More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

Virgin Media TV has cut some 16 jobs across the business, while senior commissioning editor factual and factual entertainment Rebecca Johnson has stepped down from her role.

More cuts at Virgin Media | News | Broadcast

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

Hardly earth shattering news

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

What a friendly bunch you are here.

I love you guys.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

I'll bet VM's Director of Quality is still in post!

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

Let me get something straight here. 16 jobs is diddly squat compared with the 1000,s they have dumped on the dole so far in the last 2 years alone.

Some of us have seen this first hand and i can say now there is not that many in VM who would not be concerned about there jobs in the present climate

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

Considering ntl alone had over 21,000 employees at one stage, Telewest over 15,000, and now Virgin Media in total have less than 13,000 having shed 4,000 since merger you'll forgive if there's no massive cry of outrage over 16 people leaving.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

:clap:

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

<wonders why broadban.. sorry Ignition came to be part of the reduction from 21,000>

:angel:

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

He wasn't, he left voluntarily for more responsibility, money and a job that suited longer term aspirations better :)

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

I wonder if media boy left off a couple of zero's.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

Media boy was quoting straight from the article he linked to. ;)

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

the 16 people cut is to pay for other peoples pay rises in the near year i bet lol

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

No its not is to pay for The "I want a discount" brigades war chest:D

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

IMHO I don't give a fig about anybody whose being made redundant, including the 90 people who are being made redundant along with me.

It anit gonna make get a job easier and means more competion, I wnet to an agency on Friday they only had 2 full time jobs on there books, neither I could fill.

It's look after no 1 time

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

But like the Murphy's...

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

Just out of curousity anyone in virign know if they are planning on opena new uk call centre in airdie? just i have heard from itnernal sources that a company there has won contract to do broadband stuff for either virign or sky but the details have not been offically released as the contracts are still finalise

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

The one in Airdrie has been doing tech support for the last 4 years :)

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

i know but they have wona new contract and all my source can tell me is it with a major isp for broadband support, and i am thinking from information i have other peaces it might be more virign tech support.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

Whether it's a Scottish accent (especially near Glasgow!) or an Indian accent the support service will be no better than the troubleshooting scripts that will be followed.

If VM go back to their trouble tickets and compile scripts from the problems/resolutions logged there maybe service would improve.

Also at peak times the ability to look at the utilisation stats for an area combined with an honest response is a must. We've already heard that this stuff is available - whether the Indians can access this I know not.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

I'm a Scottish accent (especially near Glasgow) and I've never ever used a script, my troubleshooting is based on what the customer is telling me.

If the customer comes on the line and tells me he has packet loss and high ping times, asking what lights do you have on your modem is a stupid question.

And yes we have tools that show utilisation, power levels, snr etc.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

The thing is this: basically the customer will tell you it doesn't work as expected. You'll go through a series of questions, the answers to which you set against your knowledge. If you judge that an engineer needs to go out to site, then that's what you arrange.

Plus/minus - I think that's what happens at first port of call.

From there, it's a crap-shoot IMO from reading the goings on reported in the forums. I might be wrong, but the CS agents should have the OSS tools necessary to drill through to a customer's modem, stopping off on the way right to the street cab. Those OSS tools should therefore be able to pinpoint a problem so that the engineer can focus on it rather than swapping the modem and running a speed test. (From what's reported here, that doesn't always seem to be the case).

Additionally, from the symptoms decribed by the customer, a range of potential causes can be brought up from the knowledge base (that many professional support organisations deploy) so that the OSS probing can be purposeful and effective.

Suspecting that VM are not at this level of maturity (despite what it's quality director Peter Evans says he's trying to achieve), I merely make the point as to how it should be done. My professional experience applies.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

There are extensive OSS tools which give a great deal of information though the onus remains on the agent to use them. As far as being able to drill down to street cabinet level VM cannot monitor unmanaged and unmanageable devices. The network is monitored at CMTS card level and CMTS port, it is not monitored past nodal level so a single amp failing is unlikely to generate an automatic outage.

VM's OSS is actually extremely advanced believe it or not.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

There only looking for experiance people with knowledge in broband and computers so hopefully it should be better if youg et thorugh to them, althougha script is to be used you are to use your gut instice and knowledge

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

What I want VM to do is to be ststematic about compiling problem categories, resolutions, codify this and roll out a knowledge base to their agents and preferably also to customers via the web.

That's the professional way of doing things when you've got trouble tickets and can compile the data in the way I desxcribed.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

BT and Orange said they were bringing some call centres back, but where are they, that was a year ago, and it was in the papers that a BT customer was verbally abused over the phone by someone from an indian call centre.

Its only a matter of time before 3 (Hutchison 3G) move its call centres over to the UK/Ireland. Its the biggest complaint about 3. The network coverage has improved vastly, but the last thing that will appeal to customers is the actual call centre. For 3 business services, they use a UK call centre during the daytime. For 3 sales and directory enquiries 118333, a UK call centre is in operation for that too.

What I don't understand, wouldn't it still be cost effective to have 3 call centres in Hong Kong where 3-Hutchison Whampoa is based? At least people will be able to understand the accent better and people there have a much better knowledge about 3 and mobiles than in india???? I'm sure 3's retentions is based in Hong Kong.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

How on earth does that relate to Virgin Media?

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

I notice they don't send some tech guy to install your broadband now, just post you all the items in a DIY pack

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

...indeed, a lot more of that to come...

VM has a new CFO (finance boss) and he's made clear there are lots more job cuts to come.

Although there has been extensive work to merge all the cablecos, there are still subtle differences between the 3 main legacy networks, although it will soon be one proper network fed by only one super headend (with a backup) instead of the current 3.

In fact, there are elements of all the predecessor cable cos within VM in areas such as how stbs work to billing. Because there used to be dozens of cablecos, VM has buildings and staff everywhere. The CFO plans to consolidate this considerably, I gather. Not a good Christmas for some...

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

Going back to the 16 jobs....

As well as the large culls there have been small numbers vanishing for some time, I believe the small numbers tend to go unnoticed. (Not for those affected though)

When I decided enough was enough and left the sorry state of a place in 2001, I would not have foreseen that the company could have got themselves into a bigger mess.

The company has now turned themselves into a company supplying a technical product but without the technical employees to support it. Instead of putting the right people in the field to fix the problems, they have people sat on the end of the phone reading scripts and posting out new modems, splitters and cables for the customer to install themselves.

If the customer is lucky to get an 'Engineer' out, they most likely end up with someone who has no more technical skills than an installer. (I have recent experience of this)

What technical staff they do have left, are generally so pi**ed off with the treatment they have received and the regular 'under threat of redundancy' periods that all they care about is seeing the bonus of another months pay in the bank.

I don't blame a poor attitude on any employee of that organisation, it has been created by the organisation itself.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

We never use scripts as Mags says they do not and would not work.

The online tools that I have at my disposal can contact the modem see what the learned MAC address is and give me the Public IP of that equipment.

I can then take the Learned MAC address and put into coffer.com and be able to tell what the modem is connected to.

We can see what outages the are in the area and we are then able to match the customers equipment against them to verify if it is an area issue or a localised one that requires an engineers visit.

All this can be ascertained by a trained agent using the correct tools in the first few minutes of the call giving the customer a quick and easy resolution to their call.

If we are unable to get the customer back online we can then either advise that it is an area fault or book an engineer visit to fix the fault.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

Would you care to elaborate? I'm pretty well infomed and I've heard nothing. Yes we have a new CFO but I not heard anything about any large scale redundancies.

---------- Post added at 17:10 ---------- Previous post was at 17:03 ----------

With all due respect Escapee, you've banging on about how crap VM is for years, despite not having worked for them for 8 years.

Granted in 2001 it wasn't good, the telecoms crash, the acquisition of C&W. It's been tough for everyone in the years since, but now (I believe) the company has passed the bottom of the curve some time ago. The atmosphere within the business is better than I can ever remember.

It's not perfect, far from it, but the company is no where near as bad as it was at the start of the decade.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

Must admit i would like to see some evidence to backup that claim as well ???

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

I was invited along and attended leaving drinks for one of the guys very recently, there was also at least one guy there waiting to find out if he would also be chosen for redundancy. I agree the numbers leaving are far lower these days, but I will not agree that morale is any better than it was when I left in 2001. (I guess it may depend on region)

I would say that morale is now a lot worse, and those who once considered they had a career now just consider they have a job. They are expecting redundancy to be just around the corner.

I do take my hat off to them for persistence, but also wonder why the capable ones have stuck it and keep taking the stress. I couldn't be doing with all the uncertainty and the regular 6 monthly re-orgs.

I guess a job there is a bit like being on death row.;)

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

[QUOTE=Escapee;34922828] those who once considered they had a career now just consider they have a job./[quote]

A very fair point, I must admit that "career" prospects in VM are not good. That said VM/NTL has always operated a flat management structure meaning that progressing up the managerial tree has always been difficult. They also have a terrible history of not promoting from within.

They are trying to address this by introducing a new career mapping program called pathfinder. Only time will tell if they are serious about this or just paying lip service.

That said, many in the current climate at this time of year will settle for a job at the moment, myself being one of them.

We have just been through the latest re-org and field engineering have been affected as have other areas of the business, but nothing like the scale of recent culls. At the moment at VM you're as safe as anywhere.

that's life

In that case I've been on death row for 15years.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

[QUOTE=Pierre;34922847][QUOTE=Escapee;34922828] those who once considered they had a career now just consider they have a job./To be fair many companies are bad at promoting from within, the company I work for now has the same problem. Within the past 6 months they launched a scheme for engineers to progress into management or take the senior engineering route.

I do feel however this is just lip service, personally after lots of promises my recent annual appraisal was glowing. The reward is to be told that I will be reporting to some kid, in reality nothing changes. With the lack of RF Engineers, a good engineer will always be kept down at the expense of someone who can be promoted and their skills not missed.

My manager was very upset when I told him what I thought about it, only after 'big mouth' Escapee piped up did others follow.

As you say, time only tells when it comes to any firm in these sort of cases.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

I have a brilliant idea, Why does'nt VM just close down altogether so that someone else can come in an buy it, if VM get rid of anybody else there won't be a company to run.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

While it is awful that 16 people are being made redundant I think you are being just a teeny tiny bit over the top.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

if l am not wrong, wasn't it a couple of months ago that some call centres got closed down as well.

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

What makes you think someone else running the HFC network and services can do it any better*?

*Same pricing structure etc

Re: More cuts at Virgin Media.
 

becaus ehe hate virign media and it appaers to because there not got everything sky has and they dnt offer truly unlimited downlaod etc