Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Apparently the move has been deemed a failure and O2 forums are back next month, dont know if it means the same for VM forums though.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

What a surprise - not!

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Say goodbye ?

Where have you got this from ?

Yes it seems to me they have gotton behind in what they wanna do.. It doesnt mean they are going to abort it totally..

No reason to say Goodbye to anyone...

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

No seriously, trust me this is a typical VM move, decide to do something, no doubt ignore any and all advice from the technical people - in fact fire them for contradicting senior management, crash on regardless and then run up against the hard wall of reality.

Merging two support forums together, well, I’m sure it's not a trivial issue, but it’s been, what, how many months now? Surely both VM and O2 did some degree of due diligence before embarking on said merger? Yes/no?

I’m going to hazard a guess, in a cost-cutting exercise both VM and O2 managed to get rid of all the senior people who actually knew how the systems worked. And now they are stuck with people who lack the skills and knowledge to implement it.

ON the original VM forums, they stated, back in I think February, a temporary pause while they migrate to a new platform - now seven months later and nothing. Seriously what does that say about VM and O2’s competence?

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

There's a guy considering opening his own alternative forum. He's currently asking for opinions as to whether it should include AI to help people to quickly & easily understand Virgin t&c's etc.

Virgin are too dim to realise that, where they leave a void, others will fill it and they won't have any control over what's said.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Ummmm, you mean like Cable Forum ;)

We did that about 23 years ago (even longer if you include NTHW, and its .com predecessor).

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

I think it was a MSE post, but since my memory is no longer fresh I am not 100% on it.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Absolutely true, but the fact is that the official VM community forums had members who were VM employees and could positively act on various posts in an official capacity.

Yes, I am fully aware that this forum has VM employees as members, but can they act on posts, could they, honestly, ask a poster with an issue, to send them their details, account number etc. and ‘short-cut’ the normal support provision?

I suspect woe betides any VM employee who does this.

At best, this forum and any other third party one will be in the same boat, at best some knowledgeable people may respond but at the very best can only advice.

I have responded to a post on the VM internet section, I’m fairly certain I know what the issue will be. But neither I nor anyone on here can ‘force’ the issue. At the very best I can advise and suggest what the customer tells the tech when they turn up.

A forum such as this can advise, at best, but not directly help anyone.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

If the proper forum doesn't start up again then we might not have different opinions about things on a good relationship trying to help people.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Actually we used to do this, semi-officially, before VM finally got their own forum up and running. We knew who the VM staff were (the ones who wanted to be known, anyway) and we would verify them by exchanging emails via their work inbox. After that if someone on here claimed to be staff and wanted to help, a member of the CF team could vouch for them.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Yes Chris, I fully understand and, in fact recognise a few members on here as being VM employees.

But the difference was, if someone posted on the (now defunct) VM forum with a problem, a member of the forum team there would offer to engage via private message and request things like account number, address, account holder's name etc. and based on that would work behind the scenes and, well, get stuff done. But the VM employees were obviously identified by special badges etc. against their names.

Now consider this, I have an issue and request help on here, and someone responds claiming to be an VM employee and asks for my account number, etc, to help me out. What should I do?

What I am absolutely not going to do is to hand over information to some random person on a third-party forum.

You see the problem here?

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Absent us re-starting our own verification, which worked really very well back in the day, the problem is obvious. However there were a great many cases on this forum where users really did give their details to VM staff who we had verified. It worked great.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

I wouldn't share account details on a public forum or even with individuals I have only encountered via public fora.

Re: VM Community Forum Move
 

Forums operated on trust and hope a lot, back in the day (we are talking about 20 years ago now!). Concerted efforts at data threat weren’t quite such a thing and more’s the point there was no GDPR legislation, which would make any attempt at organised, verified sharing difficult enough even on a VM owned forum, and an absolute nightmare somewhere like here. I don’t think there’s much chance of us trying to resurrect it. Any such assistance would have to be on trust, unofficial and very much below radar.