A tale of woe

[Nessandandy]

Where to start with this tale of woe.

I have registered a complaint but to date I have yet to receive a call from anyone at Virginmedia. 

it started before Xmas when my parents tried to call me and couldn’t get through and I noticed there was a line error on my phone. I booked an engineer to come and he duly arrived on 03/01/23. He identified the problem was my connection in the box in my street and he was unable to fix it. He assured me that he had spoken to another technician and they would be attending later that day to fix it. They didn’t. The technician asked me if I had considered swapping my phone line to my router as at some point in the near future all phone lines would be swapping over. He even gave me the adapter to save another technician attending in case I decided to make the switch  

I waited a couple of days and called customer service because my landline was still not working. I should add at this point that I was having to call from my non virgin media mobile so I was being charged a premium rate for the call. After spending 40 mins on the phone I was informed that no technician had been booked so I decided to take the plunge and migrate my landline over to my router as I thought it would be quicker. How wrong I was.

On 19th Jan then spent nearly 5 hrs on the chat line on WhatsApp (whilst working from home) trying to get somebody to respond as I still had no landline. I was told that the landline had been migrated and there was clearly a problem with my router so they booked another technician to attend on Tuesday 24th Jan. I had to take time off work as this was the only slot available.

Tues 24th came and the technician failed to attend. I called customer services again and was told they had no record of a technician being booked despite the fact I had the time and date in a WhatsApp message directly from Virgin Media. And to top it off they had no record of the phone line being migrated over, despite having been told in previous calls and chats that it had. I spent 70 mins speaking to three different people trying to resolve the problem and was eventually put through to the dept that dealt with the migration and was told that it would be sorted immediately and it would be migrated over the next day and I would receive a confirmation message.

Completely fed up I registered a complaint on 24th Jan. I received messages asking me to call them on my landline to resolve my complaint. I kid you not. I e-mailed the complaints dept and asked them to call me. They already had my mobile no.

Yes you guessed it, 2 days came and went, no message and still no migration. So I called again on Thurs 26th and spent another 30 mins on the phone and was told that whilst migration had been booked it wouldn’t be taking place until 13th Feb.

I haggled and managed to get them to book it for 2nd Feb. I specifically pointed out that I wouldn’t need a technician to attend as I had the adapter which had been given to me by the technician who had attended earlier in Jan.

I also asked someone to call me to resolve my complaint. I was told someone would call me later that  day.

I have made over a dozen phone calls and countless hours trying to resolve this problem and incurred nearly £100 in premium rate calls on my mobile, I’ve had to take time off work twice and I have had no landline for nearly 2 months.

It’s now 31st Jan and still no one has called me to resolve my complaint. And guess what I received a message telling me a technician would be attending 2nd Feb to complete the migration and I had to be in. This was despite confirming in my previous call on 26th Jan that technician would not need to attend and the migration would be complete remotely.

I was not prepared to incur any further cost in mobile calls to cancel the technician so I have had to take more time off work and will have to wait until 2nd Feb to call them on 150 when hopefully my landline will be working again.

This is without doubt is the most appalling & incompetent customer service I have ever encountered and nobody at Virginmedia seems to care.

As soon as this is rated I will take my custom elsewhere  

It would also be nice if someone would just apologise as well. But I won’t hold my breath. 

[Nessandandy]

No point I have now had to take this up with the Ombudsman after another atrocious experience speaking to someone in the resolution team today. In essence they have backtracked on their offer to refund my mobile calls, and have insisted their 1st offer of £10 compensation is final and they will not enter into any further conversation about it.

I queried why they had not adhered to the Ofcom statutory compensation scheme and the manager I spoke to refused point blank to answer the question and confirm that it did apply to my landline OR my broadband not both.

Having spoken to the person assigned my complainant at the Ombudsman today they confirmed that the statutory compensation scheme applies to total loss of service of landline OR Broadband. They could not understand why VM had failed to follow their own Ofcom policy.

This is the worst customer service I have ever experienced and as soon as the Ombudsman have finalised their decision I will be cancelling my VM contract. 

[jem101]

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@Nessandandy wrote:

No point I have now had to take this up with the Ombudsman after another atrocious experience speaking to someone in the resolution team today. In essence they have backtracked on their offer to refund my mobile calls, and have insisted their 1st offer of £10 compensation is final and they will not enter into any further conversation about it.

I queried why they had not adhered to the Ofcom statutory compensation scheme and the manager I spoke to refused point blank to answer the question and confirm that it did apply to my landline OR my broadband not both.

Having spoken to the person assigned my complainant at the Ombudsman today they confirmed that the statutory compensation scheme applies to total loss of service of landline OR Broadband. They could not understand why VM had failed to follow their own Ofcom policy.

This is the worst customer service I have ever experienced and as soon as the Ombudsman have finalised their decision I will be cancelling my VM contract. 

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I do hope that not only did you request that VM be instructed to pay you in full the required compensation rate plus, if course the £26 or so for each and every day that an appointment was missed, but that you also requested additional compensation of, I don't think £250 is out of the question, for the sheer inconvenience, failure to properly handle your complaint and the blatant lying in a cynical attempt to mislead you as to your rights.

[Nessandandy]

Update

After taking this matter to the Ombudsman we won our right to the full compensation which VM refused to pay. We were paid £309 in credits to our account and as a bonus as they have just put their prices up we were able to cancel our contract early.

Today was the day our contract finally came to an end and I can only say that the experience of the last 6 months has been the worst customer experience I have ever encountered.

The Ombudsman also directed VM to provide me with a letter of apology. It never appeared.

we still have £249 in credits sitting in our now defunct account and despite my best efforts VM still have not paid us the money. Apparently they can only pay us by cheque and it will take up to 45 days. I can pay then in seconds via my banking app so It’s absolutely astounding that a company supposedly invested in new technology can only pay me by cheque. 

So VM goodbye and good riddance. The monies owed had better be paid to me soon otherwise The Ombudsman will be knocking on your door again.