Terrible customer service. I'm so fed up.

[reeygeezer]

So, I've been with NTL now Virgin media for over 20 years. Every time my contract is up I have to battle to get a reasonable deal. As my current contract was expiring, I didn't have time for the drawn out phone call and renewed online. What a mistake. I received my next bill at £85 instead of the agreed £76. The biggest insult was that my account now showed as out of contract, but that I could renew for £68.95. So the long drawn out phone call had to be made. Apparantly I was in contract at £76 and after half an hour of trying to explain the situation and my frustration of being ripped off I was transferred to complaints. They managed to get the bill down to £70. Great I thought. I was told that my services remaind the same but the name changed from Maxit to Mega TV. Nope, TNT sports has now gone. Further negotiation, I could pay £18 extra for that, so my bill has gone from £76 to £70 to £88. Told them I'm done and dropped it to £10 extra. However my Dec bill will be £92 and then £80 a month. At this point I've had enough. Truly poor experience. Does anyone know who I can contact to try and get this sorted. If not, which other company do you recommend.

[Lee_R]

Hi @reeygeezer thanks for posting and welcome back to our community.

Sorry to hear of your difficulties surrounding your renewal and billing. And sorry for any inconvenience this may be causing. I'd like to take a look on your behalf.  I'm going to send you a private message. Please keep an eye on your inbox in the top right of your screen.

Regards

Lee_R

[archercj]

Sadly your experience is very common. I had a very similar experience to you last time I renewed and reckon spent 28 hours in total (I logged it all) resolving it. This included having to have an engineer sent out because they excommunicated my 2nd box and couldnt reinitialise it.

This time around I now have other true fibre suppliers so I will jump ship in January when my contract is up for renewal simply because of the appaling customer service. Shame really because a) I wont be leaving for any financial gain, b) not sure i will get any better actual tv/broadband service and c) the wife likes the TV interface :-).

But I wont be lied to again or go through the haggling process that seems to be the norm.

[Lee_R]

Hi @archercj thanks for posting and welcome back to our community.

Sorry to hear you're unhappy with the customer service you've received when previously renewing your deals.  If you wish us to look on your behalf, please do reach out to us.

Regards

Lee_R

[archercj]

Thanks Lee. if I am being honest you guys on here of always been helpful.

The issue is the process of your contract renewal. What normally happens is you get your renewal quote and it is at least 50% higher. So you get in touch and the dice is rolled. You may get someone who says 'fine, goodbye, I will pass you to retentions' or you might be unlucky and get someone who says 'I will pass you through to my supervisor'. You then get a revised quote which is only a few quid more and when you ask 'is this like for like' they say yes and invariaby it isnt. you lose channels, netflix and even the extra box' and it takes weeks to rectify. Oh I have full screen shots of all this by the way 🙂

Once you finally get through to a UK based CS member it all changes and you can get things sorted.

Tip for anyone going through contract renewal: use the WhatsApp route - you then have everything audited.

[unisoft]

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@archercj wrote:

Thanks Lee. if I am being honest you guys on here of always been helpful.

The issue is the process of your contract renewal. What normally happens is you get your renewal quote and it is at least 50% higher. So you get in touch and the dice is rolled. You may get someone who says 'fine, goodbye, I will pass you to retentions' or you might be unlucky and get someone who says 'I will pass you through to my supervisor'. You then get a revised quote which is only a few quid more and when you ask 'is this like for like' they say yes and invariaby it isnt. you lose channels, netflix and even the extra box' and it takes weeks to rectify. Oh I have full screen shots of all this by the way 🙂

Once you finally get through to a UK based CS member it all changes and you can get things sorted.

Tip for anyone going through contract renewal: use the WhatsApp route - you then have everything audited.

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or just don't bother with the Whatsapp contact at all 🙂

I think if it were not for the forum staff, VM would be losing far more customers and in some cases facing more legal challenges over some of the things that forum staff have nipped in the bud by sorting.

Unfortunately, as witnessed this week, it's a case of milking the existing customer and new customers joining, but that is just a view and leave it to the individual whether they think they have value.

Stream (now called Flex) will have at least a £5 monthly charge before you even take any subscriptions out for new customers and then probably for contract renewals for those that already have it free. What was a benefit over Sky (and a decent value-add at contract negotiation time) and actually a promising product (even though lack of 4K compared to Sky) now attracts minimum additional charge just for freely available channels. Additionally, the premium subscription channel packages went up in price AGAIN.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the new pricing for the optional content add-ons (as of this writing) –

• Sky Cinema HD: £24.99/month (notably higher than NOWTV that often has this for £4.99 on offer for 6 months and £9.99 after, albeit 720p and just stereo without the NOWTV BOOST pack subscription)
• Sky Sports HD: £34.99/month
• Essential Entertainment (includes several premium channels from Sky and others, but NOT Sky Atlantic): £15/month - until a few months ago this was sub £10  BUT a lot of extra channels added since then.
• Sky Sports HD + Sky Cinema HD bundle: £49.99/month
• Sky Sports Ultra HD (add-on to Sky Sports): £7/month
• TNT Sports: £18/month
• Premier Sports: £15.99/month
• Kids Pick: £5/month

[Cardiffman282]

Good spot. The quarterly results due out soon may help to explain this squeeze.