Virgin outages/customer service

julianatokyo

Is anyone else being driven to distraction by Virgin outages and the diabolical customer services? Anyone feel moved to make a group complaint (should we in fact be able to find out how to make a complaint)...

SimonB

Broadband? Landline? Cable TV? Mobile?

I've got Virgin Media (BB + TV) ... not had any problems.

JungleFaceJake

Broadband and TV has been cack recently.

TV just goes blank when changing channels, an the Broadband just stops working without warning..

I have complained many times to no avail.

I feel that I should add something dismissive and disparaging at this point as it is rare that I actually care about the yawn worthy threads on SG.org.

So here goes.

Thankfully I have a rather over active imagination which makes masturbation easy without the aid of free porn sites.. although sometimes it is important to crack one out in a hurry and the internet is a very useful 'Tool' that I have paid for and so should be able to spread my love at will (who's will? I hear you cry)

I thank you

krappyrubsnif

I was terrorised by Virgin for three months of broadband hell - and no, all their promises to fix it were so much cack.

I just switched to BT and left it all behind. It's not perfect but at least it works.

rainbow_carnage

Virgin broadband has been painfully slow the last few days. Their customer service is non-existent. We'd switch, but we've yet to find a provider that offers reliable broadband at a reasonable price. We've tried Tiscali and TalkTalk. Both were pants.

David

Since the big disruption last year mines been fine. The tip in another thread on this about requesting a new up to date modem worked a treat for me. They seemed pretty happy to send it.

ShaunG

I used to have no end of Virgin outage outrages, and from reference to this site I seemed to be having considerably more than the average. After much procrastination I got an engineer round and she diagnosed a problem with some of the modem readings (signal, noise, dB levels, others here will know about this stuff). The upshot was she was able to fix it by screwing in a new connecting thing between the incoming cable and the modem, and it made an amazing difference, both to my access speed and to the number of outages (now only probably what everyone else suffers). The engineer visits are free (albeit you have to get through some horrible customer service conversations to get there) so I'd recommend seeing if there is a localised problem.

j

Buried deep inside the Virgin Media website, where nobody can find it easily, is this form:

https://help2.virginmedia.com/assets/customer_zone/complaintformCZ.html

Unfortunately whenever I complete it or phone them up, they do next to nothing about fixing any problems- I just wait a few days and hope for them to fix themselves. They're totally useless.

Ali

Contact Richard Branson. It is his brand and he owns quite a bit of it

matt

If you order your BT line installation online, there's no charge for the fitting. That's a saving of £120. Just saying, like.

Ilovegreyhounds

Is anyone having problems this week? We have had no broadband or digital TV since Monday lunchtime. Have spent ages on the phone to their awful customer services who tell me something different each time and no one can agree if it is an area fault or our kit. My Friday engineer has been cancelled only to make another appt for Monday. Plan to pull out as soon as I have a chance to research other options. Their waiting times for calls to report faults are shocking.

Ian

I have had a lot of problems recently - every Saturday for 8 weeks between 6pm and 8pm ish. They are upgrading their equipment in the area and it leads to the outage. In response I have got money off, upgrade to faster speeds and the promise of more if it continues. So keep shouting at them.

julieshrive

Wind Up? They now have a Customer relations dept separate from customer service who spoke to yesterday regarding a new box after calling for further information on several days . But what was told wasn't what the others had said . It was a much better deal...Have you had cold calling by them to reduce your bill ? Or the echoey call centre in India who block and continue the delays.Of course Richard Branson cannot be contacted .As for Ofcom....?
They take your money for Broadband, the suddenly cause problems from afar ,usually at weekends , by saying are not compatible with Microsoft Entourage [ MAC ] that have been taking money for ever since the takeover.Mind you Telewest was worse.

Ali

It is not surprising they have problems, the number of Virgin Street Cabinets around here that don’t have their covers on so exposing all the connections to the weather and the passing public is amazing !

julieshrive

I believe Watchdog maybe featuring Virgin customer services this thursday 13th evening. As for Operator services these are non existent . Years ago an address could be traced through a telephone number now no longer.

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Sunshine Trio

Hi,
We also have had no virgin broadband since Monday afternoon. We can still see our network but are unable to connect to it. ilovegreyhounds - is this a similar problem to the one you're experiencing?
I checked to see if it was an area fault on the virgin website but it said there was no faults in the area. however I'm not so sure.
It's very annoying!

Happyhenry

We had a Virgin broadband outage on Monday from midday until bedtime. Twenty multi-choice questions and a conversation with India confirmed usual nonsense = 'local outage - our engineers are aware and working on it'. Don't know when it came back on, but was working first thing Tuesday morning.

Then on Tuesday the whole lot (bb/tv/phone) went off again at about 10.00am. Twenty multi-choice questions and a conversation with the nice man in India confirmed usual nonsense again. Walked to the paper shop and bumped into a Virgin engineer lurking in a front garden a few doors down. He confirmed that they were 'upgrading' the junction box around the corner in Florence Road! Lo and behold they were. Service resumed about 4.0pm.
No notice, no apologies, lies from the nice man in India - again!

I am surprised any of it works since the 'borrowers' filched all the doors off the cabinets and took them for scrap. They've been open to the elements, rubbish and mischief for months.

Fin

I've had regular outages on TV and broadband every Saturday evening for several weeks.

They ignored me for a while, then arranged an engineer which they cancelled without notice, then finally did send round an engineer who claimed he'd fixed it but hasn't.

Their service is awful and their customer service is far, far worse. As soon as I can work out a viable alternative I'm leaving.

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Ilovegreyhounds

Sunshine yes that is our exact problem. Allegedly an engineer is still coming tomorrow, I'll believe that when I see it and get service back to normal!

harpistic

I was with O2 for several years in my old home (Way West London - under the Heathrow flightpath), absolutely no complaints with them, but I switched to Virgin when I moved to SG as the previous occupants were Virgin Media customers so it only took 2 days to get connected (broadband only).

I'm getting outages at least once a day, sometimes for quite a while at a time. I'm used to watching TV online. but generally can't as Virgin's worn out by then. (Sometimes I have to restart the router before a TV show starts but that's getting a bit too high-maintenance).

Really fed up with them - given that they cost way more than O2 does, I'd expect a better service from them, not an absolutely crap one by comparison.

Fin - how long do you have left on your contract? Am pretty sure that we're liable for the monthly payments of the full contract - 12, 18 or 24 months, and that there's hefty penalties for cancelling beforehand. Be warned!

N4mality

Just my 5 cents. Outage with Virgin Media for a week. Just got back on. Apparently a lot of maintenance work going on in North London that is affecting it.

julieshrive

Yet again problems with the mindless customer services with a license to wind up .Customer Relations are not there on sundays . Typical usually you get India also holding the fort. Noone of decency, reason & morals is monitoring .Experience tells me if you If you Complain to customer service about staff behaviour [ colleagues] they maladministrate & wind up too using data protection likewise ofcom & Ombudsmen.
Perhaps you could e petition Islington who will also maladministrate or find fault with it .
Years ago Trading Standards would not be allowing this carry on . Now its a free for all with LA copying this abyssmal state of affairs with the foul Consumer Direct operating likewise .
What decent organisation franchises out it's Disability Directory & staffs it with people who wind up the customers likewise most organisations including LA . Even admin to Cllrs & MP behave like this . Totally unethically independently .Are they elected?
All they are good for is checking you pay your bill & pretending have no comprehension so can label you abusive when you appear horrified.They are never able to refer you to someone who is making rules , procedures & decisions. Yesterday I found the cable forum which appears to be them too further winding you up there .
Maybe try whichconversation ? Or plebble review site ??Just contact me if you need support .Pledgebank too ?

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tosscat

BT Infinity arrives at the end of December I'm told.

miss annie

We have infinity in the N4 bit of SG. It's good.

tosscat

Do we? Not on the UES.

Ali

Put your phone number in here to find out if you can get it. <http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=25633&s_cid=con_ppc_maxus_vidZ59_Broadband&vendorid=Z471&sissr=1>; If you want to know who else you can get try Sam Knows <http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker>; This site tells you everything you could ever want to know about fixed broaddband !

Ali

On Virgin maybe one of you should take a lead and do a sort of Groupon thing, ie get all the numbers of dissatisfied Virgin Customers on here and one person contact them and tell them you’re all leaving and see if they jump to help. Ask to be put through to retentions. Might not work though if there are only a few of you !

j

On last Monday's broadband outage - I phoned them up as soon as my connection mysteriously failed, to be told they'd already written to tell me and that it would be off all day.

Virgin Media have NEVER written to me in advance about any outages, and on asking the chap on the phone why they couldn't e-mail me instead, "I'm sorry I can't answer that question, sir". Great.

Amazingly, the junk mail they constantly send about upgrading my phone/TV/internet always arrives reliably, ready for me to write RETURN TO SENDER all over it and post it back.

Has anyone ever been told in advance when they are doing 'maintenance'?