Worst customer service I've ever experienced - need to share!

[shanematthews]

Unfortunately with most companies outsourcing tech support you get failures like this, maybe one day they will learn to bring it back to the UK, i've only had 1 of my last 3 ISP's provide a 24/7 UK tech center and that was O2

[Tams]

This time last year when I had a problem, I phoned India at 23:00 hrs on a Friday to report the problem. I knew what the fault was, although it was something I could not rectify, so when someone answered the phone, I started to give details of the fault and what I had done as a process of elimination to determine the fault. The guy at the other end then started to go through the text book test. I was then informed what the fault was, exactly what I had told him. He then informed me that an engineer would come and see me the following Wednesday.

Now I knew that with this particular fault, there was no need for an engineer to come to my house, as this would have meant me taking a day off from work. When I told the guy in India that I did not need to remain at home, he told me that he could not make the appointment for me.

On the Saturday morning, I phoned India again. I then asked to speak to a manager. I was passed onto someone to whom I explained the problem and fault to him. Again he told me that an appointment would be made for me, but it would not be till the following Saturday. I explained again that it was an outside box fault and that I did not need to be home. Well Sir, he then started, if that is the case, then we cannot make an appointment for you. At this point, I then asked him to pass me through to Tech Services at in England. He was not too happy about that, but I spoke to a woman in if I remember correctly, at Swansea. I explained the situation to her. No problem she said. I will have someone on the case this afternoon. And hey presto! She was as good as her word. That evening when I got home from work, all was working well.

The point I am making, although it was a bit long winded, is for best customer support and tech help, is for it to be done in the UK where there is no Language barriers.

Cheers,

Tom

[kamerynn]

I've had problems with my Virgin ADSL service since it was installed in March.

Tech support would not go past their scripts and asked to run speed test after speed test and kept blaming BT for the poor service. The connection did get a bit better eventually and I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to live with a rubbish service till the contract expired.

This last few weeks I've had loads of problems where anything I downloaded was corrupt, so I had to call tech support again which was getting me nowhere, the asked me to do ping tests and speed checks and as they came back as within normal levels they basically refused to help anymore. I asked if they would send me another router to try but this was refused unless I could prove that the router I have was faulty and suggested I borrow a router from someone else. All but one of the engineers I spoke to came across that they couldn't give a monkeys about my problems and one supervisor I spoke to got quite shirty when I suggested that borrowing a router was not acceptable.

I'm in a tech support role myself and if I put as little effort into solving issues as VM do I would have been sacked a long time ago.

I have since been able to beg a router from work which low and behold did solve the issue and another call to VM to state this has eventually got them to send me a new router.

My overall experience with Virgin has been very poor and come October when the Ofcom ruling comes in about the cheaper cancellation fees I will be seriously considering paying to leave them and go back to O2.

Kam

[rory_20_uk]

This has prompted me to see if I can get any assistance from someone as calling up or indeed sending a complaint has only cost me time and money.

I'd advise persons who are considering calling to have a look at saynoto0870 (google the term) as it gives a normal number to at least stop paying to get a service to work!

[craigd]

Virgin Media technical support in India are just amateurish as they have zero understanding of the issues involved. Asking someone to check a modem because they don't understand what a network problem is, is simply ridiculous. I really thought of signing up with this company again but since they are using India calls centres for both sales and support then I will never sign up for VM as the customer support and product provided is clearly appalling. Their own customers are saying over and over again, but its clearly they are not interested. Do I find this appealing as a potential new customer, no I don't. I'm not signing up!

[canveyboy]

I havnt read all the replies (just scanned some of them quickly).

Firstly, and sadly Customer service as a whole is broken for want of a better word there are too many front line staff letting the side down, weather its outsourcing and/or poor training or just keeping people who have no passion or pride in their work employed, is anyone's guess.

secondly (and im not sucking up here) Seph hit the nail on the head stating that the forum staff should have jumped all over this to help out as it was OBVIOUS this lady wanted help but technicly didnt ask for it, as pointed out by staff, but hers was a two pronged complaint on Virgin Media (failed broadband connection and very poor customer service) that too many paying customers experience.

I feel the forum staff do a good job here and although technicly they are not customer service staff they are still the first line of contact when people come to these forums, maybe they should be willing  / more pro active to pass customer service issues they read on here to known highly motivated focussed customer service staff who will give better support than 1st line support, the sort of customer service that most get when going via the CEO office route.

If the cable network could be opened up to other companies to run (renting the lines from VM as they already do with BT) then im a supporter of that, somone mentioned that virgin laid the cables so why should other firms be allowed access, virgin laid nothing originally, they aquired Blueyonder, NTL and amalgamated them all under the Virgin Media name.

[Lawikekurd2010]

Just because somebody is experiencing a certain problem with their local connection, this does not mean that they should recommend other Virgin media broadband service customers to change their Internet Service Providers. This is totally a lackadaisical attitude that I really disapprove of.

[elainespencer]

Being a customer of Virgin and NTL for many many years.  I am sorry to say that enough is enough.  Yes, I have had to move to a competitor.  This is purely because of the poor quality and quite frankly appauling customer service.  Not sure if any of this feedback means anything to the big boys with their big cars and nice salaries (and nice fat bonus payments), but you really need to sit up and take notice - your customer service is going to lose you so much business, and then you will not get your fancy bonus payments any more!!!

Leave you with just one example of the language problem - it took me over 5 mins (to India, from my mobile!!) to get this guy to understand that broadband and internet is the same thing - he thought although my internet was working I still needed to sort out my broadband - the problem is with my phone line!!!!!!

The only good thing I have found out during my nightmare in the last 3 weeks - is this forum, maybe you should advertise it better. Or if you want to exceed customer expectations why not have a UK based helpline which is free to your paying customers!!

[venom09]

we have had problems with VM for ages and they do jack about it, first off we had no internet for almost 2 weeks we wasnt compensated for it we pay nearly £100 a month all in and for saying we have a 20mb speed indeed we have 3.2mb speed the modem ready light flashes all the time i do what they say to reboot and still nothing, i ring them up and they say do this do that ( ive already done that ) then they send you a survey out to see how good they are what a waste of time that was, the internet needs sorting really bad as my gran can run faster than my pc, i had to format my pc once and lost everything and in the end it was the net. i have wireless ip cameras for security and the net just goes down. NOT HAPPY. VM do have bad customer service and i wouldnt rate them at all. rant over.

[argylobey]

I've just posted "Customer Service - You must be joking" which details something similar.

Very similar experience and very similar feelings!!