Delayed (and delayed) install

[DANCEDYNAMIX]

Ahhh, hello.

What a shambles.

Ordered virgin media services (broadband & TV) on November 26th 2021. Offered an install date of December 19th, a Sunday. Great I thought, just before Xmas, I can carry on working from home but with a faster connection (previous connection was with EE which never really went wrong but they dropped their TV service and started increasing their prices).

So I told EE and stupidly cancelled my contract with them for it to end on the Monday (20th December) thinking virgin will install OK on the weekend. 

Virgin guy turns up on the Saturday (18th) when I was out and calls me. Tells me there's an issue with the cables and doubts the job will go ahead the following day. OK I say, let me call customer service to see what's going on and what they are going to do to resolve it. I'm thinking at this point I can live without a connection for a few days, surely they'll put this issue as a reasonably high priority and get it sorted in a few days.

How wrong I was. 

Here starts the saga, the Virgin media customer services phone lines have to be among the worst you could ever have the misfortune of dealing with. You constantly get shunted from department to department, call centre to call centre, each time having to repeat your account number, area code, password and problem. I've had people hanging up on me for asking simple questions, being transferred to 'sales' a couple of times when asking to speak to a supervisor and so far have spent close to 4 hours on the phone trying just to get this issue actioned.

I'm writing this while waiting for my 4th 'install slot' to go ahead today. Engineer due to turn up (at 1pm, its 2pm now) to finish it off, who knows. Let's see if they can keep their promise!

First World problems of course, but you would hope if something goes wrong that a company providing a service would treat that issue as a priority and not bump it down and just leave you to sort out other customers. I'm in Enfield North London, not out in the sticks

We shall see, just had to vent after 6 weeks of waiting, and calling, and waiting, and calling..... Zzzzzz

[zirgin]

Think virgin media is just a shambles. I've been waiting for 2 months already and counting. Heard it could take up to six months on this forum. 

I would just wait and see how it goes. You cannot speak to someone who actually knows what is going on, even if you get through to the UK call centre. 

[gw5150]

Im almost 8 months still waiting for my installation an no further forward. Delay after delay and noone can help.

[jem101]

I believe the longest reported delay on this forum is still just about a year or so. We’ve not heard back from the person in question so maybe the install happened before it’s first birthday, or they simply still don’t have anything to report!

There really is no remedy or recourse for these issues, it’ll happen when it happens (or VM decide that it’s not worth the effort anyway and cancel the whole thing (sometimes while neglecting to let the prospective customer know). All you really can do is see about some kind of alternative supplier, maybe on a one month rolling contract if you still hold out hopes of VM coming through.

The general advice here is to not cancel the install, just assume that it won’t happen and plan accordingly. If it does actually go ahead and work, you have the option to cancel within the first 14 days with no penalty, but you would then know that the cabling is all in place and working should you decide to try your luck with VM at some point in the future.

[gspannu]

@DANCEDYNAMIX: Dates from Virgin really mean nothing. As you would have read in these forum posts; Virgin customer service is very poor.

… You can read more about my experience here. 

[Jodi_S]

Hi DANCEDYNAMIX,

A warm welcome and thanks for posting on our community forums. Firstly, we would like to apologise for the service received, we can certainly understand the frustration caused after months of delays with your installation.

Remotely checking from our end, we have located your account with the details you have provided from your community profile.

We can see that our CEO's office is dealing with your complaint, and that you now have active services with us.

Please can you let us know how your services are and if your experiencing any other issues.

Kind regards Jodi. 

[DANCEDYNAMIX]

Yes, the install went ahead on the Saturday. Although it was touch and go as the engineer found another issue with the external cable and had to get another engineer along to help him. Think that was a bit lucky as he was telling me he had to get Kelly comms back to fix that. But he did a good job in the end and had us up and running by 6pm

CEO office has been in touch so I'm just closing off my complaint with them today hopefully. Best of luck to those still waiting (DM me for email addresses to help ;-)) 

[Martin_N]

Thank you for keeping for us update on this DANCEDYNAMIX.

We're glad to hear this is all sorted for you.

^Martin

[MrPickle]

*written into DM*