Complaints process?

[oIMyersIo]

Hi,

I'm wondering what the complaints process is please as I raised a complaint several weeks ago which wasn't even acknowledged in the slightest.

I regrettably had to raise yet another complaint via live chat as the telephone advisor refused to raise it saying to do so online despite Virgin Media's webpage saying that you can call to raise a complaint. At this point, despite being promised a call back from the dedicated complaints team, I have nothing yet again.

Issue is as follows:

Switched to Virgin Media & within the first 3 days we suffered 250+ outages. This number was confirmed by Virgin Media.

They sent an engineer out who told me it wasn't the hardware and was an "account issue". The engineer stated they'd call me once they speak with their area manager. The call didn't happen and I received a text late at night saying they forgot but its been escalated and someone would be in touch.

Nobody got in touch as expected so I called through and spoke with someone who assured me it would be looked at and they personally would call me the following Monday - they did not. I called up again and was passed around teams before being told to switch the hub off and on - obviously this was done many, many times.

Service was somewhat better, only facing up to 50 drops per day at the worst. Eventually two nights ago it just cut out altogether, same issue as before: "connected without internet". I called for help and was told an engineer was booked for the following day between 12 and 4. I asked why this is required as this was an apparent account issue and explained there are notes on the previous fault but the advisor argued back and forth saying I "only had a technician but this is a senior technician" then was passed to the "customer relations" team to speak with a very confrontational advisor who sarcastically jabbed "why don't you need an engineer?  Your Internet is down, yeah?" explained ad nauseum again and was told an engineer has to come, so I conceded and cancelled my plans.

Suddenly as if by magic and right on cue, around 30 minutes after the call, our internet  reconnected after being completely dead for 9hours - wild coincidence that I just explained its an account issue and was made to feel stupid for saying so.

Engineer was still due to visit to i had spent the day waiting in and as you can predict, no-show. I just called up now and was told it was cancelled as the issue was already fixed.

No text message, no email,  no call informing me of this. They then booked it again for a later date as there are still drops in the connection but after everything was all done I get the dreaded, "oh you are on our special hub5, we have a ring fenced team for this hub, I need to pass you there" to be told it wasn't cancelled but simply rescheduled (still, zero notice).

As I've raised this issue twice throughout this god awful experience which is impacting my work & had zero response from the complaints team - what should I do? Write to Ofcom without a complaint reference, email Virgin Media CEO/Exec team, or continue to wait and hope someone takes a degree of ownership and accountability?

[Rif1]

So sorry to hear about your terrible experience.  It sounds as bad as mine! I would also like to know what the complaints procedure is.  I've had about seven engineer visits and still don't have any stable wifi or internet connection.  I raised a complaint ages ago and nothing came of it despite being told it would be looked into and was promised numerous call backs from a manager.  No one ever called. I am now looking to get out of the contract and get some compensation and a refund.  They don't make it easy though.  

[goslow]

For VM residential customers, complaints process is a formal complaint to VM first of all

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/complaints

a required first step but unlikely to result in any meaningful outcome.

8 weeks after you first complained, or earlier with a deadlock letter, an escalation to arbitration

https://www.commsombudsman.org/our-process

[Daniel_Et]

Hi @oIMyersIo, thank you for your post and welcome to the Virgin Media Community.

We're really sorry to hear about the poor experience you've had and that you feel this way 😔

Has a technician visit been carried out since you posted? If so, what was the outcome of that?

Regarding your complaint, you can track it for any updates using our online checker here. 

Please pop back to us at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for your support @goslow 👍

Regards,
Daniel

[oIMyersIo]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for your response.

The engineer did attend the next day and found there was an area outage which didn't actually show up on Virgin Media's own checker. They went to the cabinet and checked the connection there and it seems stable since. I asked for the contractual reimbursement for a cancelled engineer appointment within 24hrs and was told this would be sorted, it wasn't.  I was also promised a call back regarding the complaint within 72hrs last week, this also hasn't happened. Now yesterday our stream box Disney+ subscription which is paid via our Virgin Media bill just stopped...we've only had the box for 2 weeks and our subscription is rolling monthly, charged to bill, it's now not working and asked me to contact my provider (you), so I spent 35mins on hold before being transferred to another team due to having your new hub at which point the other advisor said I need to wait on a call back for this issue.

What is seriously going on? If its not the WiFi playing up its the call queues, or the promised callbacks that don't even happen. I would really appreciate if someone actually called to discuss the complaint because the list of issues is just accumulating and it doesn't fill me with much confidence when I've been charged for a Disney subscription and somehow at your end it has dropped after half of the monthly usage and what do you do? Promise a callback (without timescale) that I doubt will happen. 

I also used your tracker which doesn't even have mg contact details in it despite me entering those at the time of both complaints and via live chat. Absolutely lost with Virgin Media.

[oIMyersIo]

Thanks, I appreciate it.

It woud help if they actually acknowlegded complaints or sent final response letters, calls, anything but you literally get ignored and your complaint seems to vanish into the ether.

[oIMyersIo · Accepted solution]

I'll be giving them until the end of this week before just asking for Ombudsman involvement regardless of the 8 week mark as they haven't even acknowledged the complaint, if nothings done I'll just switch back to BT despite their more expensive cost, they just aren't as farcical as Virgin Media. 

[oIMyersIo]

Update for anyone curious:

I got an email today stating: 

"Thanks so much for the chat on 21/11/2023. We’re very happy to be able to resolve things for you

Here’s a quick recap

Your complaint was:

Broadband -> Faults -> Connection Problems

And here’s what we agreed:

Technical -> Fault fixed with technician visit"

As you can probably guess, nobody spoke with me today, I didn't agree this resolution at all and the complaint is missing several points. Really regretting my decision in moving to Virgin Media.

[Kath_P]

Hi olMyerslo, 

Thanks for coming back and updating us. We're sorry to hear you were unaware that the complaint would be closed. I can see the team run some checks based on the complaint and could see the issue was resolved. Usually a resolution would be sent with the complaint set to close automatically after 28 days if you didn't get back in touch. 

I can see the teams have raised a work order on the account regarding the Disney issue and the relevant team will come back to you when they pick this up. There's nothing we can do to expedite this though I'm afraid. They will be in touch as soon as they can. 

I can see since posting, a new complaint has been raised and the team have responded to this. If you're unhappy with the offered resolution, reply back to the email and the team can then escalate in line with the code of practice. 

Thanks, 

[Mart888]

How appalling. I just cannot believe that a huge company like Virgin clearly doesn't have a complaints procedure. Is that even legal???