Why I'm strongly considering leaving

[brightonjohn]

Tonight I have been sent a new bill - not a new contract. The monthly fee is being increased from £107.50 to £141.00 so that will be an extra £402 per year. I can't sign in to manage my account as the system for changing your password requires a phone call and the 150 number is not working. The link in the bill to virginmedia.com/currenthelp returns the screen Oh, crikey. We can't find that page.

Then I phoned 0800 064 3854 (on the oh crikey page) and spoke communicated with the robot again. It again sent me a text that I can open but which has no service allowing me to change my password. 

As has often been noted before this is a communication company which has no understanding of the word communication at all! 

[Client62 · Accepted solution]

Don't waste time on the phone.  Cancel by signed for letter :
https://www.virginmedia.com/help/cancel-virgin-media

[MeMongo]

My advice is leave. I've been with Virgin Media since the Cable Corporation / Blueyonder days (25 years ish) and the service has gone to the dogs. The final straw for me was when I was calling to discuss possibly leaving, due to the price hike, and they dropped my call. It's not the first time. Your tale of going round the houses to talk to someone is a very familiar one to me and I'm frankly sick of it. BT broadband is being installed tomorrow - faster speeds, more TV, less money. Despite me having 350Mb Broadband with VM, it only ever delivered 150Mb max. 

BT have UK based people that you can actually talk to and they can resolve things. Offshoring support was the worst thing VM ever did. 

I'm ecstatic to be leaving. I always felt like VM had a monopoly on fast broadband, but thankfully there is an alternative for me now.

[dnpark38]

@MeMongo

How did the activation go, did your phoneline get transferred?

I await my activation to ZEN using Openreach FTTP, they too have CS in England and have phone people here and e-mail addresses.

[Richard1959]

I agree that outsourcing the call centres to outside the UK can create difficulties but I do think your being a bit harsh on them regards retentions.

When I got my last price increase I had decided that enough was enough and doing my research on alternatives I was going to leave VM and go to sky using their "Sky Stream and their broadband which although not as fast as VM would have been sufficient for me and that package (with landline) was not expensive. When I got through and discussed my reason for leaving the person (overseas) tried his best to help and did cut my package price but not enough to change my mind, however he then put me through to someone in Scotland who had a bit more authorisation and although still a bit more than Sky he got my pricing  down enough. 

You mention BT as having UK based call centres, I don't know if that's a recent change but in the past they used overseas customer support as well and the experiences that I had with BT Openreach through my business were not good at all.

[dcweather]

Same view here pretty much. It will be a wrench to leave because i go back even further to the takeover of Telewest. They were brilliant in the early days and way advanced with the competition. Everything has got worse since then and others like BT, as you say, have caught up. My biggest concern is that they may only allow my email to continue for 6 months but I think Offcom are on their case with that one. I have also heard that it may be possible for Gmail to pick up virgin mail somehow? Anyway, if they put mine up that much I'm off as well.

[RHogg]

Would love to know about gmail picking up virgin mail if that's possible... my email being switched off and I think it's akin to the shop owner going round the premises unscrewing the lightbulbs to save ££.

Sinking ship.

[martinz]

Same for me, after 23 years I'm currently revolving in the VM Circle of Hell

[jpeg1]

VM will not let you move your VM email address over to gmail for the very reason that you want it to - that would make it easier for you to leave!

This is a suggestion that when VM do decide to give up email altogether they may hand it over to another operator to continue with the email addresses, but that remains to be seen. 

The best thing that anyone using any of the VM address names can do is to move to another provider now while they can do so relatively comfortably.

[jaberwok]

Gmail can "pick up" VM email but only if you can access your VM email anyway - which I can't. Yes VM's cs is often missing but occasionally brilliant - luck of the draw, I guess. I've been connected ever since Diamond Cable dug up our pavements, that's nearly 30 years and I have only stuck with them because of high broadband speed and being able to record more than one tv channel at a time. Perhaps not much longer.