Well, this thread made for an interesting read...and ever-so-slightly depressing. And I simply no longer trust any comments made by either Customer Service or Technical Support at VirginMedia. So here is my sorry tale, in the vague hope someone from VirginMedia might care enough to actually resolve the issue.
The long and short is this:
- At some point in the last month or two we have lost Caller Id on our home phones - all we see on the phone is 'Incoming Call';
- We have, until then, always had Caller Id (from the very outset of us contracting with VirginMedia);
- We have a new Panasonic handset and base unit, which is DECT compatible and by default is Caller Id enabled;
- I have spent the best part of 4 hours on the phone to VirginMedia:
- Call 1: to Customer Service, who firstly told me that it wasn't available in my area, and then eventually put me through to Technical Support;
- Technical Support tried running some tests but their "tools were offline" and so promised to call me back the next day. They never called back.
- Call 2: to Customer Service, who eventually put me through to Technical Support;
- Technical Support got 'shirty' with me telling me that I wasn't entitled to Caller Id / Caller Display and that they would have to put me back to Customer Service to have it enabled on my contract;
- Customer Service told me there was no problem and it must be my handset and that I should call Panasonic.
So, in response to certain points:
- "It's not available in your area": Wrong. My sister-in-law is a VirginMedia customer, lives one street away from us, and she has Caller Id.
- "It's a problem with your handset": Wrong. I took my phone and leads around to my sister-in-law's house, plugged in to her phone socket, and phone numbers showed correctly.
- "It isn't part of your contracted services": Wrong. We have always had Caller Id until a month or two ago.
And here's the other point: our phone stopped working entirely a couple of months ago. After lengthy debates with Customer Service, we eventually had an engineer visit. After checking everything in our house (all ok) he went to the big green box in the street and found the problem. Someone had unplugged our house and put our wire into a dead socket. So he plugged us back in, and we could make and receive calls.
Just no Caller Id.
If VirginMedia are actually watching this forum, please, please, please do something and re-enable Caller Id for our house.
Thanks. Rant over.
