Why do we tolerate how Virgin treat their customers - us?

[mikesh]

I have agreed with Virgin to continue my Virgin Ultimate Bolt contract for another 18 months. I know it's not called this now, but have all the things I had for £80.75 per month instead of £60. This is about the same rate as my favourite biscuit, chocolate hobnobs have increased over the same period. This part I am happy with.

What I am less than happy with is the amount of brown stuff they have made me wade through over the last two weeks to get to this price, that I agreed in August and suddenly grew to £100 a month later. It took a formal complaint to get this resolved by the Resolution Team two days before the cooling off period was ending and me cancelling the contract. 

I had only found out the cooling off period timing days before. Am I stupid in believing any transparent and honest company would start a new contract as and when the old one expired? The transparency and honesty chapter has obviously been torn out of the Virgin training manual. 

They started the service immediately without telling me, adding £60 to my costs, and when I asked Virgin about this, Homer Simpson who has now found a job at their Scottish call centre, told me I should have asked for the new contract to start when the old one finished. I asked how was I to know, to which he replied I just should have known.  Bless him, he did admit if I put up his IT support contract without telling him, he wouldn't like it. How are people like this allowed near phones?

How is it legal to start contract while others are still running – without telling you?

I am sure everyone at Virgin is under pressure. I am sure it’s not exactly a fun place to be. Having worked in the IT industry for 35 years Virgin are showing all the classic signs of a company on the verge of something bad or being swallowed up by someone larger:

• Long waits for calls to be answered and allowing no easy email contact.
• Totally disinterested/unhelpful staff, who realise their days are numbered
• Little promotion and advertising.

Only my thoughts,

[IanMSpencer]

Simple answer is that we don't. While people might feel that the lack of alternatives makes them compelled to stay, the long term failure to address their customer service woes, wait times, misinformation, high pressure selling, new contract terms at the hint of a sneeze, excessive price differences between new and renewing customers means that as soon as another door opens, any consideration of loyalty is gone.

I didn't go the OpenReach option due to issues that myself and neighbours had over the years, but now CityFibre have provided a real alternative here, why would anyone stay.

I suspect that VM are being hammered by the CityFibre rollout and they've had a massive spike in calls now that they are available. Of course the initial experience is great with first adopters getting a service well below planned capacity linking into mature backbones of other providers like TalkTalk and Vodafone.

[mikesh]

Thanks Ian,

I had a look at Community Fibre (is that the same as City) and that was £25 for 1Gig fibre, but by the time I added the phone line and tv stuff VM price was still better.

I can still get Freesat should I cancel Virgin. When I got Virgin, the engineer tried cutting the satellite cables so I made them come back and replace them free of charge.

Do they try changing everyone at the new rate before their contracts expire or is it just me?

Thanks,

Mike

[japitts]

Renegotiated packages are usually instigated at point of renewal unless the customer specifically requests a delayed activation - or there is an equipment swap dependency. In any case, the 14days cancellation period is a statutory one.

Virgin TV is primarily a pay-TV product, and carries many channels not available on Freeview & Freesat.

[mikesh]

Thanks japitts, 

Why do very insightful people who don't work for virgin always so sympathetic to virgin's obvious shortcomings. Is very insightful person a euphemism for something I'm too thick to understand. Please advise me?

"Renegotiated packages are usually instigated at point of renewal unless the customer specifically requests a delayed activation" - I have dealt with hundreds of contract negotiations over many years, both personal and commercial and never come across one where it the new contract started before the old one expired, let alone the salesman not having explained this fully. Had the salesman advised me and, as I have not undergone a recent lobotomy, I would have refused.

Doesn't the law demand more transparency from Virgin?

[japitts]

Unless something has gone very badly wrong, you can only have one package active on a subscription at any given  time - so I don't see how two contracts can overlap in the way that I'm reading your post.

Or are you saying that a new minimum term contract was started before the previous one had "expired", in which case this is potentially an issue of terminology. Telecoms service provision contracts in the UK - VM included - are not fixed term ones that arbitrarily stop (together with the service being provided) on the anniversary date. They are rolling contracts with a minimum term, before which you can't terminate penalty-free.

As for your other point - by golly VM have their faults and VIP users are as aware of those as anyone. But there's often two sides to a story, and sometimes one side is down to misunderstanding or misinterpretation somewhere - that often includes the customer being clear and VM making a mess of CS processes.

[mikesh]

Perhaps I am failing to explain this clearly, so please let me try harder.

My old contract for Virgin Ultimate Bolt (1Gb fibre, phone line, 2 4k boxes, Sky Movies/Sports Ultra, BT Sports Ultra, Netflix ran from 13 April 2022 for 18 months at £60 a month.

On August 2, a really good guy Pedro worked hard to keep my price increase down to £80.75 (around 36%). Whether this was a good deal in relation to what other Virgin clients get, I don’t know, But I felt it was ok. Pedro also emphasised the package was unchanged from what I have currently. As it was outside the 60 day timeline Pedro could not yet process the order and promised to call me back on 2 September. I record all calls to Virgin (ESSENTIAL), so I was more than happy knowing I wouldn’t need to shop around for alternatives.

September 2 came and went, and no call from Pedro. I left it a couple of weeks and then waited and waited until someone finally took me call. This guy was barely understandable. The prices had shot up to £100 for what I have, and I was going to cancel until I received a call from the resolutions team last week, who told me they had listened to the calls and were honouring Pedro’s price.  

So we come back to your point about terminology and how what is alien to me, is perfectly acceptable in telecom services. I have run my own IT support company for many years and asked a number of clients who pay their 12 months contracts by monthly direct debit, how would they take it if I backdated their annual increase to the time they agreed to it, rather than when the current one ended? Let’s leave it at saying they wouldn’t be happy, though expressing this a little more colourfully, The same as the guy at Virgin in Scotland.

I feel Virgin leaves start dates from its contract and has all the transparency of mud and needs to held more to account.

[japitts]

At the outset, you didn't have an 18month contract - this is a popular misconception. You had a rolling contract with a minimum term of 18months. With that done, there's a bit of everything in your story..

It sounds like Pedro misled you on a few fronts. Whenever you recontract, your are moved to the closest available current package, and on TV especially there have been a few changes over the years so I would add some caution to the "unchanged" comment. Any retentions offers are usually "of the moment" and cannot be guaranteed beyond that specific call - standard advice is to always accept any offer there & then, and use 14days statutory cancellation if necessary. VM have plenty of form in not honouring callbacks, and this scenario is of no surprise.

You did very well to get that price subsequently honoured, VM would not normally do that but I suspect your recordings may have helped your case. Yours is a classic example of many of VM's CS shortcomings, but responding to posts on this forum as often as most VIP/regular users do - awareness is halfway to being able to deal with them.

[mikesh]

At the beginning of the calls I made on 2 August and 16 September I asked Pedro’s and his colleague’s permission to record the calls, yet they both said quite clearly they were giving me exactly what I have now. Surely anyone with any form of intelligence and training would say “we no longer offer the package you were on, the nearest we have is Virgin blah, blah, blah …….”

My case should not be a case of me doing very well, it should be the minimum. I would add on a few free months to make up for the poor service.

Virgin Media and their CS should stop treating their clients the way they do, as a sport, trying to get one over on them. Maybe if they concentrated on providing a good service and training their staff properly, the flood of customers leaving may stop.

[Cardiffman282]

"Maybe if they concentrated on providing a good service and training their staff properly, the flood of customers leaving may stop."

The thing is the people you (eventually) get through to are generally not VM staff. Instead they work for subcontracted outfits in developing countries where the going rate for call centre agents is a fraction of the UK minimum wage. The VM CEO has indicated that even they will be replaced at some point by increasing take up of AI.