Forum Discussion

Cardiffman282's avatar
Cardiffman282
Trouble shooter
11 months ago

New Which? survey puts VM at the very bottom for customer satisfaction

In its 2024 survey of nearly 4500 broadband customers (not just Which? readers) this January VM comes rock bottom with a sad satisfaction rate of just 56%. 

There were some interesting movers in this one. Normal stalwart Sky only came one place higher with 57% whilst Community Fibre (71%) and Hyperoptic (68%) join Which's sole Recommended Provider, Zen (70%), in the top three. 

What to make of it all? 

 

  • People are waking up to the fact that tolerating poor service is no longer acceptable and realising that you pay for a certain standard and if it doesn't meet that standard you complain. 

    The old "British" attitude is changing from the days of "it's OK it will do" to "it will not do - I paid for it so fix it, replace it or give me discount". About time too! !

  • Tudor's avatar
    Tudor
    Very Insightful Person

    I just love meaningless stats, you can make them show anything you want. Nowhere does it show the percentage of complaints to number of customers served.

  • daveeeh's avatar
    daveeeh
    On our wavelength

    Not surprised, while being helped by PM, I was told my 500Mb connection was only good for console gaming and not PC gaming PMSL.

    The exact message : "The speed that you have is suitable for gaming, but only console gaming" and apparently if a game is using ray tracing and high graphic content it also slows down the internet. My god what were they smoking!

  • Brillo's avatar
    Brillo
    On our wavelength

    I'm not surprised! My contract ended today. I was originally paying £47 which went up yearly to £51. This was for a TV, broadband & home phone. We also had mobile volt deals too at £7 & £12 for 10mb. My wife's contract ended & they put her monthly payment to £25. I ported her to Smatry Mobile £7 for 25 Gb & ended my phone contract a month early for the same deal.
    Anyway, we don't use Virgin TV or our home phone. I have a much cheaper alternative with TV. I tried to negotiate a broadband only deal when they wanted to put us up to £80 for the same deal we currently had. Anyway they wouldn't budge, even when the contract ended. They said if you took out a new contract we would lose our email address & couldn't have a new contract at the same address for 3 months even if another person in the household took it out. In the end we had to do an M500 broadband only deal for £66. Though this is monthly & hoping after a month or so do an 18 month contract with more discount. It's terrible customer service & no loyalty at all, having been with Virgin Media & Virgin Net for over 20 years. My son has GigaClear with much faster speeds than us for £21 a month. If GigaClear were here I would have joined them, at the drop of a hat! I was on the web chat & phone trying to negotiate for the best part of an afternoon. There is no customer loyalty!  You only get better deals if you are a new customer! I could get our new broadband speed for £33 as a new customer but now it's for me £66. It's even better as mentioned with GigaClear. However GigaClear are only in certain areas. We feel absolutely ripped off by Virgin!!

    • unisoft's avatar
      unisoft
      Knows their stuff

      VM's longer term plan (and not playing out as quickly as they hoped because they aren't all bankrupt) was to grab CityFibre and some other ALTNETS and "integrate" as VM or NexFibre. They were hoping this would be cheap because of bankruptcy. They gave on CityFibre though a while back as price got too high.as reported by The Telegraph and others.

    • Cardiffman282's avatar
      Cardiffman282
      Trouble shooter

      You can cancel today giving one month's notice and then you may get more serious retention offers if you have marketing enabled. If they don't come then no problem as your wife can join as a new customer at the end of the one month notice period (what you were told about this was false - your wife is indeed a person in her own right despite what the VM agent seems to think - however you would lose all existing VM email accounts and TV recordings). Lastly if you want to represent as a new customer yourself you would indeed have to wait the three months after the end of your notice period and maybe use a sim router to carry you through.