I Hate Virgin Media
Posted Wednesday February 4th 2009
I have recently signed up with Virgin Media broadband. I have previously been a customer of theirs and vowed NEVER AGAIN! However as I live in the city there really isn’t much choice – so begrudgingly I signed up.
What a mistake.
My blood boils (and my money evaporates) ever time I have to contact them… which is a lot. There are lots of reasons to hate Virgin Media, but here are my top 5:
- Installation – I paid £30 for installation, which consisted of a ‘technician’ turning up to my house and plugging a modem in. I tried to get a web page up which didn’t work and when I turned around he wasn’t there any more. I caught him in his van and got him back, but I soon realised that he had no idea what he was doing. He also refused to call technical support because ‘it would end up costing HIM money’.
- Pricing – It’s not cheap, add on to that that they have a hidden £1 charge because they send you paper bills. Signing up for ‘e-billing’ is the solution – but they don’t tell you about this and be dammed if I know how to get on it from day one, so I ended up paying £1 for the first month.
- ‘Contact Us’ – Not only do you have to contact them all the time to sort out your service, but the only number is a premium rate one! To get signed up on e-billing I paid £5 in phone bills sorting this out, because after all no-one knows what they’re doing. Even the numbers listed on www.saynoto0870.com are all blocked.
- Overcharging – the one thing companies should be able to do right is bill their customers the correct amount. Not Virgin Media! They charged me my first bill (£51) twice! I gave up contacting them and went straight to the bank and got them to reverse the charge.
- The service – their service really is appalling. Ask anyone who is with them and they will tell you they are not getting the speeds they are paying for. And don’t get me started on the fact that their ‘Unlimited’ packages that actually are limited.
Add to this a confusing web site which never actually does anything (you need to phone about 10 different people to sort it out) and you’ve got yourself a near heart attack.
My advice – Virgin Media, really really really really don’t bother.
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Today, I tried to find out some basic info about a programme airing on one of the Virgin Media Group of companies’ channels – Living TV. No contact details for Living, just a link to Virgin Media!! No way to email Virgin Media, unless you have a Virgin Media email address!! Only way to contact Virgin Media by phone is to fudge it i.e. pretend you want to cancel your VM contract, just to get through their appalling ‘hard sell’ call management system. And, NO, I didn’t want to give them my telephone number, as they so unhelpfully suggested during the call management!! And when I finally did get through to someone in the Cancel Contract dept, who forwarded me to another customer service person, who apparently could help – HE COULDN’T!!! Blinkin’ useless!! I certainly won’t ever become a customer of Virgin Media, if this is how they treat you.
Im getting seriously pissed off with this throttling bull shit fucking up my DL speed, the reason i went with virgin is because ( as we all know) cable is faster than a phone line and i wanted FAST! so i went with the 10 meg option only to find that the cheeky bastards have absolutely no intention of delivering what i am paying them for, even when im not being “TRAFFIC MANAGED” i never get over 5 meg. if i had this problem with anything else i would simply cancel my subscription but virgin have a monopoly on the whole cable thing and so have us all by the bollocks.
Maybe i should start THROTTLING my monthly payments , see how they like that, Seriously, we should only have to pay for what we get,
say for example you were paying £30 a month for a 10 meg connection, thats £1 a day, but one day my speed averages at 5 meg, then i should only have to pay them 50p for that day, they give me half the agreed speed, they only get half the agreed payment, seems fair to me.
If ALL ISP`s were forced by the government to use such a policy i think we`d all be surprised just how fast they all manage to upgrade their system to the point where EVERYONE gets the FULL SPEED they pay for ALL the time.
Rant over.
Get Sky? You even get the M&S vouchers! (See your ebay ad page)
I totally agree with you with every point. The moment I leave this discrace of a company will not come a moment too soon.
My complaints include:
- No broadband between 6 and 9 in the evening. I was told follow their set of rules and buy a new filter which cost me money (and it blatantly is not that), then they said someone could come out to have a look, but if it was my fault it would cost me money.
-I have had numerous problems with billing. Firstly they would not take my money. I contacted them many times but they would not take the money from my account. I managed to pay the backlog once they passed the charges on to a debt collector.
-They price matched O2 Broadband at £7.50 a month, and I agreed to stay. The bill came through wrong every month and I was overcharged, but eventually got refunded. Then, after a year they reverted the bill to the ‘non-promotional’ rate and I had to pay the full amount until they changed it back. Apparently it doesn’t continue indefinitely and you have to reset it every time.
-Once you’ve been waiting on the phone for ages, listening to that smug automated woman, it’ll sometimes just cut you off for no reason.
I would switch providers if I knew I wouldn’t be moving out in the next few months.
Virgin just cancelled the installation the evening before it was due for the 3rd time! that is 3 days off work for nothing and I am no scheduled for 9 March. i going bto go back to BT but I am also going to eventually get Virgin to install and then cancel within 28 days so that i make it as painful as possible. have also managed to get the Chief Execs email so he will be getting a few messages from me. I really, really hate them
Mark, Just reading your message fills me with fear! The exact same thing happened to me today. I received two calls from Virgin Media this afternoon to confirm the installation and asking if I had any questions. So felt quite confident all was OK. Then at 3.30pm, get a phone call from some guy saying the installation for tomorrow has been cancelled due to a system problem that has over-booked installations in my area. He was no use and not worth the next few minutes I spent venting my opinions. Spent the rest of the afternoon voicing them to a number of VM sections but the same rubbish. And to make matters worse, the installation date I’ve been given is mid-March! So them overbooking installations put’s us at the back of the queue again??? Some service.
Their installation service seems to be a real shambles. If this is how they treat people before we’ve paid anything to them, I cannot think how things will go once it eventually gets installed.
Mark / Gazza – The same happened to me. To save money I decided to move from Sky/AOL. I was due for TV/BB installation on 19 January between 1 – 6. Waitied until 5:30 and phoned them to find out where they were. Got told appoitment had been “rescheduled” to 16 February. This was the first I knew of it – I lost a days pay and wasted all afternoon aticipating their arrival. 13 Feb they call me to confirm they are coming on 16th, the on the 15th they leave a message to say cancelled due to sickness, re-scheduled to 26 Feb. I’ve now got a Freesatbox and have no intention of ever paying for TV again. I will be canceling the entire package and going with PlusNet for £17.45 including line rental.
Well I had a chat with the very friendly (and thankfully knowledgeable) tech who came to upgrade my broadband and he told me that they have just switched to a computer controlled routing sytem for their installations (morning and evening) However it would appear that there are a few “bugs” in the system. The techs should get around 12 installations a day, however the system is allocating up to 20. This is not the techs fault as they can only do so much in a day but this does mean that anyone who is at the end of the list isn’t going to get the job done. I would suggest making sure your appoinment is booked for the morning otherwise it’s probably luck until/if they sort it out.