Neverwinter :: Even angels loose their wings, eventually...

Without equal, Virgin Media are possibly the worst provider of Broadband and TV services this side of the sun. 

The ‘rudest’ award definitely goes to them for their lacklustre effort at listening to the customer and their sometimes blatant attempts at getting you off the phone as soon as possible – presumably to meet their quota of pissing ‘X’ number of people off in a single day, whilst unwilling to pass you onto someone that might possibly have some ability to actually do something about a complaint. 

The very thought of escalating you from 1st line monkey level to 2nd line sentience offends them and they would rather you hang up in disgust than pass you over for fear of making them look more stupid than they already are. 

This attitude of Virgin all hit home recently, after months of continued poor service, lack of customer care, faults and errors. Previously, when it was Telewest – I only ever had one problem with the broadband service, when it was out for 3 hours and that was it. 

Since taking over, Virgin have overcharged me three months in a row, failed to apply the correct tariff on more than one occasion, suspended my services twice (Once for paying on the day required and not before and once because their system was down, couldn’t take the payment in time and as a consequence, was automatically cut off – something you think they would have control over, given that it’s their system – you would think…). Add to this the escalating costs of their temperamental service; the recent fiasco has nudged me into sourcing alternative providers, with a view to telling Virgin where to stick their service very very soon. 

The biggest issue lately and ultimately the reason for moving on, concerns their broadband. One would conclude that paying £37 pounds per month for a 20mb service would actually give you what you were paying for. Not so it seems. The service only ever reached 10mb for a significant period of time and only endless complaining about it managed to get them to look at it and correct the error. Bandwidth is throttled during the evening back to 10mb until around midnight, when everyone has gone to bed and during the time when you expect to be able to get the service you pay for, yet £37 pounds are still extracted from you, despite not getting the speed you are paying for. Notwithstanding that fact, their customer service is a joke. 

The broadband technical support team are in India and will not listen to you if responses deviate from their crib sheet. They get particularly arsey if you in fact know what you are talking about and know more than them (Which isn’t that difficult really), stating that they are ‘Thousands of miles away and can only provide limited help’, which ,makes you wonder what they are for in the first place. 

If that wasn’t enough to contend with, their Engineers – those poor chaps that get sent to the houses and face the wrath of the customer face to face, have to be the most under informed group of individuals alive. For example, my recent issues have all been faults in the area, yet Virgin central fail to communicate this to the mobile grunts. For 5 days, the service was off and on like a flashers trousers and I knew full well it wasn’t the equipment in my house, neither was it likely to be the cable running into the street from the house. I know this, because it has happened many times over the last few months and the symptoms are always the same – failure to acquire the stream and without fail, it’s always the exchange. 1st line monkey support will not entertain the notion that it is NOT the customer, but the area. 

The last time this occurred (And it is the last time as I’m now switching providers as I write this) was Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Five whole days of arguing with all and sundry…. 

Thursday: Fault reported, Engineer booked. Text received to say that it was area fault, engineer cancelled.
Friday: Fault reported as fixed – but fault is still apparent. Engineer rebooked, to be dispatched Saturday Morning.
Saturday: Engineer arrives, discovers it is an area fault. Fault fixed. Service resumes.
Sunday: Fault returns, Virgin do not accept it is area, despite recent events. Engineer booked for Monday.
Monday: Engineer arrives, does not even enter house and goes to cabinet in street. Fault fixed. 

That farcical approach to customer support is one farce too many and I refuse to pay them anything anymore for a service that is both woeful and over priced. 

In the next week, I am very much looking forward to telling Virgin to shove it and will not miss the weekly arguments, having now switched to BT and O2 Business, which should be a significant (If not cheaper) improvement.