Appalling service after death of account holder
Guessing what a fiasco it would be i put off notifying VM of my wife's death. Unfortunately I had to let them know to be able to contact them to have service and contract issues resolved. All I wanted for the account name to be changed to my own. How simple surely? The bereavement team assured me that there would not be a problem and that they would simply transfer my late wife's account over into my name and that the contract and service would remain unaffected. What a mistake, although they have a dedicated bereavement team, 3 months later and after numerous standard copy and paste non personal replies and simply being cut off on the phone if the problem was too difficult for them to deal with I still have unresolved problems. This seems to be an all too common experience on this forum Although the account has now been transferred to my name if I log into my account it states I am out of contract, it cant give me details of my package and I cannot get Netflix activated by anybody it seems although I am paying for it but have not been able to access it for 3 months. I so wish I had taken the alternative action when I notified VM of my wife's death and simply closed the account. I presumably would have then received a more responsive service opening a new VM account in my own name I hope more recently bereaved partners do read this and the numerous other complaints about this subject on this forum and learn by my mistakes. By far the best result would be for customer services to contact me to close the account so I can move to another provider that shows some compassion to its customersuseless berevement team. I'm disgusted
I'm just going to post this whole thing and hope Rachel Barriss or someone reads it as Virgin just get worse and worse Ac 8930***** The facts: Nobody has been able to log into this account since sometime in 2019 when your staff changed the log in email and password but failed to tell us what they were. To this day i do not know the email address on the account and as i don’t know either i can’t log in or do anything over the phone either. I’ve tried many many times but to no avail and gave up. Consequently the bill appears to have risen and risen to a ridiculous level - you have been ripping us off for the years I have had to nurse my dying father since about 2020. Your ‘bereavement’ team are a joke and an embarrassment. One particular individual deserves special mention and that is Ibrahim. He was rude, raised his voice and would not help in any way whatsoever. i told him the above and said basically: ‘The account is a mess due to virgin staff and we’ve been paying far too much please can you pass this case onto someone who can look at it and ring me back to deal with it’ A perfectly reasonable request but he wasn’t having it at all and would only do the simple tasks that he had ‘trained’ for and didn’t help at all. I asked to speak to someone else and he said he would fill someone in and pass me over. He lied as he just chucked me back into the pool and I had to repeat the whole thing again. Bear in mind this is about the 50th time I have tried over the years. The new useless member of staff ( i can’t remember his name) sort of listened but not really and said he would look into it and would get back to me ‘early next week’ (about 6/2/24) but no call came. All the above can be verified as long as you recorded the phone calls The Consequences: I was simply after a bit of time to sort things out, decide on the best package going forward and due to us paying far too much due to Virgin incompetence I felt we were due a big discount of some kind for a short period of time while we decide on proper important things, not this nonsense. Instead half way through a film at about midnight on 10/2 my services went dead, all of them. No one told me this was happening. No email (you do have my real email address) no phone call, no letter not even a message on the tivo to say ‘your services are ending’. This is a systemic failure, your bereavement team/process and the whole Virgin system/process. Obviously I am dealing with important legal stuff due to my dads death and internet and a land line phone was essential for these few weeks. To not inform this was happening is firstly your bereavement teams fault but obviously the whole Virgin ‘family’ is to blame as why was no communication of any kind not sent to me? I would have then had time sort things my end, look at other companies and keep my landline. Instead, due to ingrained incompetence I have lost the phone number that the family has had since before I was born (i am 50). So there is bit of sentimentality there but also anyone from dads past would have that number (as did the solicitors etc) and now we have lost that. You have no idea and obv care not a jot the consequences of your action/non action - this applies especially to Ibrahim who needs to be removed from the bereavement team immediately. He lacks compassion (even his ‘sorry for your loss was obv not meant!) and he will carry on upsetting people. I have no idea how much your nonsense has cost us both financially and emotionally and Virgin is solely to blame I rang again on 12/02 and Ibrahim answered and was just as rude and didn’t listen to a word I was saying. He indicated that he had spoken to staff and no one could see anything wrong. That says it all really. He was not interested in helping, merely herding me to get off the phone. At the least someone needs to listen to his calls as I’d be astounded if I am the only one he behaves rudely to I have encountered some sort of silliness from (big) companies around dads death but just general easy to sort stuff - Virgin’s behaviour really takes the biscuit. To make matters worse you’ve just sent an email to what was supped to be my new account addressed to ‘J***’ - my dead father. Ibrahim told me that if I wanted to just drop the old account if I did things this way I would. not have to pay any money and the account would be brand new. I desperately need the internet so I had to agree and thinking about it anyway the essentials internet suits me atm. Once again I get duff advice as how the hell has there been a connection with my dead fathers account? it was brand new from my end i most def did not enter my fathers name so wth has happened? You’ve disconnected me cos my dad is dead but you still address things to him - again total systemic failure! Have you any idea how upsetting this is and just gets worse and worse? To make matters even worse I’ve just signed in to what i thought was my new account but it appears to be the old account with my dad still down as the account holder! In other words you have now done what i had been asking for for 5 years but every member of staff wouldn’t do it, Virgin is an utter joke. I typed the above and was going to send it as soon as I reconnected yesterday but due to you not doing your jobs I cant as it says i need to be my dad to do it and the situation has got a whole lot worse. I cant log into my account as it says there isnonly the old one and you have now sent a demand for payment for a bill that doesn’t need to be paid anyway as it is for Feb services to my DEAD FATHER, HE IS STILL DEAD You have stained my fathers death with your nonsense and incompetence. I eagerly await your response.