Recently we have moved, with this came the opportunity to get a TV package and faster internet. Our new flat had previously had cable so Virgin Media seemed like the best option. Being a lovers of everything new, shiny and fast we decided to get Virgins new Premier Collection. This gives you the top TV package with a Tivo box + 60MB/s Internet and an old school phone line. In addition you also get a second V Box which so that you can watch the same HD TV content 0n a second TV.
Come installation day on a Friday the engineers arrived at 6pm. Due to the second V Box another cable needed to be run upstairs, this apparently caught the engineers off guard as they weren’t expecting it. The old tradesman’s saying “Measure twice cut once” doesn’t appear to be employed late on Friday afternoons. After a few minutes of hammer drilling and pinning cables we had the V Box upstairs, all it cost us was chunks of wall and badly done cabling. We now have cable curving slackly around the bottom of the stairs and pinned at an odd angle up the side of a wardrobe. After giving me the land line telephone number and connecting a laptop to the wireless the engineers prompted left. No demo of the Tivo, no signature to sign off the work.
An hour later after we have cleaned all of the brick dust of the carpets we called customer services. After a few minutes of waiting we were put through to lady who took on our concerns and said someone would call us back and arrange a visit in the next 48 hours. After two days of hearing nothing we called back. Customer service had it noted that we needed to be called back but couldn’t give us a reason why it hadn’t been done, but we would be called back in another 48 hours. After another two days we called back again, originally “Lets get ready to rumble” whilst waiting for customer service might have been endearing but not any more. Same story again, 48 hours.
Eventually we received a call to arrange an engineer to come and inspect the work. He confirmed the state of the drilling and cabling was unacceptable, took some photos and said they would send the information back and would be in touch for when the repairs and rerunning of cable would be done. Several days later I received another call to arrange another engineer visit, apparently they need to inspect something else before the proper work could start. I asked what they needed to know, customer service didn’t know but they would find out.
After several more days of getting no where we used Twitter as Virgin have a customer service account. After a little back and forth we were sent a form to fill in:
https://help.virginmedia.com/system/web/custom/socialMediaEnquiryForm_ssl.jsp
If you want anything done fill this in. It will take a day or two but someone with some power will call you. After doing this the ball actually started rolling, be it slowly.
Now that everything has been resolved how do I feel about Virgin Media? Although the technology and service is fine I absolutely dread ever having to deal with customer service. I would never recommend it anyone.
My experience with them was the polar opposite, as I was bouncing between them and BT to get to the bottom of our fucked internet, it was Virgin who were being the most helpful. Pushing at BT to sort their shit out and generally keeping me informed of what was going on via text messages.