Forum Discussion

Beautygirl95's avatar
Beautygirl95
Joining in
12 days ago

Pre installation nightmare

Hello, 

I signed up to Virgin media on the 4th January for installation on the 16th Jan. I’ve recently moved house and the previous owners or owners before them had Virgin media as the boxes are installed inside the house. On top of this, Virgin media confirmed that Virgin was already installed inside the property and could do a self install, however as I ordered 2 boxes I had to have an engineer in at no extra cost, fine.

So the 16th Jan comes around and the engineer turns up to the property to discover he cannot install Virgin as the external cable needs a re-pull. All the wires are still there attached to the brown box outside but somewhere along the line the wire has been pulled out. He said it should be done within the week. Shortly after he left, I got a text from Virgin media to say the pre-installation will not be done until 9th February which means the actual installation cannot be done until 10th Feb at least! This is 3 and a half weeks without broadband!! 

i’ve called Virgin multiple times and I just get passed around with unhelpful agents. I’ve been hung up on, spoken to rudely and everything you can imagine. On the my installation tracker it says the pre-install are coming on todays date and the next day it changes to that date. So when I call the pre install team they keep telling me ‘the engineers are coming today, I promise’ 

on top of this, I’ve tried to complain through the app and everyday I got a ‘resolved’ message when I’ve had no contact from anybody. 

This is just so frustrating and infuriating and feeling to just cancel all together and go with another provider. I’ve never had such bad customer service from a company, Sky were much better. 

anyone been in a similar situation? 

  • Kath_P's avatar
    Kath_P
    Forum Team
    12 days ago

    Hi Beautygirl95, 

    Thanks for your post and welcome to the forums. It's great having you on board with us in the Community. 

    I'm really sorry to hear that we've had to put the installation on hold for now due to further works being needed to be completed. 

    Whilst this isn't ideal, it does happen on occasions due to the way we provide our network. Sometimes this can take around 10 weeks to complete depending on the issue at hand. In terms of the appointment rolling over each day, this will be because when work is needing to be done before installation, this will show on the account as a floating appointment. This is to ensure the work is planned. It can be done at any point between now and the installation date and will continue to rollover each day until it's completed. As it will be external work, you're not required to be at home so it's not a booked appointment and just a kind of placeholder so we can ensure things runs smoothly. 

    Whilst we're not able to expedite things, I'm happy to take a look at things for you to have the latest update. I can also get a complaint raised to ensure the relevant teams are aware. I have sent you a direct message to allow us to do this with you in a private space. If you are using a PC/Laptop then you can just click on the little ✉ at the top right-hand side of the page to access your inbox. If you are on a mobile/tablet device then instead click on the little circle icon in the top right then select 'Messages'. 😊

    Thanks,

  • goslow's avatar
    goslow
    Alessandro Volta
    12 days ago

    You will be eligible for compensation for the delay. Usual advice on here is not to do any cancelling yourself as the compensation will keep stacking up each day you are kept waiting.

    Keep detailed notes of everything that happens as you go along. Use a timeline format to record everything and link pieces of evidence on the timeline (such as texts, emails, phone calls, missed appointments etc.) with each entry on the timeline. This will help ensure that you are paid what is due when/if you get connected. If you are viewing dates online, get screenshots of those for evidence as VM's systems can overwrite existing schedules and past evidence can be lost from the online record.

    In the meantime, if you have no connection, look into some temporary measures to keep you online such as a mobile data connection/hotspot etc. on a rolling monthly contract.

    https://www.virginmedia.com/help/billing-and-payments/automatic-compensation

    (The new forum software only allows hyperlink text to be posted, not a functioning link)