TiVo : Why can't Virgin Media ever get their customer service right??

[Andrewcrawford23]

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

Well you don't actually know me so you can't say that. However, I am very easy going until people try to fob me off or lie to me. I was very polite and friendly with the other three CSR's (even though inside I was a bit miffed by the third call).



He knowingly (or ignorantly) told me something that wasn't true, because he was either too lazy to either sort the problem, or to ask someone who did know. So as he represents VM, then I was lied to by VM, as they told me something that wasn't true.


It's a bit like someone saying that milk carton is full, when they haven't actually checked (because they can't be bothered). Now is it a lie or not? It doesn't chage the fact that they were trying to fob someone off because they couldn't be bothered.

---------- Post added at 11:22 ---------- Previous post was at 11:22 ----------



Read my reply.

If as many people have said, he was following his training. Then it is those people who are saying that he was trained to lie.

no if i said the milk cartoon is full without checking that isnt knowily liying that just been daft tops for not making sure ie checking, ill agree he should have checked before saying he couldnt do it but he never lied, now with your example

ok i have checked the milk cartoon 5 minutes before oyu ask me about it, i know there very little left, i say to you when you ask me about the milk cartoon, i say it full, now i have lied to you because i knowigly knew the milk cartoon was nearly empty or knew it wasnt full, now that isa liar under english dictoniary

now the same scenario

you ask me about he milk cartoon i say it full but i havent checked, now i am being daft to assume and not check before giving you the answer but i ahve not lied to you i have gave you the wrong information because i madea assumption based on what i cant say because it just a dummy scenario but in this case there is the potential i coudl have lied to you an there the higher potential i was just daft and nver checked, now if you say the agent potential lied to me ill agree that is true but nither you nor me or anyone can prove it otherwise without putting the agent on a lie detector test

you aint said anything about the possible of the agent havent a disabilty like dsylexica so impossible might be part of his limited vocaliabilty and not know other words that better describe what he means, cause trust me if i ever had you on the phone and then foudn you saying this i owuld filea report to the police under the equailty discrimation act because my vocaliabilty is poor and i cant always describe wha ti mean

[Tim Deegan]

Originally Posted by oyez

I have been a customer with Ntl/virgin for approx 20 years,I phoned up last month to cancel because of an ongoing tv problem the woman I spoke to seemed helpful enough and asked me three times are you sure you still want to cancel I answered yes.
Today I got my virgin media bill which showed I was being charged for the period dec26/jan 25 I phoned to query this as I was leaving Virgin and was told that my request to give 30 days notice had not been put on the system so I would have to give another 30 days.

The guy I spoke to today gave me a termination date and also a date to collect the equipment. But I still have to pay for another Month

Customer service is abysmal

Exactly. Yours is another example.

However in your case you should escalate it to a manager. If you cancelled your direct debit, then what could they do?

---------- Post added at 11:51 ---------- Previous post was at 11:47 ----------

Originally Posted by Andrewcrawford23

no if i said the milk cartoon is full without checking that isnt knowily liying that just been daft tops for not making sure ie checking, ill agree he should have checked before saying he couldnt do it but he never lied, now with your example

ok i have checked the milk cartoon 5 minutes before oyu ask me about it, i know there very little left, i say to you when you ask me about the milk cartoon, i say it full, now i have lied to you because i knowigly knew the milk cartoon was nearly empty or knew it wasnt full, now that isa liar under english dictoniary

now the same scenario

you ask me about he milk cartoon i say it full but i havent checked, now i am being daft to assume and not check before giving you the answer but i ahve not lied to you i have gave you the wrong information because i madea assumption based on what i cant say because it just a dummy scenario but in this case there is the potential i coudl have lied to you an there the higher potential i was just daft and nver checked, now if you say the agent potential lied to me ill agree that is true but nither you nor me or anyone can prove it otherwise without putting the agent on a lie detector test

you aint said anything about the possible of the agent havent a disabilty like dsylexica so impossible might be part of his limited vocaliabilty and not know other words that better describe what he means, cause trust me if i ever had you on the phone and then foudn you saying this i owuld filea report to the police under the equailty discrimation act because my vocaliabilty is poor and i cant always describe wha ti mean

That's why I said, is it a lie or not?

The fact is that whatever reason the CSR had for making an untrue statement. The fact is that there are other people in the company who do know. So as he made an untrue statement on behalf of the company, then I was lied to by VM.


And forget all this nit picking about exact wording and examples. The fact remains that it is terrible customer service, which is what this thread is about.

[Dustymiller]

What a waste of IP packets this thread is.

Lets firstly go to the Oxford English Dictionary:

To lie = to make a false statement with the intention to deceive.

There was no "intention to deceive" as far as I can tell, the knowledge that the CSR had was that your request was impossible to achieve.

Therefore there was no lie. - Simple really. Retract your stamement and lets move on.

[Andrewcrawford23]

Originally Posted by Dustymiller

What a waste of IP packets this thred is.

Lets firstly go to the Oxford English Dictionary:

To lie =df to make a false statement with the intention to deceive.

There was no "intention to deceive" as far as I can tell, the knowledge that the CSR had was that your request was impossible to achieve.

Therefore there was no lie. - Simple really. Retract your stamement and lets move on.

thank you for clarifying what i was saying tim jsut wont accept it and he doesnt seem to understand what the word lie mean its the intention and since no intetnion could be prove then it wasnta lie

---------- Post added at 12:21 ---------- Previous post was at 12:19 ----------

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

Exactly. Yours is another example.

However in your case you should escalate it to a manager. If you cancelled your direct debit, then what could they do?

---------- Post added at 11:51 ---------- Previous post was at 11:47 ----------



That's why I said, is it a lie or not?

The fact is that whatever reason the CSR had for making an untrue statement. The fact is that there are other people in the company who do know. So as he made an untrue statement on behalf of the company, then I was lied to by VM.


And forget all this nit picking about exact wording and examples. The fact remains that it is terrible customer service, which is what this thread is about.

the terrible service you and the poster your quoted is terrible i agree but the reaosn teis thread is so long and heated is yoru instnce ona lie form the agent when the word lie as the psoter below you has said is with intetnion since you cant prove he intetnd to lie retrect the statement of the lie and people will be on your side about hte poor CS you have have had

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

On Sunday I still didn't have HD movies, so I called again. I was then told that they wouldn't be activating my HD until Tuesday. I explained what I had been told the previous day, and about the text message. To which he answered that it was impossible to activate the HD before Tuesday. As you can imagine I was getting rather annoyed with being messed about. So I told him that if it wasn't sorted then I would take my whole account to Sky. At this he put me on hold for a while, then came back to say that he had now activated the HD. By now I was furious. Not because he had activated the HD, but because he had blatantly lied to me.

So my question is: why can't VM give consistent good customer service. And why can't they be honest with customers???? If they built up a good reputation, then far more people would use them due to their excellent product.

So, Tim, have you considered that maybe the agent was under the impression that the channels would not activate immediately, then was proved wrong? For instance, if the system they needed to use to activate the channels had been offline and he only found out it was back online part way through your phone call when he tried to activate the channels, and the attempt unexpectedly worked? I work in a role that sometimes involves answering technical queries over the phone, and I've experienced something similar. A system I needed to access had been down, I tried to access it during a call only to find it had come back online and we hadn't been notified.

While I accept that some staff are quite capable of lying, I am struggling to understand why you are so wound up about this. He has managed to activate your channels two days earlier than he said he would. While that could technically be a lie, you have gained, not lost out. What would you rather VM did? Cut off your movie channels for a couple of days so that the agent didn't lie?

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

Stop trying to twist my words Sirius. You know exactly what I'm saying. Many people are saying that he was following his training, and that it wasn't his fault. Well if this was the case, then what they are saying is that VM trained him to lie. But what is more likely the case, is that the training given by VM was very poor. So when asked to do something that he didn't know how to do, then instead of asking someone, he just took the lazy option, and tried fobbing me off.

You just fail to understand that agents must follow a certain process and sometimes that process will disallow certain things, so the first three agents would not do it but the forth went away and found a way to do it and because of that he lied to you, AMAZING, most people would consider that as going the extra mile but sadly not you, I wish that the agent could read this and then call you up and say sorry the has been a mistake and we have to cancel it.

[Sirius]

So which one of these is a lie Tim

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

If as many people have said, he was following his training. Then it is those people who are saying that he was trained to lie.

OR

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

Worst of all is when staff are actually trained to lie to customers, as I have come across a few times with VM.


Oh, and stop training staff to lie.

Tim you may wonder why i have kept chasing this slur on members of staff at VM.


You feel you have been wronged by VM and have spent a whole thread stating that,

I feel as a member of staff for VM that i and others who work for VM have been wronged by your constant accusations that we all have and do lie to our customers and that we are intentionally trained by VM to lie to our customers which is not true at all.

This slur on staff and company i find unacceptable considering you have not provided one ounce of evidence to backup you slur on members of staff at VM. Therefor until you do correct the slur on our character or produce the evidence to prove that VM train us to lie i will continue to rise this issue every single time you say we lie to customers.


I bet if someone came on this forum and accused you of training your staff to lie to your customers you would be very annoyed and shouting from the roof tops about it ????

[Osem]

What I don't get is why someone who's told us this:

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

Time is money, and my time is very valuable. I can really do without having to waste my time....

would waste so much of it here posting about this.

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Sirius

I bet if someone came on this forum and accused you of training your staff to lie to your customers you would be very annoyed and shouting from the roof tops about it ????

HMMM!!!

I wonder as he is a business man selling beds does he allow his staff to twist or bend the truth or even tell them to use any means at their disposal in order to get a sale, do you pressure your staff with targets making them do this just to keep their job, pray do tell as I am more inclined to find a small company pursuing this line than a major company such as Virgin Media.

Now do you really want us to question the integrity of your staff training regimen as I kind of expect that they do not have anywhere near the kind of in-depth training that Virgin Media staff have to go through before they are allowed to take calls and is continually updated sometimes on a daily basis through our intranet.

I also rather doubt that you have the continued ongoing assessments and one to ones that we have as a small firm tends not to have the time available and expect you expect your staff to learn on the job, basically on the fly so to speak.

Don't forget - his firm gives "a 100% satisfaction guarantee"*.....

btw, I see you have very good reviews from your customers on the web for your company - I especially liked this one.

*with exceptions**

**which surely means it can't be 100%, as 100% of something includes everything...

[Tim Deegan]

Originally Posted by Dustymiller

What a waste of IP packets this thread is.

Lets firstly go to the Oxford English Dictionary:

To lie = to make a false statement with the intention to deceive.

There was no "intention to deceive" as far as I can tell, the knowledge that the CSR had was that your request was impossible to achieve.

Therefore there was no lie. - Simple really. Retract your stamement and lets move on.

There was an intention to deceive. He wanted me to believe that it wasn't possible, for 1 of two reasons:

1. He couldn't be bothered to find out
2. he couldn't be bothered to do the extra work needed to sort the problem

---------- Post added at 16:23 ---------- Previous post was at 16:20 ----------

Originally Posted by Andrewcrawford23

the terrible service you and the poster your quoted is terrible i agree but the reaosn teis thread is so long and heated is yoru instnce ona lie form the agent when the word lie as the psoter below you has said is with intetnion since you cant prove he intetnd to lie retrect the statement of the lie and people will be on your side about hte poor CS you have have had

The reason the thread is so long is because people keep bringing up the lie as the main issue.

I have said many times that the main issue is the poor CS from VM. The lie was only a small part.

---------- Post added at 16:25 ---------- Previous post was at 16:23 ----------

Originally Posted by Stuart

So, Tim, have you considered that maybe the agent was under the impression that the channels would not activate immediately, then was proved wrong? For instance, if the system they needed to use to activate the channels had been offline and he only found out it was back online part way through your phone call when he tried to activate the channels, and the attempt unexpectedly worked? I work in a role that sometimes involves answering technical queries over the phone, and I've experienced something similar. A system I needed to access had been down, I tried to access it during a call only to find it had come back online and we hadn't been notified.

While I accept that some staff are quite capable of lying, I am struggling to understand why you are so wound up about this. He has managed to activate your channels two days earlier than he said he would. While that could technically be a lie, you have gained, not lost out. What would you rather VM did? Cut off your movie channels for a couple of days so that the agent didn't lie?

I really don't care what the reason was. I keep saying that the issue is the whole picture: Poor customer service from VM.

Strange....

In the OP, you stated

now I was furious. Not because he had activated the HD, but because he had blatantly lied to me.

[Tim Deegan]

Originally Posted by Osem

What I don't get is why someone who's told us this:



would waste so much of it here posting about this.

Because that is my business, and not yours.

---------- Post added at 16:27 ---------- Previous post was at 16:25 ----------

Originally Posted by Hugh

Don't forget - his firm gives "a 100% satisfaction guarantee"*.....

btw, I see you have very good reviews from your customers on the web for your company - I especially liked this one.

*with exceptions**

**which surely means it can't be 100%, as 100% of something includes everything...

You really like to twist things around to wind people up don't you?....there is a name for people who do that on forums.

---------- Post added at 16:28 ---------- Previous post was at 16:27 ----------

Originally Posted by Hugh

Strange....

In the OP, you stated

And did I start the thread saying that I was furious because I was lied to? No I didn't. The thread is about VM poor CS.

[Stephen]

There was no intention to decieve at all! You are totally twisting what happened and trying to get everyone to believe you......which they don't.

There was not poor CS at all. The person you spoke to did everything they could to help you out and eventually bent the rules to sort things out for you.

The cake is a lie! That is all.

[Tim Deegan]

Originally Posted by Stephen

There was no intention to decieve at all! You are totally twisting what happened and trying to get everyone to believe you......which they don't.

There was not poor CS at all. The person you spoke to did everything they could to help you out and eventually bent the rules to sort things out for you.

The cake is a lie! That is all.

Here we go again, a VM employee with his head in the sand, thinking that VM can't possibly have done anything wrong! Who are you trying to convince?

Stop defending poor service. We all know that VM are one of the worst as far as the comms companies go. And you are still trying to deny that taking 4 phone calls to get something right is good customer service.