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.
They’ve broken the blueyonder debian mirror too.. Ah well time to change again.
But remember.
Cable, if you can you should.
But in all seriousness, cable is still better than ADSL.
I work for the old telewest company /now virgin medai and can advise we have had to do a lot of extra training to satisfy the virgin name every companies will have things to work on otherwise they wouldn’t be human we are doing the very best we can and are very excited as a company to become part of one of the most sucessful companies in the world
Is it me, or is the new Virgin Media logo based on a red Pringle?
Hear hear!
I too was mightily peeved when the debian mirror disappeared! Pulling services is not good customer service any way you look at it.
And why is my broadband suddenly maxing out at 256Kib downstream? Some monkey in engineeering probably set it up wrong.
In my opinion rebranding is a total fallacy. The managment get a hard-on because it will generate X much new leads. Unfortunately it alienates all existing customers. Unless you’re in a booming market, new is not greater than existing so net result is the passing on of costs of this mis-management to the sorry sods who remain in spite of being treated like dirt. I did it to my clients, O2 did it to me, now Virgin Media are doing it.
Why not leave things alone that aren’t broken, keep the brand that everyone is loyal to and just market the same/new service under the new brand for the new leads? Oh no the PHBs wouldn’t have that – we need SYNERGY!
Ever wondered why the “New Customers Only” mickey take advert is so effective? Because it’s so TRUE!
I cancelled my landline (with ntl) three months ago, they are still billing me!, have tried to contact Virgin Media to sort this out….
Guess what? Customer services is down due to a “technical fault” samo samo i guess.
Is no use phoning NTL,s number on the bill btw ,Why is that? , so no-one to talk to.
I,m off to SKY, that is if i can ever contact anyone to cancell my contract!
In fairness though, didnt the indian callcenter catch fire on the 22nd? I believe this is why you couldnt get hold of a customer services person to deal with your problems.
I call them NTHell. I have clocked up 17 hours since Novemeber trying to sort out a problem phone line. Only to be advised that a crackle on the line was ok, even though you couldn’t hear what was being said!!!!! Now I’m dealing with Virgin same crackle same waiting time.
I signed on up 20 Feb for the VirginMedia VIP package at the Bromley Virgin store. Supposed to be installed 27 Feb. Heard no more. Nobody turned up. I took the day off work. They lost my order. Then spent well over an hour on the phone trying to sort it out. Package had changed and also had to now pay for call waiiting and caller display which I was told was included in the VIP package. Now they cannot install until 24 March nearly a month away. Have been with Virgin Net for nearly 10 years. Wasted a day off work and hours trying to sort this out – had enough. Feel I cannot trust or rely on VirginMedia and cancelled. Be wary nobody seems to know what is going on. To think that I was prepared to spend over a grand a year with them!
ive been a telewest/ntl/virginmedia customer for 5 years now and cannot believe whats happening at the moment first off we lost 3 channels the box,jettix,crime and investigation within days of of the company rebranding to virginmedia with not even a letter to explain the changes now we have lost skyone,skynews, skysports news so that is 6 channels all within the first month of virginmedia great start EH! i`m coming to the conclusion that i dont like this company very much any more so i think that it is time to move on its a pity because like the footnote says Cable in the UK – what a wasted opportunity do i believe that branson can sort this company out i think he can but the road is going to be very very long they are going to lose a lot of customers in the short term
ive been with telewest now virgin media for 10yr no problems so far i do expect some teething trouble but im sure richard branson will sort it out,
Ive been billed for 3 premium rate numbers all on 27th Jan when both of us were out! V M is doing nothing to help us except sending out an engineer that I have to wait in for from 12-6pm on sat and if he finds no fault I get charged for the pleasure!!!
Anyone else had this?
I am a Telewest (now Virgin Media) customer who has two phone lines that have been down since the 14th of February and which as a result of apparent vandalism of a network box will not be repaired until the 23rd of March at the earliest.
Such things happen and although this seems an extraordinary length of time to get a repair done; this is not my main reason for anger and frustration with the company.
When the phone lines went done, I discovered to my horror that the “free” voice mail service on both lines remained in place, although there is absolutely no way for me to access any of the messages left, and they shall be dumped long before I shall ever have that access.
Initially I asked if this voice mail could be cut off and a message be provided that the lines were faulty. I explained that having callers think they were leaving me messages that I did not respond to could seriously damage my income and career.
Apparently the company has no provision for such a message to be given. UNBELIEVABLE and irresponsible!
My request for the service to be cut off was initially completely ignored. After over a week I was then told on several occasions that it would be cut off within 24 hours, but it wasn’t.
I could only contact Virgin Media via my Pay As You Go mobile costing me about ?4 a go to reach them (sometimes to only be told no one was available to speak with me) and never ringing me back. I also trued to use their website email contact which seemed to be ignored initially. I also wrote them a recorded delivery letter which remains totally ignored. I strongly suspect that Virgin Media might have been leaving messages for me on the inaccessible voice mail I was complaining about, but they will neither confirm nor deny this.
As of this last Monday, they finally did apparently cut off the voice mail, although a customer services manager assures me this order is still “pending.” However what has replaced the voice mail on both lines is a permanent engaged tone. This same manager says this is a general network problem for all phones in the area. This is not listed on their service status reports on their website, nor is it true for my neighbours who are customers and have no problem with their service at all.
Virgin Media appears not to care or see any problem with there being a permanently engaged tone on my lines nor do they seem to care this might be very frustrating to callers and damaging to our reputations and work.
Throughout I have tried to get Virgin Media to share with me both their complaints procedure and their ADR (alternative dispute resolution) alternatives, which I understand they are required to offer under their license as a telecoms operator. I have either been ignored or told they just don?t exist.
As I actually work in the field of ADR myself, I have found out independently that Telewest is a member of the CISAS redress scheme that Chartered Institute of Arbitrators runs for complaints that aren’t resolved by the company. It’s a free independent adjudication scheme and I have a right to use it and they have a duty to inform me of this.
I shall be contacting CISAS myself.
I believe Richard Branson does not know the importance of sky’s basic channels I believe things are no better under the Virgin name, Since Bransons takeover all they have done is remove our channels without asking the end consumer how important these channels are to them. Rather than harp on about how they have spent 20 million on advertising (with the most annoying Uma Thurmam) perhaps they should have spent that money on ensuring that we the customer still receives the channels we was getting 30 days ago. I shall be canceling my subscription as soon as I can get past the 30 min plus wait for cancellations.
Changed to virgin media for digital t.v. recently – WHAT A MISTAKE – not only did i have to listen to the engineer eff and blind the whole time he was there, but i attemped to watch my d.v.d. only to find the batteries had been removed and placed in virgin controller – CANT VIRGIN AFFORD TWO LITTLE BATTERIES.
Then what happened – oh yeah !!!!!!!! sky 1 gone – after telling virgin that was the only reason i was coming to them.
They breached any contract i may have with them so i`m off!!!!!!!!!!
For well over 2 weeks we have been unable to receive incoming calls. Obviously it took a few days for us to realise this as we had no trouble making calls ourselves. The Virgin man could not come for a few days but arrived 19th February to tell us after a few minutes that it was a BT problem – we had changed from BT about 5 years ago and retained that number. They said that BT had made the number redundant instead of transferring it (after all this time?)
It would be fixed in a matter of hours. Nothing happened. We got another Virgin engineer out Tuesday this week – 27th. He spent no time with us just said BT was at fault and left – should be okay in a day or so. He said then that it was up to us to get something fixed – not a Virgin problem!! Still no joy – help!
I signed up to NTL/Virgin Media in December for the Broadband, Telephone and Tv PACKAGE. I am halfway through series 3 of Lost and series 6 of 24 and well and truly p*ss?d off that since Sky One has been removed from my PACKAGE I will be unable to contiue watching them. After a 40 min wait getting through to Virgin today to cacel my PACKAGE I am told that they have only broken their agreement to me on the Tv subscription and therefore I have to keep the Broadband and telephone line (which sky can provide for me for free!)
How come it is ok for them to break their contract to me without any notice and I now have to accept 2 individual subscriptions instead of the original PACKAGE I purchased?
Lets hope that bungy cord fails next time you jump out of a plane Mr Branson.
well i guess were all on about how good virgin media is iv been on hold hold for 49 mins and told to go and get trancferd to another line only for them to hang up on me well peeeeeed of as im a scifi buff and all i watch is sky one well im trying to go on the 2 for ?20 pack now for my bb and phone but canot get threw to them sort it out branson because i think your gona loos a lot of coustomers in the next few weeks but i do see skys point ov view ntl were paying lets say 30 mill a year for the services and teliwest say paying the same thats sky making ?60 mill a year now they mearged they still only wana pay 30 what would you say i know what id say o well cya ppl
well after a few hours they rang me back im now on 2 for ?20 phone and broadband 2 meg plus i get some tv channels plus the ?14.99 call plan all for ?20 a month so not a bad deal for me and they done same for my m8 next door they now gwet everything for ?50 it was ?85 so there happy to
well i tried to get one, get them all. I only wanted basic TV, not the films or sport but was told no phone with us no go, everything or nothing. The only reason i have no phone with them is because when i wanted the pack they said yeah fine, then 3 weeks later with me chasing them, was told they had no capacity to give me the phone, just as my bb was to expire on adsl. l went back to my original provider homecall ( fab customer service so far) and stopped my disconnection, and dropped the price of 8meg down to 6.50/mnth by re-signing for a year. Well I am glad I can get sky unlike some poor people in listed buildings as there would be no digital tv for me as freeview dont work here. The company needs a kick up the pants. come back ntl!! What amazes me is at the minute you would think that they would want any customer with the sky exodus going on. Maybe the ASA should take a look at their website aswell as the waffle on there is just that 100% proof, and maybe they should look at why they were still advertising you would get sky one etc when they knew you wouldn’t! Richard – bully boy tactics may not be on when it is aimed towards making people leave you to go to sky , so why make us leave our current phone provider to take some of your services.
I Have been customer for telewest for last 7 years, what a bad choice i made i’m planning to leave now because their customer servise is going down !! I tried to contact them three times last week and each time i had to hold the phone for half an hour then put it down because no one was there to pick the phone up.
I have been with Telewest for five years and they are the worst company i have ever seen. Their customer service is poor, i tried to contact them but no one was there to answer the phone, i emailed to them and explained what i wanted, gues what for five days i have not received either an email or call back.
I am disgusted at the way they have gone about this rebrand, the most important people to them should be the excisting customer and they have not even thought about us at all! i am livid.
What also anoys me is that they are advertising this all singing dancing virgin channel where you can watch a few episodes of some old programmes and that its free for 3 months!? erm so what? we had that anyway with teleport life!!! and now we cant get sky sports news which is a free view channel!?
total rip off
i think i will be leaving too
The whole Telewest/NTL and now Virgin Media takeover is a shambles.
I was a happy customer with Telewest for two years until we moved house in December to a non-Telewest area. While ringing round to compare new suppliers, I was DUPED into signing to NTL by the promise that I could keep my blueyonder.co.uk email address (?we are part of the same company now?). I was also offered an NTL cable/broadband deal a few quid cheaper than Telewest (because I was a “valued customer”).
NTL duly installed in the new place. It wasn?t until the engineer had gone and I was flicking through the brochure that I found a sheet of paper that I should have been asked to sign to confirm that he had given me a demo of NTL TV, NTL replay (or whatever it?s called) and Broadband.
Each of the three boxes had been ticked and he had signed on my behalf ? even though he did not give me a demo of any of them.
It turns out I can?t keep my blueyonder.co.uk email address ? couldn?t even access it to let people know it wasn?t available anymore. It?s just disappeared into outer space. No explanation, no apology ? I was just told I was ?misinformed? initially.
When my NTL bill arrived, I was charged ?20 more a month than Telewest. It?s taken two months and endless phone calls to get them to agree to bring the price down to what they originally offered.
When I moved from Telewest to NTL, I had to sign up to a new contract (despite them being ?part of the same company?). I negotiated it down to six months from the 12 months they were insisting I sign, but that still means I?ve got another four months before I can cancel the contract.
Now we?ve lost Sky One, Sky Sports News and Sky News as well, I’ve had enough.
Wish I’d stuck to my original idea, gone back to BT Broadband and got a Sky dish put up on the roof!
We signed up to NTL nearly 4 years ago to get cheaper phone, broadbend & tv. All without wires & satelite dishes attached to our property. No real problems at all during our time with NTL until Virgin Media came on the scene. Now there are less programmes for more money and the equipment we have is no use at all in communicating with the new system when the RED button on the NTL remote is pressed. (New Customers Only?) Sorry Richard – no deal!
this company is finished there phone lines are in melt down to the cancelation line.
i have just wasted 2 hours of my life trying to cancel
Signed up for 3 for ?30 bundle 3 weeks ago the bills arrived everything is wrong
late payment charge added wrong phone tarrif tv package wrong ,
Phoned them yesterday tried to cancel waited for 1 hour was told that their system was down and nothing could be processed, they took my number and promised to phone today Sunday i smell a rat!!
I am not happy.
Within a few days of becoming Virgin Media, Telewest has lost several channels, why?
When I signed up for cable tv, my contract included Sky News and sky One, therefore I believe that Virgin Media is in breach of contract and will remain so until these and other channels are re-instated.
Are there any plans to compensate cable subscribers i.e. price cuts?
Instead of trying and failing to jusify the loss of channels, Virgin should be improving its service and honouring customer contracts.
What has happened to Premier Plus. We paid our subscription at the begining of the season and were all set to watch the match on Saturday 3 March 07, switched on only to be told the next match would be on 17th. Tried to phone – office closed. Emailed – nothing. What is happening?
im having the same problem, they cut me off on the phone when i tried to speak to them. they told me that the premier plus.they told me that the packages were the same but charging me nearly ?25 for 5 channels. i get the family package. what do they expects us to do pay it or cancel my subscription with them, virgin is a load of b*******s and they havent a clue what they are talking about at all,im so furious with them.
richard branson is absolutley hopeless and a waste of time, he should of left it,stop trying to take everything over, it was fine before he butted his big nose into it and screw things up for us, its us that have to suffer the conciquences of it all.
Ive clocked up more than 30 minutes trying to cancel, Will soon be over an hour the whole thing is getting ridiculous, They have a big history of poor customer service. I hope to cancel as soon as possible. I try again tommorow, No wonder the newspapers are saying only about 100 people are leaving them a day.
They must have just 1 person working on disconnections answering about 4 calls an hour, The rest they place on hold as hes done his quota. That gives tham about 96 disconnections per day, if their call centre was 24 hour which it is not.
As soon as they lost sky, they should have given all customers a complimentary free upgrade.
Sky one is not an issue for me although I do like it, My major reason for going to sky is the access over 300 freesat channels that are available and not available to cable due to their very limited boxes.
Virgin Media is using Dirty Tricks to retain customers by not letting them cancel.
I remember over 10 years ago signing up for telewest, the amount of channels for the price was very good. I remember 5 years ago getting broadband and a fewer channels for a very good price. This year I signed up for them and I so wish I had not now. The amount of channels is near to nothing and I lost the only channel I ever watch, Sky 1. My broadband install CD had a virus in it, and for the life of me i cannot get my email to work. (I am far from a newbie, programmer for over 5 years and had a computer for 20).
Do yourself a favour, go to Sky and get their package. Richard, sorry bud, but this time your company is going down faster than that ballon you were in.
I have been with Telewest for five years and share the frustration!!!
As an added extra I made the mistake of ordering a product from the NTL online store. They falsly advertised the product and I am battling to get my refund…
All in all, NTL/Telewest/Vergin Media, doesn’t matter which service you use, one can’t complain about their custemer service, BECAUSE THEY DONT HAVE ANY!!!
Sky here I come…
phoned virgin today to see what exactly was happeneing. Took 58 mins to answer but by threatening to go to sky got my internet connection speed doubled and cut my monthly bill by 35%.There is hope…if you can get htru…
I have been a customer of Telewest for 10 years without any problems. Then in the space of 24 hours, the entire service disintegrates into Virgin Media. I lose channels from my package, and aged considerably whilst trying to contact the so called customer services. I have been passed from pillar to post (when I eventually managed to get a response), and cut off on each occasion. In desperation I finally got through to the accounting dept, when I threatened to withhold payment of my DDM.
I have been monitoring the comments left on the Virgin Media site, which differ somewhat from the latest articles in the newspapers. Most want a reduction in tarrif and compensation for the loss of Sky 1 etc – hardly anyone wanted an improved service, which to be honest I doubt whether Virgin could supply. The entertainment offered on their channel 119 and 120 is appalling. And as for their library of over 500 films, I’ll be damned if I pay ?2.00 or more to watch the Great Escape, The Alamo and other old films which I can get on terrestial TV for free. Other films are being charged at ?3.00 to ?3.50 – and they call this a SERVICE? A right rip off, more like. Channel 119 is showing Alias, Nip and Tuck, Little Britain etc – anything from 6 – 16 episodes of OLD series, which are well past their sell by date. There is nothing new or inventive on the channels, which leads me to believe that the Sky marketing team didn’t do their research very well. Will Heads roll? I doubt it.
My main gripe is the loss of Sky 1 – I have watched every episode of Stargate SG1 since it started, and will now be missing the final episodes as this has been pulled. No more Stargate Atlantis, The Dresden Files etc. Who is going to compensate me for missing my favourite programmes?
I am sick to death of being used as a pawn in the media game, and if Branson runs Virgin Media anything like his train service, then heaven help us all.
I don’t particularly want to switch to Sky, the Murdoch’s not being my favourite dynastic family – but they are giving the customers what they want, which is what this game is all about. Oh that and the big profits to be made.
A very unhappy customer.
First they dropped Fashion TV (and other channels) with no communication to their customers and now Sky One. I’m off to Sky now, much as I have mixed feeling about it. Tomorrow I will hopefully get the system installed and will be able to resume watching the programmes that I actually already paid for.
What a shambles.
I have just spent the day waiting for a new “V+” box from Virgin. 3 weeks ago I was told that the engineer would call between 1pm and 6pm. After waiting in from 1pm I rang Virgin at 6pm and was told that the engineer would be working until 8pm and only had 2 jobs to do before he came to me, but not to worry as the 2 other jobs would not take 2 hours to complete. The person I spoke to could not tell me why the engineer was unable to call me to tell me he would be late. Apparently, they had more jobs than expected that day!!!!! That call to Virgin lasted 17 minutes. At 7.45pm I called again. I was told that the engineer’s supervisor would call me in the morning. Due to the fact that it took 30 minutes for me to receive this information, I decided I had had enough of Virgin Media (what with losing channels and all) so I asked to be put through to someone to discuss disconnection. I was (wrongly) put through to a supervisor who told me that I could not speak to anyone regarding disconnection as that department closes at 5pm and I have to give 30 days notice anyway. The supervisor was acutally very nice becuause I explained the situation to her in full and she said that “the last twat I spoke to” (my words, not hers) would be rollocked on Monday. She said that the engineer’s supervisor will call me tomorrow and I would have this new V+ box installed tomorrow. Having been a cable customer for 15 years, I have lived through the dark, dismal days of Videotron and Cable and Wireless and I have never been treated so appalingly. At least the old companies called to let you know they were letting you down! They were also able to negotiate prices with Sky that Virgin do not seem to be able to manage. I am bitterly disappointed with Virgin. I will post again to let people know how I get on. If I am not satisfied, I will only have terrestrial TV (or Freeview) as I cannot have a minidish put on the building I live in. In the meantime, encourage your friends, neighbours and colleagues to switch to Sky if they can. I do not like Murdoch and do not buy his papers, etc, however, I feel that Branson is exploiting those who cannot have minidishes and basically ripping them off.
picked up my ball and gone to sky
have been a customer of Telewest for more than10 years without any problems. Then in the space of 24 hours, the entire service disintegrates into Virgin Media. I lose channels from my package, and aged considerably whilst trying to contact the so called customer services. I have been passed from pillar to post (when I eventually managed to get a response), and cut off on each occasion. In desperation I finally got through to the accounting dept, when I threatened to withhold payment of my DDM.I would like yo cancel my subscription from the T.V
and telephone package,to take immediate effect.
You won’t add this to your comments. The service is pathetic. Technical Help person ignorant as to basic operation of the sytem and weak on basic English. Complaints useless. Web site fobs off. How can you expect to keep customres.
Just in case the domain name, site design and page content don’t make this clear, I’m not Virgin Media. I’m not associated with Virgin Media, either, other than being a customer.
I Have been with telewest (ntl/virgin) for 15 years, and get this I wanted one of the new scientific Atlanta Cable box’s (not the ones with playback) due to the fact they have digital output, so i can run it through my surround sound system. so I rang erm , and asked And after being pushed about I got an answer “the only way you can get one is to pay ?70″. Yet all new customers get these box’s for the standard installation fee, then they post them and the user has to install themselves.
Why is it new customers reap the benefit?s and long time customers get nothing
We Brits love a good moan ! It seems to me that nearly all of the above are disgruntled existing customers who watch sky one, so instead of endorsing this mass exodus to Sky I will give you all a little food for thought.
TV: You will all BUY your equipment from Sky or they will give it for free as part of your new deal. this means that after a year if it goes wrong YOU will have to pay for it. If your dish moves by just a fraction and you cannot get a signal YOU will be charged for the engineer to visit. and if it rains heavily or in high winds you will not get a signal. So you could have sky one and not be able to watch it !
Broadband : You get this down a phone line which can be nearly 100 years old. your speed is dependant on how far you live from the exchange and how many are going through the exchange at any one time. If the exchange becomes full of voice data all of a sudden, will BT tell its customers you cannot get through because all of our lines are tied up with internet traffic ? OOPS why did my broadband suddenly stop ????. And did Sky ever ask you to check your BT phone line to see if it is actually capable of delivering UP TO (plenty of room to wriggle) 8 meg ? but I bet you considered buying it !
Virgin Media may be going through a rough transition, but at least it isn’t hiding what you may or may not get. You lot need to get up off the sofa and go out more, or tell me to get lost.
Another very peeved off Virgin Media customer. Lost all of my services apart from the phone last night and look on this site to see everybody else the same. Looks like i’m going to cancel as well because ever since Virgin took over from Telewest, everything has imploded and the good service i was getting from Telewest has gone. Can’t beleave that Branson and chums have destroyed everything in such a short time…….. Sky here i come
I have been a telewest customer for 4 years and moved house in Nov 06, which meant renewing my contract, I have had to cancel my contract due to personal reasons and Virgin have informed me that I have to pay for the remaining months
Can they do this?? Is there any way I can appeal against this?
really nit haooy with virgin media at all. Thankfully i only get my broadband from them! Sine the changeover my broadband has gone up to ?23 a month for 1mb broaband!?!?!? They say that this is because i no longer pay through direct debit. I cancelled my direct debit a while back because i was switching banks and they have never acknoledged my requests to set it back up again! I am now paying a handling charge of ?5 per month for paying my bill in ways other than DD!
Thankfully, I have been with NTL for around 3 years and have never renewed my contract so im going to cancel and go elsewhere for my broadband!!
Hi,
We have had two phone bills from Virgin Media (February & January) so far. Our call charges have gone up by ?13-?17 since our last Telewest bill? This seems a bit suspicious since I have been using the phone less these past few months? And whats with not itemising under 50p?? Is this even legal? If I went to Asda and they refused to give me a receipt for anything under ?1 I would not be happy!! Can I request fully itemised bills?
Hi there…
I signed a 3 per 30 ? contract (television, broadband and phone) with VirginMedia on 12th Februrary 2007.
On 16th and 20th February VirginMedia took 25? from my bank account each time, so I payed the installation fee two times!
I advised my areal supervisor about this mistake and He told me that He’ll solve the problem but VirginMedia never put the money back on my bank account.
VirginMedia planned with me an appointment for the installation of the equipment for television, internet and phone on 13th March but on that date nobody came or advised me.
It’ s 6 days that I’m trying to speak with your customer service to understand what’s appening but anyone is able to help me and give me an answer.
In these days I’m calling many times the areal supervisor but his behavior is totally unfair: everytime He tell me that He’ll solve the problem calling someone else and He never call me back. Other many times He close the communication untill I’m speaking with him.
He still saying me that my services are already activated but they aren’t!
On Thursday 15th March 2007 I received my first bill for the period 16th Februrary – 15th April 2007 but the services are still not activated!
I never received any modem or decoder or Cd-rom from your company, any advice about my password or PIN or any other details that I need.
At the moment I don’t have internet connection, my phone doesn’t work and my digital tv has not any signal.
CAN WE DO A LEGAL ACTION AGAINST VIRGINMEDIA ALL TOGETHER?
Good night and good luck
I wrote / emaild and phoned to cancel my NTL Broadband connection 4 months ago as moved home.
They still taking my monies every month and without permission (I used to pay by cheque every month)
Despite writing, emailing and wasting hours trying to get thro’ to someone by phone on NTL – still no change
Have compleined to OFCOM – no joy there either. Now going down the VISA ombudsman route and will be making a claim for compensation. I’m not the only one this is happening to I see.