Virgin Media
My cable company changed its name to Virgin Media, today.
So far, the results appear to be:
- The new brand’s website is a horrible confusion between selling the service and the kind of portal that fuelled the dot-com boom.
- The old telewest.co.uk site doesn’t even redirect, it just times out (which they announced would happen for six days, apparently).
- The Guardian’s media section reports that they’re targeting customers who’ll pay upwards of ?1,000 per year.
- The rebrand has been an excuse to raise prices – e.g. the ?10 per month for 12 months broadband offer for new customers, set to expire on 28.02.07, has mysteriously become a ?14.99 offer.
As a customer, I don’t care; there’s plenty of competition and, despite assertions to the contrary in their annual report, I don’t feel enough loyalty to the Virgin brand that I won’t look elsewhere. In fact, I’d have left two years ago if it wasn’t for their increasingly desperate discounting, each time I rang to cancel.
What I do find interesting, though, is how un-Virgin the rebrand has been. The Virgin brand is crafted to represent quality, value and a sense of mutual “fighting the big guy” fuzziness with the customer. Instead, the same old annoyances remain – the TV EPG is slow, the previously good Telewest customer service has been reduced to NTL’s poor level, the award-winning Virgin Mobile customer service is hard to gauge because their staff are so rarely able to access customer data, there’s no way to know if you have voicemail without dialling 1571 to check, the phone tariffs remind me of the 1980s, and now the, once faultless, broadband service is choppy.
So, should I give them a chance before stamping on the rebrand? No, because then it’s not a rebrand, it’s just a name change, and that would be meaningless.
I hate to talk about bows on turds, because that would be vulgar. And perhaps the big press conference later today will hold some surprises; but I doubt it. The website’s up and the customers have been informed of the various price rises.
Cable in the UK – what a wasted opportunity. I’d love to be proved wrong.
Update: telewest.co.uk does redirect now and it’s the online billing service that’s offline for six days.
Virgin Media, well well well.. I seem to be able to upload messenger okay, but certain websites are just timing out. I know the websites are fine because a few of my mates were on the website at the time. I phoned up Virgin just to see what the problem was and the person didn’t have a clue…
If Branson would get his backside off of his huge bloody cruise ship and help, I’ll be more than happy!!!!!
can anyone out there help me im not very good with computers and e mails and ive got problems trying to get a fefund back from virgin i get nowhere on the phone but dont know how or who to get in touch with by e mail
Crap! Mega Crap, thought Virgin would be the dawning of a new age but boy was i wrong. The Rolls Royce of broad band has been reduced to a hittie-miss shambles and the call centres are rubbish. my names Mr Blythe not Mr Blite for the hundreth time. Broad band problem took 15 days to sort out, when an engineer finaly came out it took him 2 mins to sort it, rubbish, my dish reconnection is getting closer and closer.
A service that has been getting worse with every passing day. I’m due to pay them money for my bill, but they can kiss my fat service-changing-ass. I’m not giving them another penny.
I signed up with Virgin last year without a 12month agreement meaning that I paid extra for the privilege. 8 months later I madethe call to Virgin to give them one months notice and sign up for the Talk Talk with free broadbank.
In doing so I discovered that they charged a £50 disconnection charge and also £17.99 for the remaining month which I expected but not the £50. I was more than pissed off with the service and customer services where not interested in my concerns. I bit my lip and accepted as my hands were tied.
2 months later i got a letter from Virgin with a Final Notice to proceed legal action for the outstanding balance. ???
Well there was never any previous letters or calls to outlines these outstanding balanca on my account and least of all they took the £50 two day after I called to cancel my contract. So virgin are bullying us to pay and then threatening us with court orders without reason. Has anyone else come across this before???
I could write a very long message and probably I will, I have been a telewest customer for 4 years, very good service, after VM came in, my broadband speeds are dial-up like, my phoneline still doesn’t work for a week. Customer services have no idea what they are talking about and have no interest to help. I had an installer that refused to install by inventing stupid excuses. After 14 calls I had a new guy coming who was relatively ok. Then I called them to sort out my phone, I called 28 times within a week and have spent 7,5 hours on the phone, talked to 19 people. No one was able to help with anything whatsoever and just transfered me to alll sorts of departments that thasfered me further without getting to the right person. I called tech support for broadband, they couldn’t even speak proper English and refused to help, encouraging me to call customer support to log a complaint as he cannot help, after submitting me to an appalling list of rubbish troubleshooting steps in an attempt to move the problem to the user rather than acknowledging that they have a problem. Asked to talk to managers, put on hold for 15 minutes, no manager available. Promised to be called back without asking for the phone number promised me to repair the phonelline without asking address details. But this guy I spoke to from broadband tech support was really appalling, absolutely unbelievable. I am sure that they encourage these people to be as elusive as possible in giving help in certain areas because they are so aware of their problems. The hubs are so overcrowded that they cannot cope. Telewest would move you to a different hub after some discussions but with VM this is not possible anymore. So prepare for the worse. I feel so sad that I went through this complicated installation which proves to be useless. I do not know whom to talk to, what to do, I am horrified by this bunch of incompetent morons who all hate their jobs and are underpaid and reflect this on customers. It is the worst experience I had in my life so far in relation to service.