Virgin Media Community

[kayakmoose]

Phoned today to ask for a hub 5 upgrade as I have been a gig1 customer now since the roll out began. 

I explained that my wifi has always been really bad in the house and despite many changes of location in the house the router still cannot perform as expected.

Retentions told me that no hub 5 routers are available but then went on to try and sell me a mobile phone package in order to obtain a wifi booster. 

The cost of the mobile package was £6 per month with limited usage but I would get a free wifi booster.

I explained that I didn't want or need a mobile phone package and the Tier 1 rep continued this hard sell.

I asked how much a wifi booster would cost without the mobile phone package. The answer was £5 per month.

So straight away this woman went straight for the larger revenue option for virgin media. Completely  ignoring the customers needs and requirements. Even when I stated that I did not need or want a mobile phone package this woman insisted it would be the cheapest way to get a wifi booster.

This clearly is misleading information as the price of a booster is £5.

Thankfully my contract ends in May as I am done with this form of selling with virgin media.

All I want is decent wifi in my house.

Am I being unreasonable by asking for a hub 5?

Am I being unreasonable for asking for a wifi booster.

I don't live in a mansion and it's only a 3 bed house. Surely with all of the hype around the hub4 I could get a decent signal without the mis selling practices.

[newapollo · Accepted solution]

Hi @kayakmoose 

Aside from the sales tactics you were given the wrong pricing.

Since you are on a Gig1 package the wifi pods should be free

VM now send out wifi pods as part of their WiFi Speed initiative.

Info below from  https://www.virginmedia.com/wifi-max 

If you are on our Gig1 Fibre Broadband, Volt or Ultimate Oomph packages, you get our WiFi guarantee included at no extra cost.

If you are on our M50 to M500 Fibre Broadband packs (without Volt), you can add our WiFi guarantee with WiFi Max for £8 a month with the first WiFi Pod provided automatically.

A member of the Forum Team should pick this up for you.

[Paul_DN]

Hi kayakmoose,

Thank you for reaching out to us in our community and welcome back, ,sorry to hear you have been unable to arrange the free Pods you are entitled to as a 1GB customer, this is done allow you to get our WiFi Max which comes with up to 3 Pods and a guaranteed minimum 20 mbps per room Via WiFi.

So I can help I will send you an invite into a private chat, once received please click on the purple envelope to accept.

Regards

Paul.

[-tony-]

and check your contract and bills - saying no to the hard sell is no deterrent to the scammers that are offshore - you may well get the sim in the post you dont want and your bill adjusted to charge for it - its become normal practice for them 

[jpeg1]

@kayakmoose you are fortunate that you are already on the 1gb contract.

If you were on a lower speed contract you would probably be advised that your WiFi would be improved by buying faster broadband.  It's happened to others who have then been locked into a new more expensive contract and found that the WiFi is no better.

Never trust the sales staff who are only interested in their commission. 

[kayakmoose]

This is so true. I asked in the past for baby tc to be added to my package. Its a single channel that should have cost £5.99 the person added a full package and when I tried to cancel I was told that I had to pay a cancellation charge.

In the end a subject access request was submitted and the refund was given for the cancellation charge. The while farce took weeks to sort out.

Offshore call centres are causing the massive drop year on year of loyal virgin media customers.

This today is the final straw for me and I am done.

I have 3 months to go with my contract then I am off to hyperoptic for my broadband.

Thankfully 1gb broadband and fibre to door is becoming more accessible, virgin media have failed to realise this and I can guarantee in a couple of years they will be clinging on to life as an isp.

Once the current generation of TV viewers drip off the revenue from this will also drop as customers switch to online platforms for their viewing pleasure.

Who needs virgin media anyway?

When we are given lies deception and manipulation worthy of a report to the ombudsman it's time to look elsewhere.

Shame on your oversees call centres. They may make you money but it's dirty money obtained by dishonest staff.

This is not the virgin media that I knew.

[Client62]

The offshore support and sales team have become so untrustworthy it is time to have recordings of these calls for litigation purposes.

[Tudor]

It’s always best to get an app on your phone so you can record when speaking to any customer services, it can save a lot of hassle in the future, but remember to tell them that you are recording the conversation and make sure this is also on the recording. This way you are covered it there is any questions at a later date.

[Anonymous]

You can see how it happens in terms of basic pay and sales incentives for these offshore VM customer service agents. 

According to Indeed the average call centre salary in the Philippines (where I believe VM have some of its operations) is the equivalent of £4.5k per annum https://ph.indeed.com/career/call-center-representative/salaries

In South Africa make that £4k https://www.payscale.com/research/ZA/Job=Call_Center_Agent/Salary

Living wage at VM? Pah. 

Oh, just to add, the highest paid director (probably Lutz) received a total package of 7.8 million pounds in 2021

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02591237/filing-history/MzM1NDA2M...

[jem101]

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@kayakmoose wrote:

This is so true. I asked in the past for baby tc to be added to my package. Its a single channel that should have cost £5.99 the person added a full package and when I tried to cancel I was told that I had to pay a cancellation charge.

In the end a subject access request was submitted and the refund was given for the cancellation charge. The while farce took weeks to sort out.

Offshore call centres are causing the massive drop year on year of loyal virgin media customers.

This today is the final straw for me and I am done.

I have 3 months to go with my contract then I am off to hyperoptic for my broadband.

Thankfully 1gb broadband and fibre to door is becoming more accessible, virgin media have failed to realise this and I can guarantee in a couple of years they will be clinging on to life as an isp.

Once the current generation of TV viewers drip off the revenue from this will also drop as customers switch to online platforms for their viewing pleasure.

Who needs virgin media anyway?

When we are given lies deception and manipulation worthy of a report to the ombudsman it's time to look elsewhere.

Shame on your oversees call centres. They may make you money but it's dirty money obtained by dishonest staff.

This is not the virgin media that I knew.

---

So basically, what you are saying is that Virgin Media, via one of their agents, deliberately attempted to mis-sell you a product by claiming that you would have to pay an extra £5 per month when, actually it would be free for you, no?

This is actually, illegal!

Now, at best, we can imagine that VM's customer services staff are, at best, not properly trained and simply are not in any position to correctly advise customers, or at worse are 'incentivised' to 'upsell' services, and are actively instructed to do so, even if it involves directly lying to customers!

Maybe, if you can be bothered, make a complaint to OFCOM about your experience. Now, admittedly, they are the world's most useless and toothless regulator, except, given enough complaints, you never know, a Government in a bit of trouble, wanting some good news, might, just might, lean on them to 'make an example of an ISP', with a truly eye-watering fine so as to show how they are 'putting the consumer first'!