Matthew Revell

Hermes. I worked for VM when they were telewest/ntl. customer were treated like muppets then like they are now

We have been with NTL for approx 5 years. That was bad enough, but now Virgin have taken over, the service has totally gone down-hill.
I am typing this while I wait for a game to download……since the virgin take-over, this now seems to take forever. At least with NTL it would only take 2-3 minutes……………..so far 12 minutes and I am 45% of the way through !!!

Well i see many of you are having problems with virgin media, firstly you say the boxes freeze up and are slow, these properly aren’t virgin media’s boxes they may be ntl:telewest boxes, virgin have redesigned their boxes and now work as fast as sky’s, also the sky movie channels and the pin protection isn’t up to virgin, sky put them pins on so as they can broadcast certified 15 and 18 movies before 9′oclock, another thing is virgin have replace the ntl:telewest server which holds all of the personal information for their customers, this means that they may have lost some information about you, if so just inform them next time you contact them.
Also teleport has ceased to air but VOD is available instead, it is exactly the same but has a better selection of shows and films, your box may not have changed to vod at the moment but as soon as the mini guide changes colour to black and it says virgin instead of telewest you wil be able to access it.

Ever since Virgin Media took over from Telewest – my broadband connection has been absolutely dire. I had near 5 years of top notch service from Blueyonder. Rarely a problem, the few I did have were swiftly rectified.

Of late I’ve had no end of connection drops, slow-downs that make me wish I was using dial up, and many hours of angst. Upon calling Technical Support I was told that there wasn’t much they could do as my Modem seemed fine. At this point the “Techical support” I was speaking to asked me if I’d like him to call the “Tech’s to see if the servers were alright” which quite honestly made me blink Funnily enough this was the seond time I had called, the first time I was on hold an hour and pretty much hung up on.

I will attempt to solve the problem once more. If it is not worked out in some way I’m switching service. I also expect a refund for the 4mbps broadband I haven’t been getting for nearly a month.

i hoped things would improve under virgin but they are worse,tv box dont work properly,poor customer service,asked to change phone number all they did was turn it off,broadband waste of time emails never work properly.
wrote to sir branson no reply.gave up ringing them kept on hold for hours.the staff dont know what or how to do anything !!!

managers dont ring you back. i suggest mr branson cuts his losses and flies out of the country before this company ruins him !!!!!!

I contacted customer service with full intention to cancel and head to Talk /Talk phone & Broadband package.

Customer Service fell over bacwards to price match.

I not Get phone XL and $ meg BB for 26.50.

Thats a Bargin.

Bueni

The reduction in internet browsing speed may be caused by Virgin Media’s removal of the transparent proxy servers which have been in place since the broadband service was first introduced and people have complained about non-stop. You are now accessing files directly across the internet, and not from Virgin’s nice fast proxy servers!

What moron at VM thinks it’s an upgrade for the sort facility to be removed from the TV Guide and Favourites list.?

I’ve been a very happy customer of NTL for many, many years. Since the move to Virgin I was told I would be on a new package saving me ?31 and that the second phone line I had asked to be removed would also go from my bill.

Guess what, three months later and I’m still being billed the same amount I was back in January. Four emails, three phone calls – its like banging your head on a brick wall.

I’ve just cancelled the DD and I’m writing to the MD to get the money they owe me back – stuff ‘em. Virgin Media are rubbish.

upgraded to v+ on saturday .engineer told me it would all be switched on and working in 2 hours.after 6 phone calls ranging from 20 to30 minutes on hold ive been told it will work in 24hrs,48hrs and may take upto 10 days (what!!!!!)still not working now(wednesday night) .how difficult can it be.customer services promise to call back but never do.the whole company is a shambolic disgrace and the people answering the phones are incompetant ,rude idiots.i just want to cancel the whole lot now and switch to sky but cannot even speak to anyone to do this.THIS COMPANY IS A DISGRACE. AVOID!!!!

Since Virgin, I have noticed during large downloads after about 575 MB, you connection speed is reduced by half. I average 400 KB a second for the first part of the download and everytime it is reduced by half to 200 KB a second. I have ran this test for the last week, and without fail the above happens, is anybody else having this problem.

Virgin have suddenly started charging me £1/month for itemised billing . Am I alone in receiving this?

HAVE JUST BEEN SWITCHED OVER TO VIRGIN MED. WE CAN NO LONGER SET REMINDER FOR PROGRAMMES OVER 3 DAYS ONLY FOR 24HRS, AND ALSO CANNOT CHANGE PROGRAMMES ARROUND ON SHORT TV LIST, I RANG CUSTOMER SERVICE TO ENQUIRE WHY WE ONLY HAVE 24HRS TV LISTING AND WAS TOLD THAT NTL USED TO BE THE SAME,(I DONT THINK SO) AND HAVE NO PLANS TO EXTEND THE TV 24HR LISTING

will they let you cancel your vm services if you havent been with them for a year yet? so let down with their service, find the bills too complicated…signed up for 3 services for 30 quid and was charged 80 for the first 3 months!!
sorted that out now, but so fed up with the loss of Sky channels, has anyone just cancelled their DD?

I have been a Telewest Customer for 10 years, having the dial up internet, tv and telephone service. In december I changed to the 3 for £35 package including broadband. So far my bills are over £60 every month, I keep getting charged for my old dial up service and for some reason I keep getting over charged for the rest of the package. I have written 2 nasty letters with many complaints to Virgin Media and so far have recieved replies saying how busy they are and they will contact me again. I have had one telephone call who left a message telling me to call customer services to enquire about my problems!
I am not spending another hour on hold trying to find out who has been causing the errors, that is their job, hence why I wrote the letter.
I am really fed up now.

I am so fed up with this new this sevice. First my Broadband went down.One hour
waiting to get through to the customer line,(Via my ntl/vigin phone) only to be told
it was a cable fault. Next sevice back, but slow, only to find my mail box was not available.Ring customer service wait 30 mins, to be told that there is a computer fault!. Yes I KNOW THAT! THAT WHY I AM RINGING!!)
Next one of my TV cable boxes dies, yes you guess, ring and five days later, box replaced but can not watch any of the channels I subscibe to as my smart card s invaild. Phone again, all customer lines engaged. I WAS paying £100-00 p.m for this so called sevice but not for much longer. (And Richard Branson wants to start a space ship sevice????!!!!!)

Perhaps I can add something a little different to this? Lets all be honest, the NTL/Virgin thing is rather going around in circles. The problems with them are well documented and have been written about at great length on this and many other boards. New customers can not possibly say that they have not been warned.

For the record, after a quite disastrous 2-and-a-half year period with NTL TV and phone I left about two months ago. I have bought a new computer and needed broadband. I asked myself, ‘do I have confidence in Virgin to do this?’ The answer was no.

What may be a better exercise would be for people on here to recommend where they have got good service from. I am aware that many companies (including NTL/Virgin) have a great many happy customers and a small number of unhappy customers who write on websites, lets stop the sniping and say where we have had good service.

My broadband is from a company called Freedom 2 Surf. I have only had it for a month, but the service so far has been little short of outstanding. No service problems, easy set-up, clear advice. I recommend it highly. Not the cheapest by any stretch of the imagination, but one gets what one pays for in this case.

Anyone – where else can I find good service?

TISCALI HAVE A GOOD REP

i think it all depends on location. i never had much trouble with telewest in my area but there are people from other areas who frequently encounter downtime.

Tiscali have the worst rep in the UK lol. They only have like 200000 customers 90% of are trying to get out of there contract.

Virgin media allowed customers to leave there contract if they aren’t happy with the change in name or loss of sky channels. I for one couldn’t give a monkeys. I’ve seen every Episode of The simpsons, Startrek & the rest of the other shows they repeat several times a year.

Little note for the untrained people. If your having a problem with your account speak with Cancelations they aren’t in india and are better trained to deal with customers. They can do anything a customer service person can and normaly bend over backward to help there customers.

I’ve used Blueyonder for years and have never had any problems. I’ve heard the horror storys of NTL though hehe. Cable broadband is always better its faster and more reliable. 2 outages 1 lasting a few hours and another lasting 1 and a half days. since 2000. i’ve 10meg broadband soon to be up at 20meg,
The Tv service is going to be much better also. Virgin have signed deals with HBO for on demand content and are signing a deal with Satanta for a virgin sports news. Tons more to come. I stumbled on this site looking for news on Virgin Sky argument as Ofcom are looking into the illegal way Ruppert the not so wonderful bear dealt with the situation. Not because i want to see Sky one again but because it would be great if Living, Bravo, Trouble and the other cable channels all got taken from Sky.

Stop moaning and phone there cancelation depart for any queries you have.
And if you really have to goto another ISP go with BT. The other Isps have to deal with BTwholesale anytime theres an issue with your connection meaning it could be a month before it’s fixxed as they won’t call to ask you.

Rob B said,
April 13, 2007 @ 2:33 pm

“To be honest i have no problem with the service or the pages, its just the speed of the internet that bugs me, e.g i usually have 54Mbps and ‘Very Good’ Connection but now its more like 1Mps and ‘Low’
Every time i ring the help desk they come up with some excuse.”

Thats because your using a router . 54Mbps is the speed of your network card. as an ethernet connection is always the same you have to be using a router. There isn’t any 54Mbps in the UK. and your connection won’t be telling you it’ low unless your using a router. Try changing the frequency on your router as this might get you a better signal. Maybe there is interferace from somthing close. but your prob is def not Vmedias

Rambo,

I think that much of my view about Virgin was in my previous post, and there is no point in repeating that.

I would however likt to add that Virgin’s argument about promoting competition seems to me to be not quite as watertight as a first look implies.

When I had Virgin, I could only get Virgin Broadband. Sky apparently offered to retail channels to VM customers, if VM would open teh network up. They refused

Yes, sky needs competition, but it is not enough for Virgin to throw that around whilst keeping their customer base tied to their products.

i know about 20 people who are happy with tiscali. you could be right rambo. i am a long standing telewest user like yourself who has worked for the company.

from my experience, it all depends on what area you are from. people in certain areas get a better service than people in other areas. I cannot really complain about the service that i received from blueyonder but i have known of a few people from othe areas who had the right to bloody murder

lol john jones i like the right to murder idea tbh. maybe some ISP’s should enter that into there contracts. after xxxx days offline you can murder 1 of our engineers. If that doesn’t make them techies get there fingers out god knows what will.

I understand dara
but the point is you know nothing about there in’s and out’s of the dispute between these companies. Sky Pretty much forced virgin into selling there carried channels for a fraction of the price. Sky then demand a much higher price 3times more for there own crap. mostly unwatchable. Who watches Sky travel ffs.

Sky are big bullys they want to have there cake and eat it. They refused arbitration for the dispute. they demended unreasonable sums of money. Simply because Murdoch knows Virgin are a threat. Variety is the spice of life competition is required or these firms won’t develope a better service. Virgin seems to have moved pretty fast into making more things available. Sky don’t seem to have changed much other than there movies channels are renamed and there taking content from freeview watchers also.

The Skyone argument would like coke forcing pepsi into changing there flavour as there getting to tasty then saying btw we want to you to throw a can of cola in every 6pack so we can still make money. Don’t be silly. Virgin will have there day soon and sky will suffer the bill for lack of respect for customers and partners.

I FOUND A SWEETY UNDER MY TABLE AND ATE IT. IT WAS IN THE RAPPER. I THINK I’M POISONED IT WAS AN OLD TOFFIE… OMG OMG OMG.. HEEELP.. :S

I was with ntl for 8 years…..95% of the time was ok.
Then Virgin took over …speed has been decreasing and when other PC on network is logged on both are like snails and getting worse.
Not sure if this is a virgin problem but have been on a forum for 6 months everyday..2 days ago found I couldn’t connect to it…owner of the forum tells me it must be my server.
So it’s goodbye from me and it’s goodbye to Virgin

A copy of my recent e-mail to VM:
To whom it may concern.

This is not the first occasion on which I have needed to contact Virgin Media regarding poor service.
I recently had to re-confirm my cancellation of services, following which, I received a pleasant ‘phone call from one of your sales team(Joanna,01642880388) who persuaded me to give VM another try by having broadband installed last Friday. This I agreed to on the proviso that everything went well over the weekend.
I should have known better, Virgin Media (NTL) are known for poor service and I seem to have received some of the worst. In total I have spent almost 4 hours on the phone, being passed from UK to India, no less than 5 times, each time repeating the same information after having to wait for anywhere between 15 minutes and 45 minutes. I was even sworn at by one of the call centre operators in India, who when I questioned his ability to deal with the problem as none of his colleagues had been able to, said, “Why the hell did you call then?”. Furthermore, when I tried again on Saturday, the following day, I explained to the customer service operator (Simon), that I was not prepared to spend my time waiting in a queue again, to which he suggested that he take my mobile number and call me back, It is Tuesday and I’m still waiting for that call.
I made one last effort on Sunday, discovered that Virgin Customer Service was closed and contacted India again, not only were they unhelpful, but they were going to put me on hold and transfer me to customer care. Either they were not aware of the sunday/bank holiday hours in the UK or they were being vindictive, you decide, either way it is poor service!!
All of this stems from not providing me with a P.I.N. for the broadband service which was installed on time. The password they were looking for was for a closed account (3 years old) and the P.I.N. that they did provide was from tha same account! This is poor service!!
As a result of all of this, I will be writing to your Directors and to Watchdog, providing them with the complete version of events, furthermore, I am now prepared to pay more to receive the service from a competitor of your and will regard the Virgin Brand as tarnished.
I do not wish to have Virgin Media equipment or services in my home and expect that Virgin Media will at least have the decency to ensure that I do not receive any charges for this debacle, although they have charged me previously, for three months, Dec 06, Jan and Feb 07, for internet that I never had installed!
Please ensure that you respond to confirm that you understand the content of this complaint

I DON’T EXPECT THEY’LL SORT IT OUT, THEY’VE MANAGED TO BOTCH ALMOST EVERYTHING SO FAR AND AS FOR CUSTOMER RELATIONS…. HOURS OF 12 ‘TIL 6PM!! DEAR OH DEAR!

“Rob B”

The guy who is complaining about not getting 54Mbps – doesn’t’ have a clue!
54Mbps is the speed of your WIRELESS connection (Not your broadband). He is almost certainly using a laptop with a wireless connection, and there is a problem in the connection between his laptop and his ‘router’ – the one he bought labeled (Netgear/Linksys/Belkin/etc)

Basically either you are moving too far from your wireless router, or there is some interference in your house that is causing some problems with your connection. The issue is confined to your house, before it even touches Virgin Media’s network!

I’m sure this is what Virgin have been telling you but you’re obviously not listening!

We moved from Sky to Telewest in Oct 06 because I had business broadband from BT and it was dreadful, really flaky and often no connection. I have to say that since I’ve been on cable broadband the service has been excellent and the speed brilliant. It is residential not business by the way (but this will be changing soon).
But that isn’t why I’m moaning. Yes, I’m annoyed about the fracas between VM and Sky but it hasn’t affected me greatly as I don’t watch Sky One or Sky Sports New but I appreciate that it is very annoying if you do and these channels are no longer available.
My main issue may seem petty but it is to do with local news coverage. Sky transmits local news to their subscribers by using their post code to identify their area and local BBC news. So, here in West Sussex when the BBC switches to local news, at say, 18:30, we would receive BBC South East. But, since we’ve been with Telewest / VM we now get BBC London.
After installation I called Telewest and was passed around a number of technical support people all to no avail. Even BBC South East technical team tried to get an answer but failed. In October I was finally advised by Paul Keys of the National Faults Team that…… Telewest Digital feed to Surrey and East and West Sussex is from Croydon, which in turn receives its feed from Hayes and we all get London news. I asked him was there anywhere in Sussex that had local BBC South East news transmitted and he said nowhere, which I find hard to believe. He further advised that BBC South East news was only transmitted to a limited region in South East Kent. He further advised that they do not have the infrastructure to switch clients according to their location and Telewest assumes that everyone who lives in a 50 miles radius of London wants to watch London news. And, there is absolutely nothing they can do about it!
Well, I’ve put up with this feeble excuse for long enough and again wrote to VM on 26/03/07. I received a standard letter reply on 11/04/07 saying that they will reply in 10 days. Last week I had a call from Julie in Fyfe to ask whether I was satisfied with their response to my enquiry. Of course I said no as I hadn’t had a reply. She said she would re-open the case and I would hear shortly.
Oh well…. par for the course. I don’t expect a definitive response as no one at VM seems to have any idea whatsoever as to why we can’t receive local BBC news coverage. Oh …. and it’s not just me. On a cable forum that I registered with, many others have the same problem with NTL/Telewest/VM. Some are in BBC South region, for instance, and they too get BBC London. Absolutely pathetic in this age of digital wizardry.

signed up for their 4 for £40. the story is too long and complicated to retell here but in summary, I now have no phone line, have not received the sim for my mobile, have reconnected to my old internet provider as virgins never worked, have had to take 2 days off work so far, spent over 8 hours on my orange phone to their various customer service numbers (dreading that bill!!!) and am currecntly waiting in for an engineer who seemd like he will not arrive. I have landed on Planet Virgin and want to get off Help!!!!!!!

I knew a call centre worker in Telewest who told a customer to f**k off and kept his job

In the beginning this all made sense; consolidate my TV, Broadband, phone and mobile to one provider and save money and hassle.

Now I wish I hadn’t bothered!

The process for signing up to Virginmedia was smooth and straight forward all carried out over the phone with no glitches or problems and an installation date of Tuesday 24th April between 08:00 – 13:00 arranged.
I duly took the day off work and sat at home waiting for the engineer to attend and carry out the installation. At 13:15 I gathered they weren’t coming and called Customer Services.

The lady I spoke to could not explain why nobody had turned up but informed me she had left a message on the area manager’s voicemail to call me and he had to respond to that message within 30 mins.
30 mins later and no return call I called customer services again and this time was put through to the installs department.

I was informed by them that the installation had not been carried out due to some construction work that was required. This was highlighted during a pre installation visit which occurred on Thursday 19th April.
When I asked why nobody had contacted me to say the installation would not be carried out they informed me they did not have my telephone number. When I pointed out that they were transferring my telephone number from BT he quickly retracted his comment and had no explanation. At this point I asked to speak with his manager to try and progress the issue.

Following the response of “What have I done! What have I done!!” I was eventually told that he was on the other line at the moment and I insisted on holding until he was free. Several minutes later I was told he was to busy to talk with me but he would try and get hold of the area manager Lee Collins who was supposed to call me previously.

After several minutes I was told that he had spoke with Lee Collins and he would be calling me in 10 minutes.

30 mins later I had still not received a call so back on the phone to customer services. I was eventually told that all the managers were in a meeting and she had no idea when they would be available. The lady told me she would keep persisting in trying to get in contact with Lee Collins and phone me to keep me updated (that was my suggestion!). Unfortunately I received no updates so an hour or so later I was back on the phone again.

This time I was told exactly same thing again but eventually received a call from Lee Collins explaining he was investigating what the issue was.

30 mins later I got another call from Lee Collins saying some construction work was necessary, I believed this involved pulling a cable to a T box? He informed me that the construction work would be carried out before Friday when the installation had been rescheduled for between 13:00 and 18:00. He also apologised for the inconvenience and service I had received and suggested that once the installation had been completed then we could discuss compensation. He informed me he would call me on Friday to see how the installation had gone.

I couldn’t be at home on the Friday 27th so my wife arranged to be there for the installation. The three man crew from virgin turned up and began the installation, for the duration of there visit they were aggressive and constantly moaning about how mis treated they were by Virgin, how they hadn’t been paid by them ect. My wife wasn’t particular happy with the installation but felt very intimidated by the installers and wanted to get them out the house as soon as possible. Once they had “finished” they left still moaning and even left me some of there tools behind!

When I arrived home on Friday and inspected the work, I was shocked.

I basically had been left with the following;

= Unsafe installation – in my opinion an unsafe installation carried out by intimidating cowboys as shown in the photos.

= Broadband not working – no details on how to get this connected had been sent to me but a very helpful lady in India assisted me in getting this working.

= TV – Interactive portion of the TV installation not working. Spoke to India and another visit from an engineer was required, was told if I was not in when the engineer called I would be charged £10! My response to this was polite and to the point!

= No phone call from Lee Collins

After I had calmed down I called customer services and explained my concerns regarding the installation and the attitude of the installers. The man I spoke with was extremely helpful and emailed both Lee Collins and his boss to inform them about the issue. He informed me that one of them would call me either on Saturday but more likely Monday 30th April.

Monday arrived and no call was received so at 12:30 I gave Lee Collins a call, (the wonders of caller ID!). Lee Collins was completely unaware of the issues I had experienced on Friday and initially thought that I wanted to discuss compensation with him after he had failed to call me. After I explained what had happened Lee Collins said he would visit me on Friday 4th May 09:30 and resolve any issues with the installation, he told me that the engineer scheduled to attend by India would be cancelled.

Friday 4th May 08:30, a knock at my front door and the engineer who was scheduled by India turned up, I informed him that Lee Collins was attending at 09:30 and he turned around and left. 09:30 arrived and no sign of Lee Collins, as 10:00 approached with no sign of Lee Collins and no phone call to apologise for being late I picked up the phone to Mr Collins.

Lee Collins answered and informed me that he was unable to attend site today because the regional manager was not in and a couple of other managers were out and he was covering them also. He told me that Martin Hackney would be coming to see me though in his absence. At that point he said he would try to call him and call me back in 2 minutes to provide me an update. Guess what happened next???
Yes he didn’t return my call until 11:30 when Martin Hackney was on my doorstep. Lee informed me that Martin would discuss getting the problem with the installation sorted out and also discuss compensation with me.

I had a long chat with Martin and initially he suggested that the guys who carried out the work return that afternoon to redo the job. I informed him that I didn’t want the same people redoing the job due to there attitude and obvious lack of workmanship. Martin then suggested that he and another team would visit me on Tuesday 8th May between 10:30 and 11:00 to redo the work. We also discussed some compensation for the inconvenience that had been caused.

When Martin left I finally felt that I had got somewhere, he had taken ownership of my problem provided me with his contact details and had restored some of my faith in that this issue was going to be resolved.

Well today was the day that everything was meant to be sorted Tuesday 8th May, my Virginmedia installation saga would surely be over by lunchtime. Having not gone into work because my wife didn’t want to deal with any of the engineers again I waited at home.

I kept waiting and waiting until eventually 11:00 came and went. I had received no call from Martin Hackney to let me know he wasn’t coming. Since he had provided me with his details I called him, straight through to voice mail. I left him a message and left it for about an hour or so before I tried again. Still no answer and again straight through to voicemail, another message left. I tried Lee Collins now to see if he knew what was happening but there was no reply on his number.
I tried roughly 30 mins to get in contact with either Martin or Lee but by 15:00 I had given up.

I called Customer Service with the vague hope that I was going to get through to someone who could help me either get in contact with Martin or Lee via a different channel or escalate the problem to someone in there team.
Initially I got through to someone in India, I explained my situation and again was told that there were no notes on the system indicating anybody would be visiting or that there was any problems. He suggested that I talk to someone in installs and put me through to the installs department.

I explained my issue all over again and was then told they would try and put me in touch with someone in Lees team. However I ended up back in the customer services queue!

Back to India again and explaining the whole situation again, again they put me back through to installs but this time told me they could not contact anyone in Lees team but would put me back through to customer services in Glasgow where they could help. I spoke to a guy there and again explained the situation, he kept repeating “Looking into it now for you sir” every two seconds before placing me on hold why he made some calls. He came back on the line after about 5 mins and told me he was dropping someone an email to contact me and would continue to try the numbers he had. He said if I would like to drop off the call he would call me back when he had spoke to someone.

Since I had been on the phone for about 40 mins I suggested that I may as well hang on why he continued to try. He then put me back on hold and about a minute later I was put through to someone’s voicemail without him even telling me who it was and that he was going to transfer me!!

So after nearly an hour on the phone I was none the wiser, still no call from Martin or Lee and no help from Customer Services.

Determined I tried them again, I got through to a lady called Christine McMillan, who was extremely helpful. She filled out an incident form for me which she said would assist me in escalating the incident to a incident management team who didn’t speak to anybody without a reference number.

Having logged this for me she then tried contacting Lee Collins and Martin Hackney. Lee Collins was on holiday and from what she said was livid that nobody had turned up and that he would call me tomorrow when he was back in the office. Martin Hackney was not contactable but she had managed to speak to Mark Salford (his boss??) and apparently Martin Hackney was not in the office today.

Christine told me that she was sending all my details to Mark Salford and someone would contact me to let me know what was happening. Christine also ensured that I had her name and informed me that if I had any more problems then to contact customer service and ask to be transferred to her or to get someone to email her and she would contact me directly.
More people at Virginmedia should have this attitude.

At 17:35 today I received a call from Matt Southard who works with Martin Hackney. Apparently he had gone away for the weekend and his flight had been delayed so he was not back in the country. I explained this was not my issue and Matt has now rearranged that someone visits me tomorrow after 18:30 to sort everything out.

I shall let you know if this happens or not!

Virgin Media are the modern day equivalent of ‘The emperors New Clothes’.

Their customer services are non-existent, their 10Mb broadband akin to the old 56k dial up and that’s on a good day. They cap and throttle their downloads on a daily basis and charge a small fortune for their packages,. which are basically worthless.

I cancelled my whole package with them over 3 months ago with 90 pounds credit still in my account and despite phone calls and letters sent, they still insist on holding onto my 90 quid. If you X that amount by all the sensible and intelligent customers that left them, you would have a sizeable amount of interest building up in your bank account.

If you are still with Virgin Media, don’t hesitate, cancel all your services today and don’t be tempted by their lousy offers. Find yourself another provider, it really doesn’t matter which one as most providers in the market place today provide an infinately better service than this shoddy bunch.

If you are even considering joining them, please take my advice and give them the widest berth possible. You will thank me for this advice in the long run.

Hello,
Virgin media are a disgrace. I’ve been phoning them for three weeks to say I haven’t received my bill and I’ve no intention of paying until I do. They’ll probably try to charge me a tenner for late payment in which case I’ll report them to OFCOM.
They’ve changed the TV packages so that you have to upgrade your package if you want to keep some of the same channels. I used to subscribe to NASN for the baseball which cost about a tenner a month. Then then without warning changed this to £15 on the grounds that it was now part of a package together with some other channels I didn’t even want. On top of all this it takes about a decade to get through on the phone. I hope they go bust. I agree with the previous gentleman avoid them at all costs.

I had a call from VM last night on my Vodafone mobile!

Just a courtesy call, then proceeded to check that I was happy with my products and tarriffs – he had them wrong!

I only had telewest for the fast broadband as I had ondigital for digital TV (Another great investment!). Anyhow the cowboys wo installed the broadband dcided that as I had some trees, they woudl lie the cable over the pavemet (as it was under cover of the trees) when I pointed this out a couple of months later, I was advised that it woudl cost me ££75 to get it re-installed – as it works I haevn;t bothered, but I won’t be paying for it to be fixed once it breaks.

They then tried to sell me DTV, despite my telling him in reply to his question that I had sky plus in two rooms and was happy with it. Yes I may be able to save a bit of money, but it wasn’t much once the discounts had ended and I lost the flexibility to record four things at once and on all sky channels! Think I’ll be leaving it at some point in the next year…

I wished him a good evening and then logged straight on the the TPS (telephone preference service) site to register the mobile to stop marketing calls to it.

virgin is the company that has got it all wrong, so much so i shall be using the company in my collage course as an example of how not to do it.
i was let down before i even started with them. they did not turn up to install my phone, and you try getting through, no chance unless you are signing up for the, first time and you get through in minutes and not in hours.
i will be staying with BT, and richard branson you need to stop trying to make more money, and spend more time sorting out your customer care which should be the first thing.give me a call i have just pass a diploma in customer and bussines, i could do a better job than what your team are doing.
Well done for setting up this web site. lest some one will listern.

What would be interesting about the press coverage of VM’s financial figures is how many of the leavers are ex-NTL and how many are ex-Telewest.

It is clear as day that the loss of the Sky channels has hit much harder than anyone at VM will dare acknowledge, but it is wrong, I think to see it in isolation.

I was a long-suffering NTL customer but I did not change through inertia. I lived with the poor service on the (good) reason that it is only TV. Losing the channels was simply the last straw. On top of the poor service, unreliable products and variable billing, a heavily diminished service was just a step too far. Indeed, it was not until the channels were lost that I realised just how easy it is to change. Virgin actually did me a favour by poking me out of my intertia!

I wonder though whether Telewest users who, I understand, received a substantially better customer service, are more sanguine as losing the channels is less of a ‘final straw’ to them

As I mentioned, I am not sure whether there was a corporate bravado about losing the Sky channels or whether VM (very wrongly) thought that the on-demand was equivalent but either way at the moment, VM is looking like bringing together the worst elements of NTL, the, at best, niche of Virgin Mobile and the insecurity of Telewest without adding any value. It is actually quite heartening to see customers recognising that they get what they pay for and that whilst VM may be cheap, that has to be weighed against the quality of service. My NTL experience suggests to me that cheap is not always cheerful and I just wonder whether the prospect of having to deal with the VM call centre over 4 utilities is why the very good, on paper, 4 way deal has not really taken off.

I had my set top box replaced because of a fault and now my sound system no longer works. I contacted Virgin and was told “someone would call back” – of
course they didn’t.

Eventually after being moved around their phone system for half an hour, I was
essentially told “tough luck mate – we aren’t interested”. They claim that some
boxes might support sound systems, some might not, but anyway, it’s not part of
the package. so you’re stuck with what you get.

PETER R

You want to have murder mate with them. the set top box should work with all tvs and sound systems. fucking robbing bastards they are. when i was working there I had a million instances were the customers were fed totally bull shit advice

I had the NTL/Virgin install cable/broadband in my house. They took out a chunk from my living room wall. Where they fed the cables through, the engineer did not put any selant arount the holes. The rain water came through and know I have damp in my living room.
The NTL/Virgin supervisor came out and admitted liability and said he would get it sorted. He sent a builder who told me that this was a common problem with instalation and he has been sorting out this sort of mess for NTL/Virgin for a long time.
Weeks went pass and nothing happened. When I phoned back they said we don’t think it was caused by the insalation not being applied and told me to sort the mess out myself. This will cost me hundreds of pounds.
Is it a suprise that Richard Branson has always got that smirky smile on his face.

And I thought I was the only one!

A while ago I transferred to NTL broadband after problems with Orange. It was then taken over by VM. No major problems other than the odd time when my service was unavailable.
Today I go to my bank and VM have taken £89 from my account!! I am a single parent on a relatively low wage and £89 really is alot to me. I speak to my bank who advise me to speak to VM. OH MY GOODNESS! What a bloody ordeal that was.

First of all VM said that I had no account with them, which is funny seeing as they take £18 from my account each month for broadband usage. I then spoke to someone who did find me on their computers. NO record of £89 ever being taken. “It wasn’t us Miss M, that would be fraud and Virgin Media don’t defraud their customers, we suggest you go back to your bank and ask them” This went on between VM, Me and my bank for the next 8 phonecalls (all of which lasted 20 minutes plus)

TEN phonecalls later I was told that they STILL couldn’t find this phantom account that had set up a direct debit. I cancelled it with my bank but basically there is nothing stopping Virgin media from doing this again next month.

I am due to speak to someone else today but I don’t hold out much hope. Nothing has been solved. I have filed a Direct Debit Indemnity claim but I have to wait up to a week for that money to be back in my bank (and of course VM could do this again next month)

I know that in the grand scheme of things £89 isn’t a lot of money, but in my life £89 is the majority of my wages and without that money, I don’t feed my family or pay my rent. Again Virgin Media don’t care. Have a nice meal tonight Mr Branson and I hope your bed is lovely and warm. Tomorrow, I have to explain to my landlord why he won’t get paid.

Leigh

You want to report them robbing bastards to watchdog. Your case would be massive on the show. it would really help us improve virgin media. they will keep on taking the piss if nobody opens there mouth. people have got to bombard watch dog and co

At the begining of march the sales team from Sky rang me up to see if i wanted Sky Broadband, ok sez i. Router will be with you in 3 to 5 working days sez they.
To date 18/5/07 NO router, I didnt contact sky about the late delivery ,their loss( or so i thought) .
Looked at my bank account today and Sky have charged me for 3 months broadband ( i went for the max, silly me)
So…….I rang up Sky and they said a letter had been sent to me on 17/3/07 telling me my line was being activated (did not receive this letter).Got a Sky welcome pack tho.They have charged me even tho the sales team assured me i wouldnt get billed untill i activated my ( non existant ) router.
So…….. They are now conducting a search to see where my router is!
I have VM broadband at the moment although its expensive i am happy with the speed i am getting.
It seems to me, better the devil you know.
What really ticks me off is the fact that these companies can just pilfer your bank account as they like.When is someone in a position of power going to sort this out,it is just legalised theft as far as i,m concerned!!!!!!!.
Oh and bye the bye VM are STILL charging me for a phone line i dont have ( see Fed up ) aaaaaaaarggh!

I have read through most the comments here and think the only way VirginMedia will learn to fix it’s policies is if enough people move to Sky. I’ve threatened 3 times to do this and they’ve asked me to stay. I’ve been back with them for 3 weeks and am going to use my ‘cooling off’ period to cancel and bugger off to Sky. I dont care if sky is slower/less reliable/ blah blah. At least they dont lie to you in order to keep you!

I have been with NTL from the day they laid the little green tubes 15 years ago. The basic service cost £5/month for analogue plus phone with a few channels. As time went by the extra channnels disappeared and the cost went up and length of time one channel was up reduced from 20 hrs/day to 8 hrs/day. Now Virgin have taken over the SKY ONE reason for staying with the “service” was severed. During this time I had been with BT adsl bb and decided to go NTL bb at £10/mth for the first year and is now £18 which I have been trying to cancel for 3 months.
In this 3 month period I have tried to reach somebody by phone (the time wasted waiting has been hours) and e-mail to cancel the bb. The automated e-mail response states that they will “get in contact within 5 days as we are very busy at the moment” and disconnect my bb but after 2 bills they are still taking the £18 and there has been no contact.
What to do next?
Unfortunately I’m in a sort of Bermuda Triangle for terrestial television and freeview so I’m sort of stuck with NTL/Virgin or do I go with SKY? (I had a problem with them also about siting the dish but I won’t go there!!!!)
If I stop the standing order I could end up with no TV at all.
Do I take legal action ? What rights do I have? Does anybody care?

I have stopped using Virgin Airways and go BA for more room and better service.

Moan over do I feel better? NO.

Called VM to cancel service & move to Talk Talk. Was offered Talk Unlimited with free TV Package, internation option, mobile option & 2mg broadband for £20.95. Told mate across the rd from me, they offered the same deal for £19.95. I can’t complain with cost savings like that.

Try it

Glad I found this place: VM’s forums (what a surprise!) have discussions on every which topic other than the actual service.

Apologies if all this has been aired above, but I’m hopping mad & just want to vent.

I’ve no major horror stories to report, just the quiet pfffff… of patience running out. As a VM cable TV subscriber I was so lookin forward to the improved service advertised in the recent mailshot (‘The New Virgin TV Guide’), which promised ‘You can set reminders for any programme in the future’.

Well, I’ve just had the new TV Guide download itself, & find to my surprise (OK, I’m naive) that setting future programme changes seems still to be tied to the brain-dead concept of ‘reminders,’ so that if there’s no programme info available (ie more than the next 24 hours, cf NTL’s 2 days), you can’t set a ‘reminder’. And if it’s just the 1 channel, so you set the box to the channel you want before you go off on your hols, it’ll have switched to something irelevant long before your recorder kicks in. Oh, & – unlike about every competitor service, or video recorder, or (I think) most freeview boxes, there’s there’s still no ‘daily’ or ‘weekly’ option.

Have I missed some new & fundamental facility in this upgrade?

Before NTL conned me (by sneakily degrading the analogue service) to switch from analogue to digital, I could do all that: all I had to do was enter a date, a channel, & a start and end time.

I appeciate that VM has inherited the arrogant, sod-the-punter approach of NTL & its predecessors, wallowing in the monopoly bestowed on them by the government of the day; but (hey – I said I’m naive) I hoped Mr Branson would make a difference.

Oh, & the programmes which were recordable on first showing, but which became unrecordable when NTL put them on its On Demand facility, are still record-protected, only there’s no longer a warning message. So Mr Fair Deal hasn’t tackled (or doesn’t intend to tackle) the anal-retentive lawyers & accountants who clearly held sway under NTL.

I’m probably going to cancel cable TV sub & fall back on freeview (whose quality, I find is – perversely – better than via cable, at least for the digital output of terrestrial broadcasters).

Murdoch’s cohorts are clearly out to shut down cable for good, or at least reduce it to the level of community broadcasting. Can Mr B want, or actually be bothered, stop this?

End of rant.

I have recently started working for Virgin Media as an installer(background information) I have spent a lovelly ammount of time reading up on my new employer and stumbled upon this site. Frankly i am not suprised by what i have read, especially as during my training periods i was buddied up with ” experienced” installers to observe and learn, with the exception of but a few of the guys most displayed attitudes and behaviors i wouldnt wish to see in any customer facing department. Swearing, bad attitudes, job avoiding at excuse, eg.we cant run a cable there, as that cloud is moving in entirely the wrong direction, 1 by 1 i shall provide the service to any and all customer i come into contact with that i would wish to recieve myself and 1 at a time hopefully will restore the faith of every customer i come into contact with in this british soon to be great british company. Hopefully my attitude will rub off on those of my colleagues who need adjustment. on a final note there are good installers out there i know who they are so do they. upgraded2003@hotmail.com for personal comment.

Just to drop a line:

- I called customer support today to order a second phone line, they answered in 10 seconds! Great improvement compared to NTL days.

- Also had my cabe modem broadband for about 6-7 years. I haven’t had any problems for about 3 years now, no outages at all, and the speed is really good.

I’m quite happy with the service Vergin Media provides!

IVAN

YOU HAVE BEEN VERY LUCKY OR YOU WORK FOR VILE MEDIA