I did and it was unobtainable. I then rang the Virgin Media “Dial up” helpline directly (50p per minute) and was told that what I wanted was not a problem and he had my "Dial up" account set up and working within 10 minutes.

So if any of you reading this are with Virgin and your broadband connection goes down they can provide you with a "dial up" service (using it and listening to the sounds the modem makes has made me feel quite nostalgic).

I note from Which? (September 2008) that they had rated its service as “Poor” so I am not alone and many other customers think that Virgin media customer service sucks. I don’t blame the individual staff I spoke to rather management for providing bloody awful policies which front line staff has to implement.

I will fire off this rant to Virgin Media and unless I get a proper response I will take the plunge and move elsewhere. BTW Which? “Best buys” are Zen Internet and BE.

5 comments:

ian said...

Crap service John.

Can you complain through Ofcom? We did this about our ISP BT. Seemed to have worked.

John Gray said...

Hi Ian

Yes, if they do not properly respond I will complain to Ofcom.

Thanks for that.

Shamik said...

Stop putting naked men on your blog. This is not gay porn. You creep.

John Gray said...

Hi Shamik

Dare I ask why you actually think this photo is "porn"? Is there something you want to come out about? Nothing to be ashamed of

Anonymous said...

Virgin Media is the absolute worst service ever.You should try working for them its grim.They have just made 150 ppl redundant 4 of which where a leaving present to a an ops manager.He did not like them and as he was leaving anyway he got to take them with him on subjective selection criteria.
Disgusting compnay to work for,