Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I've been trying all week to get though the retentions all week without success! Does anyone have any tips on how to get through? It's getting beyond a joke now!

Thanks in advance!!

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I suspect they are inundated at the moment!

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

you could trying calling CS and asking them to put you through, but yes, im sure they are very very busy, and will probably get even more busy at about 5:30 as people start geting home from work.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

The retentions line is always busy and there is never no Q.

However it is not impossible to get through, wait time 30 mins(as from 1hr ago).

I know this is not what you would expect of a Virgin Company, but once Virgin get going hopefully there will be none of this!!!

Hope this helps

John

;)

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

What exactly do you mean when you say "Once Virgin get going" I thought they were operational or are they ?

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Things still remain in more or less the same state as when everything was separate, they now have in common a trading name but it will take a while for anything to change

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Sorry for not being clear yeh they are opperational but it took Vrigin Trains 2 years to get that service up to scratch, i think after 6 months Virgin Media will be very big.

But thats my opinion...

John ;)

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Hi All

I have been a NTL now VM subscriber for many years.

However due to the BSKYB fiasco I have decided to cancel today! Im on the XL package. Not worth the money now!

Tried several times today but I kept getting cut off!:Yikes:

I see im not the only one.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Why are you trying to get through. Are you expecting an offer you can't refuse, or are you serious about leaving. If the latter then simply write in (recorded delivery is best) giving notice to terminate. If the former, then you'll need to be prepared for that extremely long wait on the off chance that you get lucky.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Hi,
That's my opinion aswell. We shall see over the next few months just how commited VM are to their customers.

Regards - Woolly One

Sorry - shpuld have qupted virginmedia(John) to confirm what I was on about (new to this)

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I handed in my notice and got through in about ten minutes.

I did not take any option on the phone just let it run on as my phone does not do the press 2 or 3 or 4 etc, dont know why?

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Lucky Sod. It took me 3/4 hour holding on to get through to someone. After explaining things and reading out their contract a few times (to cs) I got put through to a manager.

He released me from my TV contract early. I did keep the broadband though as that is a superb product.

Even Trading Standards have been on telly saying they "would expect Virgin to release customers who are not happy".

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I've sat in retentions at Knowsley (the old TW center) a few years ago, and they had very strict targets on how many callers they can allow to actually disconnect. Virtually all were saved in some way by talking them into keeping them some of the services, or keeping all of the services with discounts.

The training given included a section titled "How to undermine the confidence of the customer", which was all about showing the customer what they thought they knew is wrong.

I sat in the center for the day listening to calls and speaking to the managers. It is creepy, to be honest.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Any idea how long they should be taking to answer e-mails?

Sent them an e-mail on the 13th and managed to get a partial replay on the 22nd but then needed to send them another e-mail and still no reply yet.

I tried calling them but it took to long and had to hang up.

Look after a disabled relative with dementia so staying on the phone for 30 to 45 minutes is not an option.

I did get an auto responce saying they'll get back to me within 48 hours.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

tekboss, they're being hammered with demand. I'd imagine they're running quite far behind.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Thanks.

I'll leave it for another week or so and see what happens.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

havnt tried to get through yet though from my phone calls to other places to check my options i can say you might not need to

bt said they would contact virgin and sky said they would give me a pack with letters to send to virgin

now i am just waiting to see if sense will prevail or if i will go with the cheaper option with the channels i want ( that is sky now ;) )

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

a friend of mine cancelled a couple of days ago the girl on the line said they where losing hundreds of customers a day

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I work in a retentions department (not TW/NTL) and in a 5 hour shift I'll probably do 10 disconnections for every 'save'. Multiply this by the 200 or so people working and theres probably a good 2000 cancellations per day (with a customer base of 2.2 million). On 3.3 millions customers, a few hundred a day cancelling won't be too much for virgin to cope with, once it gets to a few thousand a day for a sustained period I would imagine they'll worry.

I feel more sorry for the fact that they'll almost certainly miss their targets (and hence commission) due to something completely out of their control.

Any less than approx 77000 people switching from cable to virgin and virgin win. Between 77000 and 150000, no-one wins (sky loses and virgin loses), above 150000 and Sky win.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

i think it will get to 150000 very quickly as people begin to really miss the channels after the weekend e.g. people wanting to watch lost etc or sky news at the weekend

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I'm not sure... It'd take at least a month and thats discounting new connections (and I know of two new connections amongst friends in the past few days alone). I miss the channels, I did watch Lost & Futurama, but its not the sort of thing I'd up and leave for, especially since I'm happy with the price and reliability of the service I've got.

edit: Just remember that even if 2000 customers a day were leaving (and I'll pretend that new sign ups have frozen), it would still take 75 days (2 months) for 150,000 people to leave. I imagine that after the first few weeks, cancellations will die down and people will forget they ever had Sky One, as is the way with a lot of people.

And of the people I've spoke to so far, not one has said they'll cancel. A couple have considered it, and my step dad even rang up to cancel (Massive star gate fan), but retentions gave him a deal he couldn't refuse so he's staying, especially since he's happy with the broadband :).

It'll be interesting to see the effects of this, but its going to be 3-6 months before the true picture emerges...

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

i think alot of people are leaving due to lost and sky news

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

[quote=holographic;34237769]

He released me from my TV contract early. I did keep the broadband though as that is a superb product.
quote]

Aye but they gave me a 29 day notice, how did you get out of it? i'll phone them back and get it.......:mad:

as for lost i never watched it but im not missing skyone for the other things,not a chance in hell.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I was 23 minutes on hold. Then I got the lot, unlimited talk 24+10Mb for 57 quid.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

What do you mean by the lot?

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

No idea. My TV and Phone end on Monday (same day as my sky install)

I am keeping BB but getting 10Mbit at very cheap price!

I was going to stay with VM but it makes sense to change. I can save money. I know people on here are very passionate with regards to either Sky or VM but I'm not.

Saving just over £20 per month for better services.

Both VM and Sky are BIG companies so take advantage while you can..

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

All the TV channels but Sky Sports, I watch Sports on Hong Kong ESPN, so I can watch any game that I want live.

TV all (all movie channels etc) but not Sky sports
Phone unlimited 24 + free international calls to 1 country
10Mb BB

57 quid. Somebody posted on DS (I think) that he got a 55 quid deal for the same deal.

I asked the guy to offer me a deal, I did not say I will leave or anything. He offered me several choices and I picked the above.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

that was quick with the install -Monday fantastic for you!

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I have seen people posting that their Sky install is over a week away.

I signed up to Sky (via their website) this afternoon before calling VM and it offered me Monday as install date. PERFECT!

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Really? When I was in retentions, their targets were something like 98% of customers 'saved'. No way I could have done it.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I believe you are moving to early. Give it at least 30 days and see what happens. But if you leave to join Sky now, you will be tied to a 12 month contract.

I've got no plans to leave Virgin Media.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Tuesday 6th march AM.

So well happy i wont miss Battlestar etc......just dream team on sunday.

Thank you for ordering from Sky.com.
Your order is being processed and you will receive your sales confirmation and installation letters within the next few days.
In the meantime if you have any queries about your order or you wish to make any changes, please email skydigital@bskyb.com or call 08702 40 40 40.

plus whats the worst that happens I'm with sky now paying the same for what i had a Virgin. No brainer.
and i dont miss a thing on skyone.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Based on the poll (http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...php?t=33607505) 17.5% said they would move to Sky. Which from 3.3m customers this is 577,500. Sky wins big time!

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

None of these polls use a good enough sample to be anywhere near accurate.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Any idea how we can find out the actual churn figure once the dust settles?

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Well it's better than nothing.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

To be honest I don't think the online polls will reflect anywhere near accurately.

The ones on this forum differ quite a bit to the ones on VM's own website.

But you never know....

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Yes - it'll be on the quarterly results for shareholders, which are public access.

The last quarter results actually just came out a few days ago - to quote;

" The company had a net loss of 64,300 telephone subscribers, because of competition and an installation shutdown. Virgin Media said it's changing the way it markets its phone service.


Competition with satellite distributors including BSkyB has intensified, leading to the loss of customers. Burch has said his focus is to have ``positive subscriber growth'' this year and to reduce the company's so-called churn, or customer cancellation rate."

Bit of a stupid thing to say IMHO, as obviously this Sky One thing is going to cause a bit of churn. In an average quarter Virgin Media loose around 2% of their customer base. This is growing year on year (ie it's getting worse). A large part of the reason is Sky's advertising machine.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Very true - also more importantly there are many other options.

For example some people will move to Freeview I expect, or some to a free sat service.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Well, managed to get an e-mail from VM and they've confirmed that my services have been transfered to the Vip package, saving me about £20 a month. :)

They've also confirmed that i'm now entitled to a £10 sim card, which i don't want.

However, no mention of the sports channel or the additional set top box that's supposed to be included in the package, and also no mention of talk international or talk mobile.

Just checked the sports channel and nothings been activated and that's been a few hours now.

I've sent off another e-mail but SKY is now beginning to look good as this is dragging on far to long.:mad:

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Retentions used to be alright at Teesside. They where a good bunch of folks that worked hard to take ownership of problems and take them through till they where sorted out and the customer was happy again. They sorted problems out rather than throw money at them which I'm sure the customer s respected. I used to get handed escallations from retentions (which was directly under faults) and just sort out the priblem with a few phone calls.

untill someone at Virgin understands that the way to good customer service is to have highly trained well paid 'english' staff on the phones things are not going to get better. Swapping about call centres and phone numbers is going to make things worse in the long run. I'll give sky and bt props for haveing 150,151 0800 800 800 (bt) and 08702 40 40 40 (sky) as at least you know the bloody number to call. Most times you know your getting the sky cal centre in fife and the lady I spoke to knew exactly what she was doing even when presented with a few things to trip her up. Sky however use the phillipenes (sp) for thier bb tech support and they know nowt.

---------- Post added at 22:41 ---------- Previous post was at 22:38 ----------

Compare that to the 13% it got to a few years back and it is clear that things are getting better.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

13%?! Didn't know that. You're right -- it's much improved.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I'll be impressed if it actually happens.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

dont know all the figures but it takes a bit for me to move. I've been with Virgin/ntl over 15 years ( family thinks its 17) and ive got sky coming on Tuesday to install skydigital.

that says it all!

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Both companies are public / listed. This will get published in the interim statements.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

i was thinking of moving to sky but by judging by that article on news 24 sky channels on virgin media soon, i'm going to ask if I can get a deal until the sky channels return

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

But you've been saying all week you were going.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

What news 24 article?

As far as I know, the official word right now is neither party are negotiating, or planning to.

---------- Post added at 23:42 ---------- Previous post was at 23:40 ----------

Why?

Sky will have increased quota for the beginning of next week. Easy profit. Engineers will want the work.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

[quote=Kevin.Beaumont;34238550]What news 24 article?

As far as I know, the official word right now is neither party are negotiating, or planning to.

Someone about a consumer group or something getting involved

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I have just been on to retentions as the other week being an ex" NTL I decided to change to the VIP package for £85 - I thought this was a very good deal especially with the V+ box in addition to the shiny silver samsung box which replaced the dodgy Pace one a couple of months ago. Even more so with the unlimited local and national calls 24/7. Then a couple of days ago I was looking at the VIP bundle again and it showed you could get it for £75 if you changed online. I have just called the retentions dept and after being on hold for just over half an hour a nice lady whom gave her full name has honoured the price reduction for as long as I keep the service.

Thankyou Virgin - I am sure that I will be staying for a while even without the basic sky channels (Got most of em on my freeview telly anyway !) - Only problem now is that I have to buy the new Bones series when it comes on sale to placate the missus as for some reason she quite likes that blokewho is in it who used to be in Buffy/Angel :rolleyes: :)

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Where did you come up with the figure of 150,000? 150,000 would cover this year's losses as there are only 3 months left for them but next years losses will be bigger, i reckon it needs 450,000 to switch to cover a full year's losses.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

The VIP £10 off offer is for one month only on the website so I'm surprised you've managed to get it "forever".

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

if you are switching your tv to sky because of you miss the sky bacis channels, fair enough.

If you are switching to sky for broadband as well DONT do it.

I work for a large (100's of workers) company, I know quiet a lot of people who have sky and have also naturally took there offer for cheap broadband, switching from the likes of tesco,tiscali etc.

Every one of them is completly peed of with there sky broadband, very slow, very unstable, generaly very poor compaired to there old providers.

If you do switch to sky for tv i would recomend keeping your cable broadband or getting another adsl provider.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Result!

Sky- Digital getting installed on Tuesday the 6th
Phone and TV form Virgin Cancelled without notice due to the number of years I’ve been a customer and to top it off £10 off My BB for 12 months.
I’ve just to chuck my Ntl Box out as it was the original box and disconnect it all myself.

So basically by Tuesday I’ll have my skyone back and still have my Virgin BB for only £25 a month adding both sky and virgin together which works out £7 better off a month.

I felt sorry for the poor guy on the phone, yesterday they had a hell of a day. But at least he sounded like he knew what he was doing.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

[/I]



Your right - thats what was on the web site yesterday but a few days before I saw the other one and she told me they would honour the first one I saw :)

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

According to the latest news item on cableforum they haven't lost many people (yet), so i think it's safe to say that Sky aren't going to get enough money to cover their losses.

Retentions obviously aren't as busy as some people would let you believe!

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Well personally they have seemed pretty busy for the last couple of days. I have tried phoning them several times, but always > 30 mins wait message, and have given up on all occasions so far. Wouldn't be a bad idea for VM to add a few extra call centre staff given the current situation (and open the lines after 5pm).

I wouldn't be surprised if retentions are actually retaining quite a high % of customers though (through discounts, extra services etc). So the actual no. cancelled may well be below some of the estimates. Still its not just the cost of lost customers to take into account, but the lost revenue due to "freebies", and the damage to the brand through this negative publicity is bound to impact the new customer metrics also.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I don't doubt that, but i think both brands will have been harmed equally by this, just i think it will hurt Sky more financially. Freebies will deffinitely hurt i agree, but once they started buying up more content they won't have to keep them up. Better to keep the customer first off.

Thats why i believe they will get round the table as if the gamble doesn't pay off the shareholder aren't going to be interested in losing money.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

I agree :) - finally we agree on something :tu:

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

hehe - Had to happen sooner or later mate! :)

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Shame - you're going to miss all the extras coming to Virgin Media...

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Everyone i have no interest in........ so no i wont miss a thing. Now if i watched these trust me I'd be well happy, but i dont so means nothing to me. Although i did enjoy band of brothers if you've not seen it do its great i got the box set for Xmas.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Not to mention paying more for the package:

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Again Nope £15 i get more to be honest....but let not dwell :)
I was basic on package with VM.

I only have the Tv with sky, lost the Vm phone and kept the VM BB with a £10 discount for 12 months
the phones dead as of about 2 hours ago.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

£15+broadband costs and no phone?
Hmm - I won't let you do my shopping then

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

It was £14 with VM for a non Digital service and phone i never used at all, BT is our main phone or our moblies (non-virgin) and then £17.99.

So lets rewind onld cost £32- new price £25 and the main point lacking for some Skyone........Get it......

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Oh yes - back to the Simpsons,,,,,
Yawn...

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Yeah, and Battlestar G, Stargate SG1 and Atlantis, dresden files etc exactly what i want out my TV, Get it My TV not yours, But i guess I'm wasting my time but it is fun.

Main thing Its my TV Viewing, Skyone was apart of it.

See these guys that have no connection – no worth to a company but takes it that personal its truly sad.

I don’t care who provides my Tv, I’ve got skyone back on Tuesday and saving some money, Happy camper here and for the kids “ I’m loving it”

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

It's alright for children I guess.
Plus a lot of these are on other channels too.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Yeah the kids do love Skyone, they dont get all the jokes of the simpsons but wait till they find out we have the same Tv as there friends.

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

Sorry - I meant Sky users...

Re: Impossible to get through to retentions!
 

That says it all!
but keep the entertainment coming