Virgin Media Community

[podderko]

• As a longstanding customer, I signed up for a new 18 month contract 2 weeks ago, including an upgrade to 1 Gb broadband – typical good experience with the UK retentions team, after initially failing to get through to them. It is not the same experience with the offshore retentions teams, despite their claims, in terms of deals offered and effort to deliver the best deal.
• The quickstart package was delivered to me last Friday, but contained the wrong power supply for the Hub – simply didn't fit, as seems to have been experienced by some other customers as well.
• I called up, and was told by a call centre agent in India that a new Hub 4 power supply had been ordered, which would take 5-7 days to be delivered. The call got cut abruptly at the end, and I called again just to ensure that the order had actually been placed. I still suspected that this had not been done correctly, but waited hopefully.
• I continued to use my Hub 3 on the 350 Mb service in the interim.
• Yesterday night, one week later, I still had not received the power supply and my Hub 3 suddenly no longer had network access, according to the admin console, and I had no broadband service whatsoever. I called up to resolve, but even with global call centres, Virgin are not offering support outside UK office hours apparently.
• I called again this morning, and was told by a broadband faults call centre agent in the Philippines that this would need to be forwarded to a second line team. After waiting for 45 mins, I had to hang up and try again later.
• Later, I got through to call centre agent in India, who advised me that the power supply had never actually been ordered, and she would do it now, and it would arrive in 2-3 working days. She assured me it was raised even though I still haven't received the text message notification she told me I would receive immediately.
• I was then told that she would be unable to reactivate my Hub 3 today to restore my broadband service until the new Hub 4 power supply arrived. I said that surely some team would be able to do this, as would support an engineer appointment, and asked to speak to her supervisor. She then said she would put me through, and I had to hang up after being on hold for another half an hour, having already been on the phone for an hour.
• The retentions team in the Philippines were unable to help expedite any resolution. I have spent approximately 7 hours on the phone in total, because of the wrong power supply being sent out.
• I work from home as an IT contractor, and am unable to work without my broadband connection. It is holding back deliverables for my clients. That's much more expensive than my expensive new Virgin contract, especially if I'm left without any broadband service for another few days.
• While this is all down to the lack of intelligence and quality control to package the correct power supplies, the sheer level of organisational incompetence to deliver such a shoddy E2E customer service is astounding. This is going beyond BT levels of such behaviour. You do not have an efficient, joined up service. Just people working in silos with complete disregard for the end result. This has been my worst Virgin experience by far, and is a sign of a rapidly deteriorating service, whether driven by cost controls or other motivations. The pandemic is no excuse for this kind of experience.
• Clearly, the various layers of management are a collective bunch of twits who don't give a toss about the customer experience they are delivering. It's not just about broadband speeds.
• I'm not holding up much hope for a swift response here, but I'd really appreciate somebody expediting this to a) get the correct Hub 4 power supply in my hands asap and b) reactivate my Hub 3 immediately so that I have a working broadband connection in the interim.

– An extremely frustrated and angry Virgin Media customer, regretting the day he decided to upgrade his broadband.

[podderko]

I just spent over 2 hours again on the phone, initially hopeful after a call centre agent who seemed to know what she was doing, supposedly reactivated my Hub 3, but after seeing the network access was still blocked, I was then forwarded to another team and then to another team, and eventually had to hang up, realising that I was never going to get through before the 8 pm close.

I'll have to try calling in the morning, but again Virgin Media, I am completely disgusted by your abject service. I have also registered 3 official complaints over the past week, since this started, but I am not hopeful that much will come out of them.

So here I am still without broadband until who knows when, while I'm still paying for a 1 Gb service... I used to be customer with quite a positive opinion of Virgin Media, given my experience in recent years, but it now sunk back to the dark days of prolonged over-utilisation in my area.

[jbrennand]

Not sure if this is relevant or helpful - but there are several posts on here over the last day or so where customers are being told by tech's doing installs that they cant "activate" their new equipment right now as the system has gone pear shaped. Not sure if they have fixed that yet.

The Activation line is on - 0800 953 9500 – you will need the serial number off the barcode sticker (of whichever Hub you want working) and also your account number, Calling at 08.00 (Mon-Sat) or 09.00 (Sun) for the best chance of getting through quickly.

[podderko]

Thanks for the number, but they directed me back to customer services since they could only activate my Hub 4. I was forwarded to a call centre in the Philippines where they informed me that my Hub 4 power supply had still not been ordered yesterday, for a second time, and proceeded to do so. Unfortunately I was not surprised, but left even more annoyed.

After a protracted discussion to confirm billing and contract implications, they temporarily downgraded my broadband back to 350 Mb, informing me that my new contract deal would remain in place when I activate the Hub 4, after receiving my new power supply in supposedly 4-5 days. My Hub 3 was still not activated and I was told I would have to wait up to 3 hours, but promised a call back to check.

No longer believing anything and wanting to avoid another day without broadband and more hours on the phone, I called again to get through to the UK retentions team to explain the situation and reconfirm that everything has been done correctly. They forwarded me to to a broadband support agent based in India who seemed more competent, and ran some tests while we had an extended wait for the Hub 3 to activate. Apparently, the activation systems are now working properly again. Thankfully, my broadband is now working again and I can only hope that the Hub 4 power supply is genuinely on its way, and that the subsequent Hub 4 activation and account upgrade back up to 1 Gb will go smoothly.

After spending about 8 hours on the phone in total, it really is luck of the draw with VM's phone support, and clearly some teams/offices are much more competent than others. Just utterly shambolic for what should have been pretty straightforward customer service tasks.