From Essentials back to normal - Why so difficult?

[customer---X]

Sit back and enjoy my tale of woe......

So. As a claimant of UC, I signed up to the Essentials package. 15mb for £15 monthly, with no chance of a price increase, and their promise of  "So whenever you’re ready to go back to your usual Virgin Media services, just give us a ring and we’ll sort it all out for you.". Turns out that is a lie.

Just as my qualification period is about to finish, I get an email saying that someone will make contact about renewal. Well that was also a lie. My bill was jacked up to £21.40, with no contact.

Having a relatively good tv, I wanted to enjoy the higher quality video available, and was getting fed up with buffering. Due to medical issues I can no longer work, my social life is dead, I don't consume much alcohol, and drugs & smoking is for fools. My audio / video entertainment is my only current vice, so I asked about upgrading.

Apparently you cannot just drop back in to normal service. There is no way to do so. So I was advised that as they cannot do the upgrade then I should terminate, and rejoin as a new customer, and reap the appropriate benefits. Perhaps putting the account in another name should it fail.

I had my first call back and was offered 50mb with an O2 sim (with 10gb data) for £20, under the banner of Volt50, with the bill split £10 + £10. Well i can get O2 for £6, and new customers can get 100mb (boosting to 200 under Volt) for £18.44 after online bonuses, so I said I would think about it.

i applied for a new account (my termination still going through) to start on the last day of my old account, as advised by staff, and I get an email back saying order accepted. Then I get another email saying that I am already a customer, and someone would call me within 48 hours to discuss my options. Well that was another lie.

So I ring Customer Service to firstly sort out the overcharge, and then to try to sort out the renewal. It seems I have to wait for the overcharge to sort itself out as there was a termination in progress, but no option to prove my UC entitlement to get the reduced rate. When discussing the possibility of upgrade through the "leave & join" method, I was told that as a current customer I could not get a new contract, that it would only be a continuation of my old contract, and that if I chose to L&J then I would have to be disconnected for 3 months to qualify. Also, putting a new name to the household would not be permitted as a new customer, and so no upgrade possible. So there were another 2 lies between 2 staff.

I then ask to be put through to Retentions, hoping to sort the matter, wherein I learn that it is impossible to leave Essentials and upgrade, that I might have to wait for my contract to die and that MAYBE I will be a new customer, who knows? But at the moment my account is being dealt with by the Exceptions team. But can we get hold of them? Oh no. they are a separate unit that will call you ONLY. Can they solve it? Don't know, wait and see. Have they made contact? Nope.

So I have had to run around in circles, being fed different and conflicting information, and am still none the wiser. Who is in a position to help? All I want is the 100mb for £18, to which I will then join my own O2 account, boosting my package to 200mg, + 10gb + u/l mis & texts.

Is it really so difficult?

[Serena_C]

Hi @customer---X

Thank you so much for coming back to us with an update. I am really pleased to hear that our Sales team were able to get this sorted for you. I am so sorry for the length of time this took to arrange, I understand that is not ideal at all. Thank you for your patience.

Kind regards,

Serena

[customer---X]

@Serena

Unfortunately it wasn't the "Sales team", as that would mean several members. It was ONE member who saw a way out of the issue and acted in the best interest of the customer and company. Now if we want to mention Sales "team", well, those that I had the experience of were useless, whether by lack of training, or the inability to escape from the script. The inability to offer the same advice on consecutive occasions shows that either there are half a dozen versions of the training manual out there, or procedure is made up on the fly. Do those in England get the shiny new updated rule books, while the old ones are boxed up and sent out to Mumbai to avoid wastage?

How could you install a system for those in a position of low finances, with the appropriate publicity of how wonderful you are, without having thought through the procedure to bring them, and their extra money, back into the mainstream. The website still proudly shows the lie.

I still cannot get a refund of my £6.40 with the excuse that it is because of the termination. Yet that is still 2 weeks away, was ahead of this farce, and you have extracted the funds already. There has still been no contact to verify my entitlement, and I have been told nor will there be. So basically, once you have been ripped off, that's the way it stays. All I will get back once the contract is over is the pro rata amount. Agreed it is not a lot of money, but in comparison to the price of the service it is a 43% surcharge because someone did not do their job.

The new application for service on the 17th of Feb, that I was promised a call would be made to "chat about my options", is still showing on the account, and some weeks further into the year is still without a follow up. My last conversation informs me it is dead in the water, but while it still shows, what do I believe after all this?

Strangely I need new kit to run the new 100mb service, despite having had the 350 service running through it before various downgrades. Surely it should be a simple matter of switching my modem details over to the new account, thus leaving me with a down time of a mere couple of hours, and avoiding two lots of courier. This is an old version 3 box that has caused no issue. The new one will only be used in Modem Mode. Will it go in the same box as the old rule books? When I was told there would be new kit, I was too elated over having settled the saga to be bothered to contest the issue. It just seems a silly waste.

Will you confirm in open forum the company line of the time frame it takes for an ex customer to qualify as a new customer? 30 days? 3 months? 6 months? Where within the website will we find that official information? Will you give Sales the same link?

If Virgin wanted to stand out from the crowd, then surely letting everyone take advantage of any offer, as long as the contract is up, would be the way to go. Stuff this idea of having to do the "Retentions Dance". After all, for the sake of 30 days I can go without my intake of cat videos and crass FB conversations, and would just get a dongle for the period if I really needed to watch the world explode on Reddit. But in that 30 days you could lose people to the competition for a period of 18 months. It can only be a matter of time before OFCOM steps up and forces the idea of equality that the insurance companies have to follow. Perhaps Virgin should lead the charge.

Normally, should there be an outage or problem, there is some level of compensation for the inconvenience. Virgin has always been very good at rectifying those issues. I almost feel that I should be in the seat next to Richard on the next trip to the cosmos to make up for this. 

You have access to my call history, the chat logs, and any system notes. Can I have your reassurance that as each fault is picked up, analysed, and corrected, that I / we will be made aware? Too many customers have mildly similar issues. Perhaps not as many or in such a condensed amount of time as I, but it would show openness and clarity to the paying customer that you are aware that issues exist, and are doing something to tidy house.

[Akua_A]

We truly apologise for your experience with us @customer---X. We can understand that this ordeal was not ideal. We will indeed take your feedback on board and pass it on to the relevant teams. 

Also, if you wish to raise your concerns with us, please see our complaints code of practice https://virg.in/makacomp.

In regards to outages, you can check for a local fault and run tests on your devices here virg.in/service. If there is a local fault, that results in a total loss of service for 48hrs, we do compensate for this. You can find out more here https://virg.in/autocomp. 

Thanks,