Why is your customer service so bad?

[MattCaller]

Can you tell me what your service level agreements are for your customer services / contact centre please?

Over 4hrs waiting for a repsonse?

I'm keen to understand what my renewal price will be before deciding whether to leave or not... for some consdierable time whenever I need to contact you it is simply impossible to do so.

Whoever is providing your offsite call centre support is letting you down massively - and its rapidly tarring O2 with the same brush.  If you are one company I'd suggest you've made a mistake... is everybody bailing?  Is that why you have unprecedented customer demanded?  

Also what is unprecedented to you guys?  As long as I can remember in our 15 year+ relationship your customer service capabilities have been awful... and are just getting worse.

Thoughts?

[jem101]

'Why is your customer service so bad?'

Constant and extensive practice!

Offshore first line customer services I expect? To be honest even if you did get through, I'm not 100% they would know, and whatever figure they did quote you, might well be something they just made up!

If you are coming up to the end of your contract's minimum term, I believe that VM are obliged to send you a letter explaining exactly what the new cost would be, alternatively, if you log into the my.virginmedia.com portal, does it not give indication of your contract price and how long any discounts have to run? Sorry but I can't say I've ever checked it myself, so that might be a load of rubbish.

Also what you could do, is take a look at the VM website for current prices and see if your can't find, or create the exact bundle you are on. The price will, be something like (in very big letters) 27p per month, and then in very small letters, £996 per month after the introductory term. Very roughly, the latter is the price you will be paying, unless you manage to negotiate a new discount and minimum term contract.

[Andrew-G]

No way will they say what the SLA is.

In answer to the broader sweep of the question, VM's customer service is poor because the company have concluded that the consequences of poor service are largely immaterial to commercial performance (ie profitability).  You and I can argue against that, but that is clearly what management believe, otherwise they'd have invested in improving things.

Longer term I don't believe things look good for VM, with Openreach FTTP now available to over 20% of UK homes and increasing at about 1% of UK homes per month, and another 9% (probably overlapping but likewise growing) of homes with access to non-Openreach non-VM fibre networks.  So VM won't in future years be able to rely on the historic advantage of a material speed advantage, and you'd have thought that they'd want to make sure now that they are a company people like to do business with, rather than one that people loathe contacting.

However, maybe they're right: Everybody moans about poor customer service when they experience it, but if the majority tolerate it (or indeed they don't need to contact VM) and keep giving their business to VM, why would the company change things?  It isn't even as if VM are trashing their own brand, they're trashing the Virgin brand, that they rent in a deal that runs for years, and has no apparent requirement to offer decent service.  Ole Beardo gets 0.25% of VM's gross content revenues, so what's that - perhaps £5 million quid a year for doing nothing.  That'll re-stock the wine cellar, and that's all he cares.  

[paul243]

Thought you might like to hear my experience of CS recently. Bad and good! please read to the end.

I called to enquire when my contract was due for renewal and at what cost. Called at 12.00 Monday, seems my password was not acceptable. So 15 minutes  later I spoke to a lady who reset it . Explained what I wanted and was put on hold (what is that music)! for 27 minutes.

Finally answered by another lady but was unable to understand what was being said. So it seems she changed my package and told me the price would increase by £4 per month on an 18 month contract. I accepted , naively thinking I was getting the same package I have had for several years, Full house, broadband and talk anytime.. Total time on phone now over an hour.

E-mail confirmation came and I discovered that I now had something called "Mixit", upgraded broadband (don't need it) and talk anytime international (also not needed.) I then discover Instead of my usual channel list I had lost half of the channels including BT sports and many others which I watch. I called back, another 10minutes wait until a very nice voice said no problem and put me on hold for another 20 minutes and then a further 20 minutes until she said she would call me back in 10 minutes. Waited in all evening, no call.

So I called next day via 150 and got to speak to a gentleman called Abbas, what a revelation!  Apologetic, understanding and eager to help and I could understand what he was saying.10 minutes later and my package is upgraded to Maxit, more channels and talk anytime restored. Plus a large reduction in price for 22 years of loyalty. It seems that it is a lottery to get decent service but finally managed it Via Abbas 

Thank you Abbas, hope you see this! 

[MattCaller]

Yeah - the problem is its such a lottery... 

They don't seem to have dedicate teams any more - its all one big melting pot of generally not very good...

Had one price...  then moved to 'retention' team allegedly who couldn't match the price I'd just been offered by the 'standard' call centre. 

Today via chat been offered the slightly lower price again and this was after I asked to speak to cancellations - then I find out its the 'standard' Whatsapp team so when I say if they can't sort a reasonable price then lets just cancel it they want to transfer me to 'customer relations' - does that even exist at virginmedia anymore?

Looking more and more likely I will cancel today after being a customer for more than 23 years...  I have no choice in some respect regarding my electricity / fuel but I'm not going to get ripped off by virgin/o2 I'm afraid.

Will know by end of this evening whether its going to get sorted or if I'm just leaving the equipment outside the front door.

[MattCaller]

Hi - at renewal my price was due to increase by just under 50% without a new contract negotiation...

Last two contracts I've been able to maintain contract to same price at renewal - still around £200-240 above a new customer equivalent but given that has to be accepted I'm looking for something 'reasonable' to be agreed.

Given the environment economically I won't be accepting a big hike this time round - will be just taking it on the chin if something cant be agreed.

[Roger_Gooner]

It would be good if VM were to follow BT's lead in bringing back all overseas call centre work to the UK and Ireland, but this isn't going to happen. Partner O2 also uses overseas call centres.

[MattCaller]

Here is the latest omnishambles...

Waiting to try and finalise this on Whatsapp since 1pm yesterday...

Customer relations tell me their opening hours are 8am-9pm Mon-Fri in their opening message before saying they are busy...

This morning (still waiting) message asking do I still have query... I confirm yes and get the message again about Customer Relations...

But overnight their message NOW says opening hours are 9am-6pm Mon-Fri... managed to lose three hours of service in the space of one evening.

Anyway... waiting since 1pm yesterday and still no response yet.

🙄😴