Thursday, February 23, 2012

Virgin Media are...simply rubbish

Guest post Ebrahim Piperdy: "I am currently a customer with Virgin Media and have been for 12 years. As we all know it was previously NTL and I can remember how one of their staff left a rude voice mail for all customers to hear. This was due to a lack of staff available to deal with customer enquires, the poor customer service continues.

Recently I have managed to buy a house. However this could have been made more difficult had I not complained to the Information Commissioner and my credit agency. Virgin Media did not setup my Direct Debit properly which caused my payment to be missed. As this affects my credit rating, I would be restricted in choosing a good mortgage lender.  Virgin Media competence could have meant that my mortgage was refused!

Fair enough mistakes can be made but what puzzled me was the lack of understanding by Virgin Media in what I was requesting them to do. All I was asking was for them to write to the credit rating agencies to put the record straight. They didn’t do this.

I subsequently sent them a “Breach of Data Protection Notice” in which they did not even respond to. They had to do so within a set time frame. I then threatened them with County Court action and wrote to the Information Commissioner. I outlined they were in breach of the Data Protection Act in which they must hold accurate information about customers.

I still exchanged a few emails with Virgin Media. Eventually I believe they took the hint as to what I was going to do which was to make a claim to the County Court. I would have referred to Liz Ferguson v British Gas. Liz Ferguson became a former customer of British Gas but she still received letters from them requesting she make payment.

Liz Ferguson was successful in reaching a settlement for the harassment this caused. I too would have been and any person can do so as long as you have communicated with the other party enough to bring to their attention what they are doing wrong. The link to the case is http://nearlylegal.co.uk/blog/2009/02/the-gas-man-cometh.

In all Virgin Media are poor. I think they need to look hard at what they can do to improve the service offered to current customers and not focus on wooing new customers". (Click on "virgin media" label underneath for more sorry tales about Virgin Media and its dear leader)

2 comments:

nick venedi said...

John

Sorry to hear about the bad experiences you had with them. I can confirm that the Virgin active gyms (same group) are as equally bad if not rubbish. I had to leave the one I was a member of because of ridiculous rules with off peak members etc the customer service side of it was bad but they soon run around to sort things out after I escalated my complaint! The answer with the private sector is to challenge them and not stop until you get satisfaction!
Cheers

John Gray said...

Hi Nick

it was actually one of our branch steward's story but I have had my run in's with the (mostly) rubbish service provided by Virgin and Branson. It never ceases to amaze me that people harp on about how wonderful customer service is in private companies! As if. Please blog your experience as well.