HI BenMcr
Do appreciate your response and in standard circumstances this would have been really helpful, so thanks
Based on other advice on community I called the helpline early yesterday and got through. My box has been decommissioned. Im having another box shipped out which for some reason takes several days, rather than Virginmedia sending it through an urgent courier, given Virginmedia have removed parts of the service I am paying for without notice.
Im advised Ill get a refund for loss of service automatically - I'll advise that this never happens
But, for this community Im afraid I have to correct you, I have received plenty of correspondence for marketing over the past few months by post and email, Ive even had someone call me to "discuss my package" but not one item of contact to advise me the TV box is being decommissioned, and no on screen messages. Not even a text. NOTHING. I can see from this community that I am not the only one who has had this issue, as its been flagging up since mid June - so Virgin Media were aware a few weeks ago their system of notification had failed but have still carried on decommissioning services. They should have paused and ensured all customers had been notified.
I have been with VM since the start, I was a telewest broadband customer. I used to recommend VM as I rarely had a problem with service and found their customer service great. In the past 12 months I have had loss of all services 3 times - which all took over a week to resolve. Just at the start of lockdown virgin media sim upgrades shut down my phone, I found they had decided to decommission my mobile phone, also without notice - knowing I was shielding virgin still took 6 days to replace my phone and that was only after I had spent 8 hours over several days with the call centre and threatened a complaint to the regulator. Good job i didnt have a medical emergency.
Clearly Virginmedia are updating their systems, but have chosen to just randomly shut older hardware off and leave it to the customes to sort out, rather than have a structured upgrade system in place. The decision to routinely shut off services without notice is a beach of contract and I alone have had 5 of these in the past year - 2 being since lockdown.The ability to contact the organisation is very limited and sadly the helpline is hit and miss - either advisors are very friendly or are extremely condescending, openly mock customers or routinely leave you on hold or disconnect you on a transfer - this is a favourite. Sadly its then left to the few advisors taking pride in their role to deal with repeated callers who are then becoming angrier and angrier. I can see the customer feedback on community, twitter and facebook, Virgin media can but are ignoring it. VM are not sorting out the reduced quality of their call centre and have failed to organise for Covid as the bulk of this service is offshore and in countires affected hard by Covid. As an organisation, VM should have sorted a back up plan - theyve had nearly four months are are failing where comparable organisations have achieved. Because it costs money. .
So BenMcr I really appreciate your feedback and do appreciate you come on community to provide contact and advice where VM contact centre and website doesnt - that really helps people and reduces a lot of stress and anger. But Im too long in the tooth and have a long career working for large organisations and call centres to give VM any more benefit of the doubt. Service improvements are their structured procesess and should not be rolled out until sample tested. VM they clearly have a very large "accepted downfall " percentage where they know services will fail - they should have a modest one.
There is plenty available now that means customers do not even need to contract long term to services for TV, phone or even broadband, or can subscribe to better service providers.
Im moving my all my subscriptions, so are 4 of my family members and I have two friends also in the process of switching. My neighours have had enough, as service fails affect set areas, and advise they are switching aswell. Thats a lot of VM services loss in two housing estates, but VM arent bothered because they are focusing their whole set up on new subscribers locked in long contract periods - who then find the service to be not as advised, or exisitng customer upgrades and increased profitability - and by default renew contract periods. Classic maximisation business model.
Such circumstances, with elevated compaint levels to the regulator CISAS, will eventually lead to an investigation of VM business model and service failures. People just have to ensure they persevere with VM appalling and inaccessble complaint service and then escalate the response to the regulator CISAS.
All the best BenMcr
