How do customers contact Virgin Media? online chat not working

[Maccaman]

I've been trying to contact Virgin Media for about 3 weeks now. The online chat button does not work! I have tried on two home computers, my work computer and three different mobile devices. I've been on hold for about 3 hours total now.

Has anyone else been able to contact them via online chat? This is ridiculous! 

Can anyone recommend another provider that you can actually talk to?

Thank you.

[joff_arris]

So it isn't just me then.  Finally somebody just came out and said it.  And there has been no rebuttal from Virgin.  Kudos. 

The chat button does absolutely nothing.  The choice of browser should be irrelevant.  The advice to use the phone is comedic given the existence of the button and the time wasted with the button to date.

If VM were estate agents (don't get any ideas, you are struggling with comms as it is):

"Yes, yes of course the house has a front door, we can see it too.  But for reasons we are not prepared to divulge you must come in through the window.  But only try this first thing in the morning because later in the day everyone will be trying to get in through the window and, as windows go, it is definitely too small.  But it IS a window and for that you should be grateful.  Hang on, calm down, what do you mean the entrances to this building don't sound fit for purpose?  Has anyone told you about the chimney?"

Probably simpler to shop around. What a silly way to do business.

[Kath_F]

Hi joff_arris, 

Thanks for taking the time to contact us via the Community. It's lovely having you on board with us in the Forums. ⭐

We're sorry to hear you're having some issues with reaching the team via live chat. There are agents working on it but it's worth noting that it's not an instant messaging service. 

Can you expand on the reason you're trying to contact the team? There may be something we can do to help. 

Thanks, 

[joff_arris]

Thanks for the offer, Kath. 

I bit the bullet, booked time off work and went through with waiting for and finally speaking to the humans.  The first one was helpful but the language barrier (staggering that this is even a thing) made life difficult, we wasted each other's time and I nearly ended up with no landline.  The second one was more helpful and I accepted a revised offer which I will mull over with a view to possibly making use of the 14 day cool-off period as I am not sure VM truly deserves my ongoing business. 

Just a final comment in response to something you mentioned which was the reason I joined this thread in the first place.  The chat button absolutely *should* be an instant messaging service.  Asynchronous (i.e. non-instant) messaging is basically email.  There does not appear to be anyway to communicate with the VM team by email, so I, and I would imagine others, will have formed expectations in relation to that button. Especially since it carries the text "Chat with us now".  Hopefully we don't need to have a a discussion about the definition of "now".   VM is ultimately an internet company.  The claim that its chat button is different to everyone else's on the web will never hold any water.  But just so we are crystal clear.  It isn't that you wait ages for a reply when using the chat, the problem is that the chat cannot be used because the button causes precisely nothing to happen.  It just doesn't work, no matter whether I disable all my browser privacy add-ons and ad-blockers, clear my cache, delete all cookies, or not.  It is just broken.  This is on multiple devices and not in my imagination.

Thanks for your time.

[Zoie_P]

Thank you for your reply @joff_arris, 

Thank you for the feedback on this, and as much as we would want to have the live chat as an instant reply this is not feesable. We do have many channels you can reach out on and we can assist here with most issues. 

Thanks,

Zoie

[joff_arris]

Good morning Zoie,
I think that the sort of response you have provided is exactly why people get frustrated, angry and feel that the company they are paying for service is behaving badly.  You are defending what is obviously indefensible.  If instant messaging is not feasible then a simple remedy that would reduce the irritation experienced by customers would be to take away the button that suggests it is.  And to be honest I think your assessement of feasibility is wildy wrong.  Amazon manage it with no trouble.  Smoothest return process I have ever encountered.  How?  Online chat.  As a company Amazon dwarfs VM.  So it is entirely feasible, VM just don't want to do it.

For the record, despite a long time on the phone yesterday and multiple assurances from the representative I spoke to that the new package would go live the same day, I've checked my account this morning and am still on the old package.  So even when we do get to speak to someone it seems to be a very dubious time investment indeed.

It looks as though VM are going to make the decision for me. And it isn't going to take 14 days.

[Arissa_H]

Thank you for coming back to us Joff_arris.

So I can look into this for you and further investigate 🧐.

I will have to private message you.

Please watch out for the envelope ✉.

Thank you. 

[joff_arris]

Thanks Arissa_H, PM sent.

To ensure there is a(nother) full public record of how difficult it is to deal with VM (credit where it is due, at least the forums are public) I'll echo here what I said to you, minus the personal info.  Hopefully this will help others with their expectation management:

As of this morning the new package is showing when I click my contract.  The contract started on 16th Jan and indicates I should be getting the M500 Fibre broadband. 

Despite rebooting everything I am still only getting 300Mb.  So something is *still* wrong.

 

[newapollo]

Hi joff_arris 

Comparing your pictured upload speed and the speeds shown on the  /our-speeds-explained  page you are actually on M500 (screenshot below)  Your download speed is also above the minimum (258 Mbps) shown on the same page.  It's possible that your speed has been restricted by either the browser or app you are using to measure the speed, programs running in the background, ethernet cabling etc.

Have you tried using https://samknows.com/realspeed/  ?  If that works it will show the speed to your router and also to the device you are using for measuring the speed.

[joff_arris]

Good morning, @newappollo.  Your attempt to assist is much appreciated but it does seem a touch unfortunate that in your haste to defend VM you have posted the table of upload speeds.  I don't think this is what you meant.

For the record we are talking about this page:  https://www.virginmedia.com/broadband/our-speeds-explained

The correct screenshot would have been this one:



You are correct in that my speeds are presently above the minimum speed guarantee but in order to retain my business I was lead to believe that I have been upgraded.  The trouble is that I am getting the exact same speeds, if not slightly less than when I was on the M350.  Therefore there has been no upgrade.  Furthermore, in the interests of full transparency, VM also state the following on the page from which we have screenshotted the data:

"** The expected speed range is the normal download and upload speed that you could expect at peak times (8-10pm, Monday-Sunday). This is in line with Ofcom’s guidance."

So in line with Ofcom's guidance I should, at the time of posting be experiencing speeds of between 499-542Mbps.  And yet this morning the best I can get is 298Mbps.

VM also boast >98% reliability further down the page:

It is strange that since my "upgrade" the only thing I have experienced is the 100% reliability that my connection is not running at the speed I have been sold despite the fact that on the M350 package it always was.

In the interests of those looking at this thread in relation to the original topic (and apologies for hijacking) the VM interaction stats are as now follows:

• Days since original enquiry by phone:  4
• Days since original enquiry on which follow up communication has been necessary: 4
• Time on phone to VM during original enquiry: 1hr 5 minutes
• Number of VM operatives spoken to on phone: 2
• Posts to community forums: 5 (this is the 5th)
• Result: no further forward.  Internet approx 40Mbps slower than achieved on M350 before the upgrade to M500.
• Conclusion:  Communicating with VM really is a grind.

Number of days left in cooling off period: 11

For the record I am using a PC connected to the router with Cat6 ethernet cable that I know to be good as I am getting the expected internal transfer rates.

[newapollo]

---

@joff_arris wrote:

Good morning, @newappollo.  Your attempt to assist is much appreciated but it does seem a touch unfortunate that in your haste to defend VM you have posted the table of upload speeds.  I don't think this is what you meant.

For the record we are talking about this page:  https://www.virginmedia.com/broadband/our-speeds

---

@jofff_arriss 

For the record, I posted the correct table from the above linked page to show that the Upload speed you posted yesterday as receiving  (41.45Mbps) is in line with the expected speed range for the M500 tier, whereas the expected upload on the M350 tier is only 36-37Mbps which seems to indicate that you are provisioned for M500 and not M350.

Please try measuring the speed using https://samknows.com/realspeed/  as I suggested yesterday and post a screenshot of the result as that site does show the actual speed to the router which should confirm if you are provisioned correctly and will also indicate any speed faults.

Results run via speedtest.net can often show as being slower due to browser overheads and programs running in the background. The results via speedtest.net can vary according to the ctual browser used for testing and those results can also be skewed by AV programs, firewalls and VPN's.   I would advise downloading the ookla speed test app and use that rather than the browser version

Also log into your hub settings (192.168.0.1) and check what the provisioning speed is shown as under the provisioning tab (Advanced Settings > Tools > Network Status > Configuration 

You should be looking at the Primary Downstream Service Flow > Max Traffic Rate and the Primary Upstream Service Flow > Max Traffic Rate