Rang Broadband "technical support" phoneline (inverted commas due to the level of support they offer), as for 4 or 5 days our speed has never gotten above 3-4 mb despite turning modem on/off, and we're paying for the "upto" 10 mb package. We normally get 9 or 10, so this is unusual and annoying as there are 4 of us using the broadband wirelessly/wired. I had rung a month earlier when this happened, and they were unable to find an exact problem after an hour and a quarter on the phone, and so sent out a new modem which fixed the problem for 3 or so weeks.
Rang last night on the 8th, and was put through to a potentially dutch man called Zach, or an indian with the worst accent ever that he was trying to put on (I suspect the latter). He ran through the basic, one machine wired, turn everything off, turn everything back on again test, and directed me to
www.updn.co.uk to test the speed. It unsurprisingly came back as the same speed as before at around 2.4mb. The nice man on the end of the phone then started saying that everything was fine, that my line was recieving 9mb, and was there anything else he could assist me with. I mentionned the fact that I wasn't recieveing such a speed, and so he started asking me to ensure that some settings in Internet explorer were set up accordingly before retrying the test and getting once again, 2.2 mb. At this point he said that the computer MUST have spyware on it taking all of the speed away from the modem. I protested that there wasn't, and could he try something else. He repeated several times that "everything is fine, there are many calls waiting". I asked again if he could test for something else but was bounced straight away to a new phone line. It then turned out to be the Digital Home Support phoneline, where I explained what had happened and the man on the phone there put me straight back to broadband "technical support".
After waiting for 5 more minutes on hold listening to the wonderful selection of music provided (Elton John, so no sarcasm intended in this particular instance), I was connected to a new indian man. I explained everything that had happened and asked to speak to a manager A) To complain about Zach, and B) to get put onto second line support. The new indian man then said that he would try to test again for the issue. He did all the same tests as Zach, and came up with the same answer that I MUST have spyware. Outraged, I went and got both my Work laptop which connects to a secure server and is checked regularly by in house technicians before I am allowed to connect it, and my sons laptop which he keeps fastidiously clean as he uses it for his degree. Both came back with exactly the same speeds of about 2.1 and 2.2 mb when wired in directly. The gentleman on the phone refused to accept that this was possible, and said that all 3 machines had exactly the same amount and type of spyware lowering the speed to exactly the same speed. At this point, out of desperation I reset the modem again, and briefly, the first test came back as 8 mb. I ran a second one, which came back as 2.6 mb again. The man on the end of the phone said "If you run a speed test too quickly, it will come back with a severely affected result". At this point, I gave up trying to talk to the imbecile who was employed there, and asked to speak to a manager. He refused to put me through and started arguing with me about why I would WANT to complain about himself or Zach as there was nothing wrong with the Virgin Media side of things, and that all of my computers must be infected in exactly the same way. He then muted me, so I hung up. At this point I had been on the phone for an hour and a quarter and was mildly annoyed at the fact nothing had been achieved.
Rang back a third time with the intention of speaking directly to a manager, and was by the luck of the gods, put straight through to the British call centre and a scottish gentleman. I explained all the above to him, and he wrote it all down in the background. He then offered to try and fix the problem, and that at any time I could speak to a manager if I felt it wasn't going anywhere. He quickly got onto second line support, and was told that they could raise a log and get it sorted that way. At this point, I was astounded when he said that this wasn't an answer he was looking for, and so he decided to call a different second line and get them to have a look. Instead of placing me on hold with no warning like his Indian "colleagues" (in the loosest sense of the word) he offered to call me back whilst they conducted tests. The second line support did some throughput tests whilst I was doing the standard gamefiles download tests, and was also getting the same speed drop as I was. But was unable to find the source of the problem, even after we had been on the phone for an hour and a half. I now have somebody coming with their own computer to test the line tomorrow (the 10th) to see if they can find the source of the problem. The scottish man on the phone told me to complain using a call back option, but I have found no such option.
Based on the admittedly fairly lengthy story above, where on earth do I complain to, and is there a phone number? If it weren't for the third gentleman from the support line (who I owe many pints of his choice for his time), I would be cancelling my contract with Virgin today. I am still outraged however at the way in which I was treated, and would like to see something come out of it, even if it is only an acknowledgement that their customer support people in India (who I presume they would have a log of having spoken to my account) are now seeking employment with another call centre firm.
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