Forum Discussion

Cardiffman282's avatar
Cardiffman282
Trouble shooter
2 years ago

Official : VM most complained-about says Ofcom

Virgin Media was the most complained about broadband, landline and pay-TV provider, seeing significant rises across all these areas from the previous quarter. Customers’ complaints were mainly driven by how their complaints were being handled.

The numbers are truly dire for VM which is twice as bad as the next worst for broadband and landline and three times as bad for pay-TV. 

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2024/latest-telecoms-and-pay-tv-complaints-revealed

*VM appears to be blaming its own customers for complaining about its handling of cancellations and complaints

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/01/ofcom-shames-virgin-media-and-o2-for-uk-telecoms-complaints.html

Which must surely be unrelated to this forum post https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Community-Natter/Breaking-OFCOM-investigating-VM-over-difficulty-cancelling-VM/td-p/5365110

  • jhuk's avatar
    jhuk
    Trouble shooter
    2 years ago

    From one of best if not the best (Blueyonder days not NT(hel)L) to this dire mess.

    • Martyn's avatar
      Martyn
      Superfast
      2 years ago

      I wonder why though, is it the service? support? personally when I've had issues, and of course it happens, it's the lack of support knowledge that annoys me more than anything, 

      • asim18's avatar
        asim18
        Rising star
        2 years ago
        Martyn wrote:

        I wonder why though

        A combination of various factors.

        One factor is customer feedback. VM has the wrong stance on customer feedback. They value positive feedback when they should be valuing negative feedback. A rookie mistake so I'm guessing none of the executives at VM are even slightly qualified to run a business?

        I have seen multiple occasions where someone will want to leave good feedback, and the VM staff will very quickly seek to take the feedback and pass it onto the managers. However, when something bad happens, the staff will NEVER offer to pass the situation onto the executives. Never. They will never take on board bad feedback, nor even attempt or wish to improve support mechanisms based on negative feedback. They care more about positive feedback than negative feedback, which is an absolutely ridiculous thing to do. There should be ZERO focus on positive feedback, and 100% focus on negative feedback.

        Sufficed to say, I have learned so much about customer service from VM. The horrible examples of service provided by VM have helped me tremendously in my career establishing solid support mechanisms for the companies I've worked for.

        So thanks VM for being the epitome of bad customer service, as confirmed by Ofcom.

         

        By the way, if VM need any help in reducing the truly horrifying figures provided by ofcom, you can hire me as Executive of Customer Services. I can reduce the complaint figures by 95% within 7 days. PM me to discuss.

        OR if VM need a new CEO I can do 10 times more work than the current CEO for half the salary of the current CEO. PM to discuss.

         

        If I was the CEO of VM i'd have hired a new Customer Service Exec within 15 minutes of Ofcom publishing those figures. I think the CEO is deep asleep if he hasn't taken any action after almost a week.

    • Emily2's avatar
      Emily2
      Tuning in
      2 years ago

      I heartily concur with the word DIRE .  What has happened to Virgin.  

  • asim18's avatar
    asim18
    Rising star
    2 years ago

    Fair points.

    In my opinion though, the debt is easy to take care of....

    VM has 6 million customers. If you extrapolate their revenue based on £50 average subscription value... 6,000,000 * £50 * 12months = 3,600,000,000 per year revenue.

    If I was CEO I honestly believe I could clear the entire debt within 12months by working overtime and dealing with as many things as I could personally deal with.

    IP transit is very very cheap nowadays. And the CATV infrastructure is decades old. For an average subscriber, I'd speculate that VM's margin is about 95%. Someone paying £100 for Gig1 over DOCSIS must be costing VM around £5.

    VM is making a profit on every subscriber. I can't think of any reasonable excuse for them to be in debt.... Unless you have any ideas?

  • HPatel-1's avatar
    HPatel-1
    Tuning in
    2 years ago

    I have experienced just how useless and incompetent Virgin Media employees are and have submitted numerous complaints including to the Ombudsman and requested information under the Freedom of Information Act.

    Their response to complaints start with "I have a little update" and fail to resolve the issue - it's fair to say that they lack good leadership because the current leadership seem to be proud that they have the highest number of complaints and are the worst service provider! 

  • Impound9140's avatar
    Impound9140
    On our wavelength
    2 years ago

    The only thing I want to happen is that Openreach bring Full Fibre to my postcode, so I can tell Virgin Media to go where they belong

     

    • HPatel-1's avatar
      HPatel-1
      Tuning in
      2 years ago

      I was with NTL early 2000 and 3 polite words that best describe my experience with VM are "Useless Incompetent Idiots" - surely it can't take them over 3 months to email a Netflix activation link or can it???

  • WorstISP's avatar
    WorstISP
    Superfast
    2 years ago

    Completely unsurprising to me. I pay £55 a month for the "1 Gig" package and for about a month I was getting less that 1Mbps over ethernet. This was after 2 months of being disconnected several times a day.

    8 technicians sent out and the speed issue was partially resolved (I get about 200Mbps now over ethernet except during peak hours when it drops to about 50Mbps). 

    You would think after several months and 8 techs being sent out they would have figured out that it's not a "restart the hub" kind of issue, but nah, the whole building is stuck with this scammer thieving company.

    I always encourage people to open their complaints as their first contact with Virgin Media because whatever your issue is, it's gonna end up at the Ombudsman sooner or later.

  • Dave6018's avatar
    Dave6018
    On our wavelength
    2 years ago

    Firstly offshore call centres don't help, I find them polite but hard to understand, they won't digress off the script, it took us over 1 hour to upgrade or package from 125 to 260mb, once 5g improves in my area virgin media is gone!! i have the tv with Sky, sky stream is fantastic, oh and have you seen Virgin Media dent levels 

  • jon_swal's avatar
    jon_swal
    Tuning in
    2 years ago

    I can't even create my account because my "Verification link expired" and I'm not the only one with the issue going by the forums. If this is my experience going forward I'm not looking forward to it. The UX is terrible so far. For example all the support team wants is my memorable information to help me. I haven't got far enough with the account creation to do that yet ...