Duplicate Account - Reconnection - Service Denial?

[イザナギ]

Recently returned to a previous address and began setting up again with Virgin Media for the M350 service, I have been with this provider at this location before. After having many setbacks in getting the account setup the troubleshooting team who assists in setting up duplicate accounts returned that they were only able to create a new account as business due to a system error on their side.

The departments currently involved in assisting in the reconnection of service have begun to ghost the issue despite a sales agent Tia Thomas being able to start a new order on a new residential account setup at the property on the 10th January before beind halted by management.

Although a promise from the agent to call back had been made for 16th January, no call has been received in relation to the ongoing issue.

Christopher Lyttle of the home movers team had originally been overseeing the situation in relation to the new connection being setup along with several other members of the team including; Craig, Jason & Andrew. The problem however appears to be an unfulfilled account that agent Tia Thomas almost made a booking for that was originally setup late in the evening on the 10th January with a sales manager, however during this setup process due to the time of day, Virgin Media switchboard was deactivated due to it being the end of the days serviceable period via telephone.

The new residential account was created, however the next day when the troubleshooting team attempted to create the duplicate that was being processed through the home movers team, the system flagged the premesis as already having two residential accounts and thus defaulted to created the account as business.

The new account made on the 10th is blocking the creation of a new residential account that the address and needs to be deleted or completed. If this is not the case then it is likely there is another noted block on the system in relation to reconnecting at the property with a duplicate account due to malevolent reasons on the part of Virgin Media.

There is no justifiable reason for such a large provider for the "Computer Says No" argument to be valid, especially where service had been possible not too longer ago at the premesis with a duplicate account setup without issue. If there is an error on the backend a Lead Developer with system administration rights and skill needs to amend the issue on the backend so the order agreed with management, sales representatives and the home movers team can proceed for the new 18 month contract.

[Lee_R]

Hi イザナギ, thanks for posting and welcome back to our community.

Sorry to hear you've been unable to set up/activate a new account and for any inconvenience this may be causing you.  I would like to take a look on your behalf. I am going to send you a private message. Please look out for the purple envelope in the top right of your screen.

Regards

Lee_R

[イザナギ]

As an update to this still ongoing issue, service personnel contacted over the phone have been moderate to little help yet overall have been zero help at all in correcting the issue as it stands. It is now understood that the problem is not with any new premesis code that is being generated as these will all be business codes due to any given premesis having a limit of two residential accounts.

The property already has two residential premesis codes, one active that belongs to another person and a disconnected account under another premesis code for the same address that is mine, however, upon the end of service upon moving to a new location before moving back later on someone working for Virgin Media incorrectly labelled the premesis code attached to the previous account as "demolished".

As it has now been explained in the most fragmented way imagineable following bits and pieces provided across many phone calls with many agents across both residential, business and customer service lines including one agent who had been trained to handled bot residential and business accounts, as a property can only have two residential premesis codes, when a new person begins a service with Virgin Media at the same address an account existed previously, the premesis code for the new account will remain while the new account will now end in 02, 03, 04, etc depending on how many previous account holders were at that property where the accounts exist consecutively.

As there have been two active accounts simultaneously at this address previously, with one still active under its own unique premesis code and the other having been miscatagorized as demolished despite monthly direct debits for a landline being made through the active account for the exact same address, all attempts at creating a new premesis code for a residential customer have failed and will continue to fail as what is required is not a new premesis code as these will default to being business codes for business accounts.

The currently miscatagorised account labelled as demolished needs to be set back to serviceable to allow the creation of the new residential account that will use the same residential premesis code with the new account ending 02. This should be nothing more than a simple amendment on the side of Virgin Media through their logging systems. Yet as has been a consistent case of poor system programming, no one single person thus far through direct contact seems to have any ability to either perform or raise the issue for the amendment to be made.

A previous agent over the phone suggested council records on the existence of the property would be necessary, it has been and must be highlighted that this is not true, as referencing the currently active account with its own premesis code that has active billing can be used by Virgin Media to verify the existence of the property, confirming it is not demolished. As if this were the case, Virgin Media would be liable for theft over active billing for a landline of a non-existent address.

Lee_R here of the forum team has brought up the internal team called Central House Files, this thus far is the most hopeful seeming department in terms of correcting the second premesis code from demolished to serviceable. All connections used with a fibre broadband service still exist at the property that in of itself also still exists, there has never been any demolition or removal of service lines or cables, the issue is purely with the miscatagorization along with the false attempts at creating a third residential premesis code for the property where the second needs to be made useable again in order to generate the new account ending in 02 using the second premesis code. This is what is needed to be done.

While this is hopeful, Lee_R would not provide any direct contact for Central House Files, only offering twitter@virginmedia.co.uk as the first contact in order for the e-mail to be forwarded over, again prolonging the process. The fact that any issue that requires a specific department to correct always happens to be unreachable without going through a multitude of steps if you are fortunate to communicate with an agent who knows of their existence is bemusing. What seems to be worse is there is no direct contact number if you are a business customer as a fair few times, knowledgeable agents would backhand the situation to the business department, however, many of the business agents were by far the most helpful and professional. Yet it is not good for business to have no form of direct communication with the correct department without going through many needless steps first. Fortunately, I am not a business customer, yet I could never recommend this.

Will see that the demolished status gets changed back to serviceable and then proceed with the quoted order promised by manager Christopher Lyttle of the home movers department along with Tia Thomas of sales after confirming it with the manager there also.

[Andrew-G]

From your language it seems you work in or close to this sort of field, perhaps software design, business analysis, IT architecture?  And perhaps used to working with large companies that place some value on serving customers?  Organisations with skilled IT professionals, internal learning and feedback processes?  With database administrators able to quickly deal with simple problems like these, where the only issue is a single wrongly set flag on an address?

Well, if it isn't already obvious, Virgin Media are not one of those companies, and your use of logic is misguided.  VM are illogical to the very core, even when it means losing customers or seeing higher costs.  No amount of reasoning will help.  Unfortunately any long time observer of this forum knows that VM's systems are a chaotic Gordian knot of dysfunctional, poorly managed, under-invested code, with nobody having the knowledge, skill, enterprise or authority to break the frequent logjams.  Information flows are poor, the involvement of cheap offshoring at every stage both operationally and in IT development beggars everything up, dirty data acts as grit in every mechanism, and the surrounding processes are a typical VM omni-shambles.  

Maybe I'll be proven wrong, after all even the most skewed distribution implies that once in eternity things have to go right?

[Vikki_M]

Hi @イザナギ

Thank you for your further response.

I can see you are in a private conversation with my colleague who is assisting.

Please pop back to him directly and he will be able to help further for you. 

[イザナギ]

An update to the ongoing situation regarding the incorrect premesis filing by Virgin Media.

Central House Files finally received contact along with necessary documents to correct the filing thus allowing the original secondary premsis code to be used in order to set up a new account for the new service.

Now there is a new problem..

It took Virgin Media so long to fix this issue that the original quote accepted of £27 p/m with £100cr gift credit applied to the account at service initiation for the M350 fibre broadband package at the beginning of the process is no longer visible to the sales or movers agents.

Following the process of providing a very helpful member of the movers team named Andrew with the old account number from the now working premesis code as well as the one made in error by the Back Office Team that supplied the necessary information to show how long it took Virgin Media to resolve the issue blocking the submission of the order from the start, his manager Courtney approved the original qouted offer, though in a manner that is needlessly complex.

The package of the original quote shot up to £38.50 p/m from when seeking to resolve the original issue, the way in which it has been confirmed to bring this back down to £27 is to apply the initial £100cr gift credit as promised when the service is initiated to the account, where then applying £11.50cr rolling credit for each billing period. This is needlessly complex as simply reducing the £38.50 to £27 would make more sense, though Andrew who had been working from home confirmed to be using a version of the software that had more limitations to what those within the call centres have access to.

He assured following confirmation from his manager Courtney that the credits would be applied and confirmation of this sent via e-mail, upon this also adding notes of this to the original account as well as stating an attempt of adding the same note to the new account would be made, though this may not work due to errors exerienced due to his software limitations.

No confirmation of this has been received, all that has been received is a provisional contract with the wrong amount, no stated credits and empty sections where those should have been stated.

The service is meant to go live first of March, though it looks as though this may have been a very long waste of time if the promised and confirmed package deal is to be unfulfilled at the last minute. Even if it were fulfilled in the manner Andrew & manager Courtney have assured would be setup, 17th April is meant to entail a double bill, due to the nature of the rolling credit this should be £23cr applied, accounting for both billing periods this would entail, yet it is very much expected to be £77 charge with only £11.50cr applied against it, meaning an overcharge of £11.50...

After all the issues, redirections and countless agents dealt with thus far, it would be of no surprise. It would be much simpler to reduce the monthly charge to the originally confirmed £27 p/m rather than issue rolling credit of £11.50cr against £38.50 for each billing period as the amount charged would be the same. This would mean the only credit to be applied would be the £100cr gift credit to be applied at service initiation.

Without confirmation to this the service cannot be initiated.

[Tom_W1]

Hi @イザナギ  thanks for your reply and sorry to hear of this.

As we've previously mentioned, we can see you are in a private message with our colleague and it looks like you've messaged them over the weekend too.

Please be assured they'll respond to you ASAP on this matter.

Many thanks

[jpeg1]

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@イザナギ wrote:

After all the issues, redirections and countless agents dealt with thus far, it would be of no surprise. It would be much simpler to reduce the monthly charge to the originally confirmed £27 p/m rather than issue rolling credit of £11.50cr against £38.50 for each billing period as the amount charged would be the same. This would mean the only credit to be applied would be the £100cr gift credit to be applied at service initiation.

Without confirmation to this the service cannot be initiated.

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The reason for this is simple. At the end of the initial contract period, the £11.50 temporary credit disappears. The reversion to a 'normal' contract price plus any annual fixed percentage price rise will therefore be based on a previous £38.50 p/m rather than a previous £27 p/m.

I trust you will keep us informed here, rather than disappear into private messages.