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Dreadful service - landline voicemail not set up

SenileGit
Tuning in

I'm just venting. My landline's voicemail has never worked, I've had it for about six months and only just tried to contact VM about it, because my girlfriend's friend insists on calling her on the landline, rather than on my girlfriend's mobile. When I dial 1571, I get the message "It looks like you have a problem. Your mailbox is disabled."

So I go online to try to use the 'chat' function, and encounter the 'chat bot'. The chat bot doesn't understand basic English, and eventually it says that VM can only contact me via Whatsapp. I don't have Whatsapp, because I have a dumb phone. There is no way to contact a real person via the chat - unless you go onto the 'Help Ordering' option in chat, and pretend to be trying to JOIN Virgin Media - then you are talking to a real human being within 30 seconds! So I did that and told the real human being that I had a problem with my landline voicemail, and that I don't have Whatsapp, and need to speak to a real person, and they said they couldn't help me and would put me in contact with the team that deals with faults - and they put me back to the ruddy chat bot!

 

Two weeks ago I actually somehow managed to get through to somebody who was (pretending to) help me, but they didn't seem to understand basic English, and insisted that they wanted to send an engineer out to look at the phone. I was on chat to them for AN HOUR, and eventually convinced them that there was no need to send an engineer out, because the phone itself worked fine, I just needed them to turn on the voicemail at their end. They assured me numerous times that they would get it all sorted, blah blah blah, with the usual verbose platitudes that they specialise in.

Guess what? They didn't fix it. Nothing was done.

I am literally astounded that the head of Virgin Media isn't going onto the chat bot every day and testing it, to see how bloody awful his staff are at customer care. The person I chatted to wasted an entire hour of THEIR time basically doing bugger all. They should have understood my problem within ten seconds, sent an email to the department who turn on the voicemail (that must be a difficult job (sarcasm)) and the entire thing would have been fixed within two minutes. But no, the chat operators obviously spend their time wasting as much time as possible. I have never seen anything like it. The reason you can't get through to a real person is because the 'real people' are spending as long as possible, wasting as much time as possible, in order to drag out each query and do as little as possible. They are literally destroying the company that they work for.

So right now I am thinking of leaving Virgin Media after about twenty plus years of using them, because I am so fed up.  Who hires the chat staff? Who trains them? Who is testing them every day, to see that they are actually doing their job and HELPING customers and FIXING their problems?

They need to teach their 'triage bot' what "I don't have WhatsApp" means. When you type it in, Terri Triage Bot says "Ok great! Which WhatsApp number shall we continue this conversation on?" Can you imagine the pigheadedness of the idiot who coded this - who doesn't believe that anybody DOESN'T have a smartphone?

3 REPLIES 3

Anonymous
Not applicable

Been there, done that. Writing the book. VM don't care.

Kath_F
Forum Team
Forum Team

Hi SenileGit, 

Thanks for your post and welcome to the forums. It's really great having you on board with us in the Community. 

We're sorry to hear you're having an issue with getting your landline voicemail to work. 

I can only apologise for the poor journey you've had trying to get this resolved too. Whilst it may seem as simple to you as sending an email, this is certainly not the case however we can help to resolve things here. 

In order to help, I will need to confirm some information with you. I have sent you a private message regarding this and will investigate further once I receive your reply. Just click on the little plum envelope at the top right-hand side of the page to access your inbox.

Thanks, 

Kath_F
Forum Team

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SenileGit
Tuning in

ps I told the chat staff multiple times that your link to landline voicemail instructions on this page:

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/landline/managing-your-landline-calling-features

where it says "Most Virgin Phone customers have a voicemail service and, the best thing is – it’s free! Find out how to set up landline voicemail here. "

goes to the MOBILE voicemail instructions page here:

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/mobile/set-up-virgin-mobile-voicemail

 

I told them multiple times, and they haven't told anybody to fix it. That should bother you. It's still wrong. I had to use Ecosia to find the correct page.