How accomodating are Virgin Media Engineers?

HardwareGeek · 12 Dec 2011 at 20:23

No experience with virgin but i would guess its all down to pot luck on the day.

I work in a similar job in and out of peoples houses sparking and it all depends on how busy the guy is first of all.

Might get lucky and get a really nice guy with plenty of time and he will do the whole house up for you!!!

More than likely you will get a guy in a rush who keeps getting phone calls asking him where he is and if he can take more work, then when you ask for the extras he will probably be thinking FFS! i haven't got time for this

Best advice is to be nice and polite, tea / coffee on tap, maybe a biscuit and tip if required.

Ps. Tbh this isn't the way it should be, crap customer service nowadays, but the companies try and make sure the staff don't get 1 free minute to save money, making it harder to give good customer service or do little favours. Seems like they tend to book in 10-12 hours work in an 8 hr work day

Dabbles · 12 Dec 2011 at 20:24

Mucky_Pup said:
I was waiting for that, I came into the thread when there was only one reply, thinking "Should I post saying how long I wonder it takes the the uptight "engineer" brigade to get here" and low and behold it only took till post #6

I wonder how long it would take the uptight doctor brigade to arrive in a thread where someone referred to a nurse as a doctor....

mattyg · 12 Dec 2011 at 20:31

Foxtrot26 said:
very accomodating, back when i used to work with NTL telewest and just before i left VM engineers were known to be very accomodating, to the point of selling hooky boxes and modems

where u based Mike? sure theres a few people on here can help you if if you dont get "friendly" engineer

Lol boxes that I used to repossess for non pay etc used to be back on the street within days. We used to get £50 for handing them in until a few enterprising few started to chip "extra" boxes to get £50 instead of the £5 for a normal box

Slade2 · 12 Dec 2011 at 20:43

When I had my VM installed the guys didnt look happy when they knocked on the door. He started talking and saying that my house wasnt wired to the road and they would have to take up the bricks from the drive to get the trunking down. I told them that wasnt nessasary and that I had spoken to the dude next door and he was happy for them to run my cables through his trunking, they were more than happy to do this after a phone call to the boss. The only bad thing that actually happened was they drilling into my outside guttering from the inside of the house but I just laughed since it was an easy fix but I think the guy was a little ****ed off at himself so I ask since they made a mistake if they could run me off a nice length of cable so if I ever wanted to move my PC I could still connect it all up he was more than happy to help me with that.

I would maybe get some beers in and ask them if they could do the jobs for a crate of beer rather than the cash!

sigma · 12 Dec 2011 at 22:06

Had good experiences with VM people in the past (probably 5/6 years ago).

ToejaM · 12 Dec 2011 at 22:24

Aye the ones I've had have been legends. Last one that came out I had make me an extention cable so I could move my router to the office.. I still havnt done it yet though

Hamster · 12 Dec 2011 at 22:30

I had two VM stoners doing my installation. They were very helpful with a non-standard installation although they took their time

Gave them £15 to run cables all over the place and also for two extra telephone extensions. They left half their tools behind too.

Rameses · 12 Dec 2011 at 22:43

Depends on the type of guy, last guy we had was spot on very helpful.

My sister however had a terrible time, they were fitting a TV to the wall, awaiting brackets, so she asked for the white cable to be x-long, to the middle of the adjacent wall. Guy clearly couldn't measure and left it stretched out from one wall to another instead of running along one wall into the corner and then onwards. :eek:

Another engineer came 2 days later and couldn't believe it.

kibblerok · 12 Dec 2011 at 23:19

Depends on how busy the tech is.... if he's got a full day he'd be hard pressed to do extra as its not factored in time wise.

Saying that the 50mb to 100mb shouldn't need much if anything doing tech wise, and if your tivo boxes are simply swaps for existing ones in the same place its a few minutes work and then 10 minutes for the code downloads.... The techs can terminate a cable in seconds and can do that while he's waiting.

The outside box might be tricky as he may not have one, but its just a cover and not too big a job either if he does providing the innards are OK.