Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d...tain-d287mflfg

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/j...ored-dz9ggzlrp

You can only see the first part, if anyone subscribes could you please let us know what else it says?

Sometimes newspaper articles are republished by other sites later on, i'll check again in a few days and if it is i'll update the thread.

Hopefully this publicity from The Times will prompt some action to improve matters.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Here you go
http://archive.today/1Gdwi

http://archive.today/eFQPe

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Again I have a great service from Virgin Media.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

VM is always great until it's not. Triggering a network fault report and an engineer to fix it seems to be very slow.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

No problems with Virgin Media as they have always been very good when there is a fault.

As for Virgin Media having the worst service in Britain l would say that is completely over-exaggerated balderdash.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

It simply amazes me that Richard digs out any story about poor service from Virgin Media and posts it here while remaining a customer of said company.
Like others, I’m a very happy customer whose never had any significant problem in over twenty years.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Not read the article

I think the majority of complaints will be about the customer service side and billing, we see quite a few posts on here about the 'offshore' service centers ;)

For the vast majority of users there will never be an issue, but there are always some who experience a horrible time with installation/faults etc . . . no different to any other global company I guess.

I've never had any major issues, but if BT had fiber in my area I'd probably be long gone . . . in fact still thinking of going anyway, not because the service is bad, simply because of the pricing strategy and the thought of getting some muppet in Mumbai if I ring for a better deal ;)

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Agree with most of that other than the BT reference, I think they're far worse than VM.
As you say outages are few and far between and when there is a local or national issue they seem to get fixed fairly quickly. The problems arise when you have a fault specific to your address, reporting faults to offshore is usually a long winded process.
Incorrect billing and price rise bingo is also an ever present frustration but at least it can usually be sorted using the official forum.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Does Richard have the most repetitive topics for threads he starts?

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Thing is that people with problems are often more vocal than those who don't, especially with service provision. People don't generally come to forums like this because everything is going swimmingly but because they have a problem and want to see if it's them or more general.
And unlike reviewing "things" it's also rare to have as good comparison and what is measured is "intangible". If you compare a "thing" you can look at specification and does it match, it is often measurable (size, power, colour etc). But service is less definable and with more variables; is the slow internet due to the service, others using the service at the same time, or the fact that you are using a 15 year on laptop with 512kB RAM and a really odd wifi dongle that wobbles a bit and is only rated at 5Mb anyway and so on...

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Is it really any worse than anyone else? I pretty much have a great service and most faults I have had over the years have been fixed relatively quickly

I hate the way they deal with contracts and often I report a fault that they say is my end and send an engineer and then it magically fixes itself ie a network fault and then I am left thinking should I cancel or let him come anyway.

I also do not like the way you have to be the idiot and let them run through their FAQ even though you know full well the fault is outside your house cuz you have run all the tests already

But I am sure they are all the same CS is the weak point with everything pretty much across the board of anything

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

it's funny though if you had asked me a couple of months ago when I tried to contact CS, several days of being on hold for over an hour i got fed up, I would have been in the "they're rubbish" camp.

however a week or so ago, phoned up, almost immediately spoke to someone who was extremely helpful about my bill, and helped me reduce it, explained the bundles and charges etc. was nice and reassuring to someone who wasn't just sticking to a script.

the big win with virgin, is when it does go wrong, which isn't very often, they fix it. but from what i gather with ppl with BT, and say sky, when the internet goes wrong, they blame each other.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

When a fault is apparent, I like the way you can have updates texts, calls or emails sent to you, together with the same when the faults are cleared. Plus you can register for compensation for loss of service within the rules.

But for that you have to know where on the website to do all that. And it's not that obvious where that is.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

You can go on to ant ISP forum and see problems like this. Compared to the customer base they are few and far between. As in life, shit happens.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

The original version of this website, nthellworld.com, included a section of customer testimonials under the headings “NTL Hell” and “NTL Heaven”. There were plenty of stories in each section, however the reason Frank Whitestone founded the site was his frustration with the poor customer service he had been getting, and the reason it thrived was because a lot of people were of similar sentiments and joined, and sustained, an active discussion community based on them.

The basic stories found on that forum in the early days - extremely long wait times on the phone for CS, promises of action unfulfilled, CS calls randomly cut off, promises of improvements “coming soon” - have never really gone away. I suspect that in the circles consumer journalists move in they have become folk memory, and a story that is very easy to periodically dust off and repurpose. Whether or not the OP’s proposition is objectively the case or not, is very difficult to prove, but the reputation for poor CS is something that the company has never been able to fully shake off.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

I still access this place via https://www.nthellworld.uk/home.php :D

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

tldr: more nonsense.
In 22 years, it's been down about twice for me which wasn't even for a full day. Few DNS issues but that's it.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Yep, we keep that page up and running.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Yep, same here.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

But unfortunately, Virgin Media keeps renewing its ownership of nthellworld.com. It doesn't even point to their community forum, it just redirects to their homepage. Maybe one of these days they'll forget and we'll redeem it for its original venerable purpose. :D

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Thanks Steve, that is very useful ;)

---------- Post added at 16:20 ---------- Previous post was at 16:16 ----------

The question is regarding the abysmal customer service from VM as opposed to any technical problems (though of course technical issues can give rise to complaints about not being able to get through to resolve matters, how the interaction was handled if they could etc).

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Then shouldn't the thread title reflect this?

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Had cable from when cabletel installed in my area and then through to NTL followed by virgin media and in nearly 30 years I've had very few issues with any of the companies.

Negotiate with customer service at end of contract each time and always manage to negotiate a good deal so have to say overall I'm very satisfied with them

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

The thread title reflects vertabim the question that the Times asked. In general conversation the term 'service' could apply either to bad customer service or to bad technical service with regards to their products. In this case The Times articles are clearly referring to bad customer service.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Typical - headline not accurately reflecting article...

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Customer service, particularly via phonelines is crap everywhere. The bar isn't very high, however VMs has deteriorated significantly lately. Only if you're cancelling will you get a better service.
Cheap overseas call centres, customer retention, direct debits and profit margins is the name of the game.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

For the most part my service is great but i do have 1 issue they cant seem to solve.

If i log into My Virgin Media i cannot access any of my mail boxes, cant change passwords nor can i upgrade packages. Theres an open ticket but its been ongoing since last October.

Re: Times asks: Does Virgin Media have the worst service in Britain?
 

Looks like VM are also failing to properly pay automatic payments for loss of service:

https://archive.ph/yNsCF

This formed part of my complaint as I was constantly reassured that I would receive compensation for loss of service, but only when matters had been resolved. Once matters had been resolved they changed their mind and said I was entitled to nothing! How they can continue to get away with conducting business like this either commercially or legally is beyond me. Like one of the customers in the Sunday Times artticle, matters were only resolved after the threat of legal action by my representative.