Virgin Media Community

[sandraholds]

So I signed up with virgin after 20 years with BT as our speeds were so slow. Engineer visited and said they would need to put application in to council to dig up the path. That was over 2 weeks ago, he said it would take 4 days. Date was scheduled and I took the day off work. As the day got later and no sign of the pavement being dug up, I contacted virgin via chat and via phone. I was told don’t worry engineer is on the way. Engineer turned up at 6.15pm on Friday and said nobody had applied to the council. I put in an official complaint. Heard nothing. Engineer turned up today and I was advised nobody had applied to the council. The area manager was unaware that this was the third time virgin had stated that an application needed to go to the council and said it would now take 10 days. The BT contract ended a few days ago. I just cannot get my head round how virgin treats new customers. It’s just beyond any understanding.

[asim18]

Looks like VM has completely botched your install due to complete lack of procedural awareness and communications. Maybe they were just sleepy? They won't give you an explanation for why this happened, so maybe they were just sleepy.

I bet the person responsible for your botched install will never even be made aware that he cant even organise an installation properly. Completely oblivious to the fact that he's wasting so many people's time.

Regarding your official complaint, Virgin media has no one in charge of Customer Services at the moment (https://news.virginmediao2.co.uk/leadership/) so although you have complained, there is nothing that anyone can really do about it, there's simply no one there to read customer complaints and create mechanisms to ensure things which people are complaining about, don't happen again. This is why VM won three awards this year for poor customer service, because complaints were not being dealt with properly and this forced people to escalate to the ombudsman.

If VM have wasted your time, the only thing you can do is help them win more awards for poor customer service.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @sandraholds,

Welcome to our Community Forums! Thank you for your first post, and I'm really sorry to hear that this has been your experience with us so far. I completely understand how frustrating this can be.

Apologies that your install has not gone ahead as expected. In order to discuss further details on this issue, please call our dedicated Pre-Install Team to look into this issue further on 08000521734. Our team will be able to look and see how they can move this install ahead and what is the cause of the delay.

I understand your frustration. Please keep us updated on how you get on.

Thank you,

[sandraholds]

So after 4 visits from engineers and endless conversations with the installation team we are no further forward. The installation team confirm that an application wasn’t put into the council to dig up the pavement and delays are also caused as the phone number needs to be ported. A new date for installation of cable was confirmed - the engineers should have been today - no sign of anyone, no phone call, no contact whatsoever, just nothing. Why did virgin offer us a contract if they had no intention of activating it? Does anyone know how we make something happen - official complaints are not answered, dates are promised on phone calls, engineers visit and promise dates and …nothing? 🤷‍♀️

[jem101]

@sandraholds after all this time you need to assume that VM, as an organisation, don’t value your custom, aren’t interested in your needs for broadband and are basically saying, ‘do one’.

Now having said that, individual employees especially those on the forum staff, do seem to be caring and really wanting to help you out but are frustrated by the hopelessly labyrinthine set of outsourced providers and disconnected procedures that seem to pass as VM’s systems. But having said that, it’s probably cheap and that’s all that matters really isn’t it - you can’t get connected, well tough who care about you?

Now I’m all for giving the benefit of the doubt but after all thus time it really is taking the p’, assume that VM don’t want you as a customer and start looking elsewhere. After all they are prepared to treat you like this before you even are a customer, so how are they likely to behave when you are, and locked into an 18 month contract?

[David_Bn]

Thanks for your post on our Community Forums @sandraholds, and I'm terribly sorry to hear of the issues when trying to get the services installed.

If you are still keen on having Virgin Media installed, we can take this to a private messaging conversation and I can liaise with the area field manager to see if we can make things happen.

Understandable if you wish to have the order cancelled and go with an alternative provider

Let us know what you would like to do and we'll assist anyway we can

Kindest regards,

David_Bn

[sandraholds]

You are welcome to pm me. It certainly has not been a pleasure to deal with virgin but has now become a mission to make them do their job. My virgin account says yet another service visit is booked today but I’m not holding out much hope.

[Anonymous]

I am really wondering why you would persist with this. 

Once you are locked into 18 months of paying them, well, it will be 18 months of this or £240 to buy yourself out of it.

Even escalating with arbitration and ombudsman will take many weeks and months.

As a side note: I will predict you are still chasing install at Halloween and further.

[sandraholds]

Hi David,

I received no private message from you and pre-installation work still hasn’t taken place?

[goslow]

Your description of events so far has all the characteristics of a failed VM installation that may end up dragging on for weeks of months without a resolution. Check out the many similar posts on the unfortunately-named 'QuickStart' forum to get an idea of a possible pattern of events that could follow.

If you are willing to wait it out and see how long it takes, then fair enough but you should probably start checking out some backup options such as additional mobile data etc. in case VM do drop you into an endless loop of failed visits and false promises regarding the installation timescale.