Poor customer support and service

[Lokismith]

On the verge of ditching Virgin.

I have no supply (broadband, tv and phone) since 12th August. Reported issue same day, the fault being caused by Cambridge city council removing a tree from front of property and cutting the cable.

Virgin attended on the following Tuesday and verified no signal. After a few phone calls to Virgin and taking advantage of upgrading to Volt package, I am told an engineer would be with me on the Friday 19th. What a waste of time that was as he came to install the Virgin hub 4. Couldn't do that as there was, you guessed it, no signal. He made a few calls and emailed someone and verified that a team would be out the following day to re pull a new cable. Waited in and no show. Phone call to Virgin had them running round like headless chickens. No one new what had happened but I was given a date of 8th September. No way was I happy with that.

On the evening of 22nd August I receive a text message to say the cable re pull was going ahead on 23rd August. I used the "chat" facility within the text to get Virgin to actually confirm this as I didn't want to waste another day waiting. You guessed it, no show. Should of put money on that one!

Phoned retentions team yet again only for more apologies and excuses. 

I then decided to fill out the complaints form as it made me feel better.

And here we are today 24th August. Got a text from Virgin saying they are responding to my complaint that I raised online and have been trying to contact me. (perhaps if the phone line wasn't dead then they would have got hold of me LOL) They didn't ring my mobile either. Anyway, I phone them, got through to retentions who must no me personally by now, and was then passed onto another person who seemed to have some authority. That person made enquires while I held the line. Eventually got back to me and promised the team would be at my property today between 8am and 1pm.

Well what do you think?

They never turned up. I am now ragging.

Phoned retentions  at 1.15pm today 24th August and they have nothing on file for a visit today. Then gave me some ridiculous excuses about system updating takes 24 hours to verify things. What a load of codswallop.  I just could not listen to anymore garbage. Told the person I was going to my local news paper and I hung up.

I have been a customer of Virgin Media since they merged with NTL.

Is this how you treat your loyal customers??????

[Lokismith]

hi, engineers appeared Friday and struggled to fix the cut line but managed to do it in the blazing sun. Saturday a very overworked engineer called James sorted the connection for the new hub. Poor lad felt very tired and was almost sick. 
so, all fixed this end now.

Now there is the small matter of compensation for all the failed promised visits and 15 days of no services. I take it that that won’t take as long as the repair.

[Steven_L]

Thanks for coming back to us @Lokismith.

I can see that our specialist complaints team are looking into this for you and you will also be eligible for automatic compensation for failed visits and the down time that you have suffered. You can find more information about this here.

Regards,

Steven_L

[Lokismith]

How long does it take to sort out compensation for the complete loss of services for 15 days and 4 failed appointments ?

So far Virgin have compensated me £8.40. Service were reinstated / fixed on 27th August.

[Andrew-G]

VM's interpretation and application of VM's automatic compensation scheme rules is often inaccurate (and always in the company's favour, never customers).  So I suggest you read the Ofcom scheme rules on automatic compensation.  Obviously there's details I won't know about your case, but in essence I'd expect that you would be entitled to fifteen days at £8.40, but noting that VM's liability starts only from midnight two full, working days after they were notified.  If your connection went down on a Thursday, and you notified them on Friday, they'd not be liable for compensation until Wednesday of the following week.  That's still a lot more than £8.40.  In terms of missed appointments, unless you got at least 24 hours notice that they'd been cancelled or rescheduled, then VM owe you £26.24 each.  An important reason that VM might minimise their payments is if they needed council permits or similar to undertake roadworks.  That is a legitimate reason, but the company routinely blame council permitting for delays when it has nothing to do with the council, and delays in requesting permits or responding once granted are entirely VM's problem.  If the company offer this up as an excuse, your local authority Highways department will usually tell you if a request was made by VM, when that was made, and when it was granted.  Typically minor works permits by a statutory undertaker like VM are turned round in a couple of days - some of the better councils will have done in a day.

If VM won't pay the relevant sum, then you need to raise a formal complaint.  That might work, but a more likely outcome is getting fobbed off with a "resolution" that resolves nothing.  If that happens, reject the resolution and ask for a deadlock letter, and with the deadlock letter you take the complaint to CISAS, the industry complaints adjudicator (adding a request for a further £50 due to VM's failure to apply the compensation scheme rules correctly, and £50 for the poor complaint handling).

I suspect the forum staff will be on this shortly and may offer a settlement because CISAS is costly for the company.  But sometimes their hands are tied by dubious company policies, so if you don't get a good outcome then go down the formal route outlined above.