Virgin Customer Service

Soldato
Joined
1 Jan 2008
Posts
11,247
Well, this may come as no surprise to a lot of you, but it's pants.

Been on a 12 month contract, service has been great, broadband speed fab. Saw the TV, BB, Phone deals for £19ppm with V+ HD, thought 'great', but I'll do some research first.

So I called customer services, but they claimed setup would be £99 instead of the advertised £49. So I asked where the extra £50 came from, was it a labour charge? 'Yes, it's a labour charge and £49 for your V+ box'. OK, fair enough but that wasn't on the website. Another twelve months of my current contract would be £20ppm. OK, hung up to research sky.

Called back, this guy now claims it's £49 but then says it's £99, and spends about 10 mins telling me how bad sky is and how I should sign up to the expensive virgin package.

So, unable to a straight answer about how much it will cost per month, I went to a store in Lakeside, and the chap told me it was £5 more a month but £49 setup. He then said it was actually £99 as I was an existing customer and then a new one, and did not dismiss my suggestion that this was stupid and I should cancel and sign up again! So he calls to find out whether I can get the £49 setup deal but he has to call the same darn useless call centre I do! Turns out I can, but straight away this lady tells me that I can't receive their phone services in my area! Which means I can't get the £19ppm deal, and means I'd have to pay £35ppm to get just TV and BB WITHOUT the phone, £16 more!!? This is as they won't allow customers without their phone service to take M or M+ size TV package. (Even though I couldn't get the phone if I wanted to!) So I hang up.

I discuss my options with the guy in store, who helpfully confirmed I can't get their phone services (though no mention of this from the first two call centre people, great.), and I call back to just sign on to another 12 months of broadband for the £20ppm quoted to me in the first call. 'Another 12 months on your contract will be £25ppm sir'. Then I got angry. I hung up and left the virgin media store.

I think I'll cancel the contract and sign up again (perhaps with the gfs name) so we can get the £20ppm broadband advertised to new customers on their site. That or go somewhere else, which would be a shame, as their product is actually great, just the absolutely shoddy customer service lets it down. That and not allowing us loyal existing customers get anywhere near a decent deal.

/rant.

If you wan't a stress free process, I would avoid VM for now.

Anyone else have a similar experience they wish to share?
 
Indeed, as I said, the actual product is very good, if it wasn't I would no longer be a customer for sure. Just the support is terrible as nobody seems to know what's going on.

Still, I imagine a lot of large companies suffer this same problem. It'd just be nice to talk to someone who knows what they're talking about for once though.
 
Just an update on my situation - two of the people I had previously spoken to were in retentions, but this time (my 5th call not including the visit to the VM store) I called tech support and asked them to transfer me to someone who could help explain the lack of phone service at my address. After 10 mins of holding I was through (call on a monday morning if you can!) to a very helpful guy who explained it was an issue specific to my block of flats.

I explained that I wanted to take the TV and phone but virgin couldnt sell me the services I wanted and he was totally understanding and reduced my £25ppm quote for 10mbit BB to £17ppm, and after some haggling I'm now getting the first 6 months for £13 and the second for £17. I'm VERY pleased with this deal now.

You just need to get through to someone who knows what they're talking about and it's fine. I believe the guy I spoke to was a supervisor or similar, he said he didn't belong to a particular department like they usually do.

Virgin Media need to look at their customer service, seems like a lot of people on here have had frustrating experiences, seems as though I was lucky to get through to the right guy. 80 mins on hold? I almost hung up after 10!
 
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