Very Poor Customer Service

[owld_whitehair]

Not been here for a while.

Virgin Media has descended into a disorganized mess. On the 2 December 2023 at 15.50 had to contact your V.M. Customer service as telephone line had been down this despite when logging into my account to check service status it reported that there was no problem with the phone line. The customer service is abysmal, providing misleading information, unreliable information, ignoring a 30day notice not to renew the current contract at its expiry date, ignoring a request to reject a V.M. contract summary sheet within the 14 day cooling off period. As a result chaotic billing with undeserved early termination charges. Ignoring the reporting of the phone line being cut off for more than 24 hours which had to be reported to the atrocious continental call centre on a borrowed mobile informing the advisor that I was a pensioner and still very ill and needed to give authority for my wife to speak to the advisor so the call took longer than needed (three quarters of an hour) being asked the same question repeatedly, the call cost over £20.00 even though the V.M.C.S.O. said that the 0345 number was toll free. The V.M.C.S.O. eventually was persuaded to carry out a test and he confirmed there was a fault with the line. Incidently again logging into my account to check service status it still reports that there still no problem with the phone line.
VM are well aware of my age. I have been very ill over the last couple of years and still am and they are just taking advantage of my position to hand out this punishment.

[Kath_P · Accepted solution]

Hi owld_whitehair,

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've been having some issues with getting your landline working and getting support from the teams. This is not something we like to hear. 

Taking a look at things this end, we can see there was an issue on the line. The team have remotely been trying to resolve this but it looks as though the downstream power levels on your hub are too high. We won't be able to fix this remotely so I would like to arrange for an engineer to come to take a look at this for you. 

I just need to confirm the address to ensure we are booking the visit on the correct account. I have sent you a direct message to allow us to do this with you in a private space. If you are using a PC/Laptop then you can just click on the little ✉ at the top right-hand side of the page to access your inbox. If you are on a mobile/tablet device then instead click on the little circle icon in the top right then select 'Messages'. 😊

Thanks,

[Kath_P]

Hi owld_whitehair, 

Thanks for coming back to via private message to confirm your information. 🤩

I have booked you in for the next available appointment. To view this please sign in to My Virgin Media here 👉 My VM. Once you log in scroll down to Orders & appointments then click on View your orders. Please note it can take up to 24 hours to show but you should also receive a text message with the details. You can also view this in the My VM app. If you have any issues with accessing your account or unable to see your visit, please do let us know and we’ll pop you a message to pass data protection and confirm the appointment details.

Just to confirm, there will be no charge for this visit unless:

• ➡ The technician diagnoses the faults as not being caused by our network/equipment 
• ➡ The technician discovers that the fault or problem relates to your equipment
• ➡ The technician discovers that the fault or problem relates to any system that we are not responsible for
• ➡ The technician will confirm during their visit if any of these instances apply, and if so, a £25 charge will be applied to your account.

Please ensure there is someone over the age of 18 present at the time of the visit. If you need to change or cancel your appointment you can do this online or via the MyVM app by 4pm the day before the appointment. If you do miss an agreed appointment for any reason, a £25 missed appointment charge will be applied to your account on the day of the appointment.

We will continue to monitor your services and if we can see that the fault has cleared and the visit is no longer required we will cancel the appointment and let you know by text and email.

Let us know how the appointment goes. 😊

Take care.

[owld_whitehair]

Thank you for the appointment.

O.K. with that your test showed a hardware problem is that correct. But having problems making medical arrangements  on the borrowed mobile phone @ considerable cost. As you will see from my original message there are still outstanding problems caused by customer service waiting for a resolution.

[Ashleigh_C]

I'm very sorry to hear that this has happened @owld_whitehair 

I'd be happy to take a closer look into this with you to raise a complaint and see what we can do to get it resolved. 

I will pop you a PM across now, please keep an eye out for the envelope at the top of your screen alerting you to a new message.
 

[owld_whitehair]

Virgin Media / Telifonica unsurprisingly incorrectly reported the wrongly disconnected landline fault as "the downstream power levels on your hub are too high" as when happened the technician visit arrange for me by the very helpful V.M.Forum Staff he found that the V.M. HUB landline connection had been remotely disabled.
The technician phone V.M. on his mobile to request that the landline be re-enabled this was achieved after the hub was restarted. What the technician did not tell me was that this process have consequences that it destroyed the home network set up on the hub. The hub setting password destroyed, Wi-Fi SSID Name destroyed, WiFi SSID Password destroyed, any messages that left on 1571 by callers or about medical appointments have been lost or have been destroyed. I have an eye condition which requires eye drops to arrest the onset of blindness all this mismanagement of the provision of my services led to a very stressful time of sleepless night for me and my wife who I depend on to for day to day life. My eye medication running low and needing a request for a repeat prescription from my G.P. which because of the above was made very difficult and lead to miss understanding about the type of medication required. This required more work for my wife to try and resolve again made very difficult by the above problems to resolve my supply is about to run out so if cannot continue with the medication my eye sight may be further impaired. Virgin Media / Telifonica have demonstrated by their conduct that they have no ethics or morality with regard to their loyal customers. In these days of organisations both commercial and public using electronic communication to send essential communications Ofcom should insist that companies such Virgin Media / Telifonica should be regarded as a vital utility and as other much needed utilities they should have a register of people with legitimate personal difficulties.

[owld_whitehair]

When V.M. remotely cut off my landline incorrectly and prematurely on the 18th Noveber 2023 in an attempt to stop me porting my landline transferring service to another provider, the landline not remotely reinstated until some 16 days later after V.M. technicians visit 5th December 2023. The continental V.M. call centre phoned on the 2nd December 2023 said incorrectly, when they  informed us that the fault was an area problem and would be rectified within rectified within 24hrs. This has now been shown to be clearly a lie and consequently had no effect on the reconnection on the much needed Landline Service that was fully paid for. It has now come to light that during the incorrectly enforced disconnection the NHS has been trying to contact me with regards to an important appointment. Very frightening thought.

[Daniel_Et]

Hi @owld_whitehair, thank you for your post. 

We're really sorry to hear about the poor experience you've had and the impact it's had on you.

I can see my colleague Ashleigh is dealing with your complaint, and we hope a satisfactory resolution is reached.

Regards,
Daniel

[owld_whitehair]

I thank you for your concern very worrying that Liberty Global / Telefonica trying to lock people into a life long contract. They also display no regard for their actions and there consequences and do not share your ethics and morality and show little care for senior citizens of the U.K.

[owld_whitehair]

My Contract & confirmed as Ending on 30th December 2023 yet I have received a demand for £48.48 to be paid by 12th January 2024 Please can you sort this immediately as my wife is saying this is terrible harassment towards me as a vulnerable person by Virgin Media. Thanks