[MrRanner]

Before I start with an explanation into our situation, can I first of all say that I bear no malice to any Virgin Media Employee, as I’m sure they get screwed over just as much as the rest of us.

I got Virgin Broadband in July of 2008 when I’d moved into a new flat. The cabling was all installed so all I needed was the modem box. I was also sent a wireless router that wouldn’t work with a Mac and an excessive amount of CAT5. The box weighed about 4kg, for the sake of a 400g modem. At the time, I’d taken the 20Mb service as this seemed to promise the fastest available speed in my area, and living less than a mile from the main Virgin Media control room thing I thought I’d get some of this, and at present I get about 15Mb. This isn’t a massive problem, but is the first in a series of lies.

Since then I’ve not had a consistent connection for more than 6 weeks at a time. I’ve been told that the fault is with our line, the area, our switch box outside the flat and repeated software upgrades. I’ve had three direct debits set up, and all three have been set up for the wrong day of the month and then cancelled, without notification of the suspension being sent through to me, so I don’t know I’ve missed payments.

On one occasion, my partner had to take the day off work to be in for an engineer to come round to fix the line after the service had been down for two weeks. After missing their morning slot, they came round mid afternoon, then phoned me (at work) to say that they couldn’t find a parking space outside the flat, so wouldn’t do the work. An hour later (after calling tech support and being passed around department to department) I ended up in a row with the local engineering manger, who ended up sending out two engineers at 7pm – meaning that no-one needed to be in until after work anyway.

Today, in the latest round of problems, my partner called tech support because the internet was down again. The guy on the phone (Jim), was quite helpful, but informed us that the line had a fault on it and it would take 2 hours or so to resolve. As we were both trying to get work done, we both went to our respective offices. 8 hours later, we came back, having been assured that the line would have been fixed after two hours. It wasn’t. So again my partner phoned tech support, where she was informed that the line was fixed, but the operator needed my password to turn on the line. My partner said “I think the password is ******” to which we got the reply “If you’re not sure, I cannot proceed”. My partner asked to speak to a supervisor, but was spoken over with the operator saying “I just need to tell you one thing…” and generally not wanting to put the supervisor through. Eventually, in frustration, my partner hung up and waited for me to get home.

I called at 5:05 this evening and finally had my call answered at 5:09 by an operator. I informed him of my problem (ie. no internet), and was immediately informed by him that “there was an outage in my area”. This was odd, as between us (my partner and I), we’d been given three different reasons to why the service was down. When I challenged him on this, and questioned why two people from Virgin Media had lied to me, I was put on hold for five minutes (enough time to make a cup of tea and a slice of toast), and was informed on his return that the fault was with the line. I asked what he needed to get this sorted and what information or passwords he needed, and was told he’d have to check what the situation with the fix would be, but that there was no need for passwords as the technical support team DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. I was then put on hold for a further 9 minutes, at which point he came back on the line and told me that I needed to unplug the modem. Having done this, I was put on hold for a further 5 minutes, before the operator came back on line to ask me (repeatedly over the next 6 minutes) to plug in and unplug the modem. He then put me on hold (again), for a further 5 minutes before eventually asking that I check if the internet was working. It was. At this point I asked to speak to his supervisor, who must be a very busy man as it took him 8 minutes to reach the phone.

I questioned why it had taken over an hours worth of phone conversation to solve the problem, and why we had been lied to. His only reply was that he “would be filing a complaint against those involved” then put me on hold for another 5 minutes whilst he checked my account. He said that I should get in touch with customer services as technical support could not offer any financial compensation for poor service.

I’m now passed the point of anger, and slipped into resentment of ever taking this appalling “service” out. I’m disappointed that virgin care so little about their customers they can’t be bothered to find out what problems are so just lie to them instead, assuming that most people will simply accept the first piece of information that is handed to them.

If you are reading this from the position of someone who is looking at getting a Virgin Media service, I would recommend doing the following instead: get two plastic cups and thread a piece of string through them, stretch the string out until it is taught and you can hear noises being transmitted down the line; now, take some scissors and cut the string, take £30 out of your wallet and set fire to it; now do a wee in your cup, and hey presto! Virgin Media quality service without the hassle of a massive phone bill!