Frustrating Customer Service multiple years ago, and now I'm in arrears???
Hi. I hope there's someone here that can help me. A few years ago when I was a student, two of my friends and I had rooms in a student house. Most of the bills were included but internet wasn't, so we decided to go for Virgin Media for a year, despite only needing it for 9 months as that was the only contract option. I was the account holder, signing up with my email address. We all moved out, and I went to cancel the contract and disconnect it, happily sending the kit back to them and paying any early disconnection fees. I ended up being asked to speak to their customer service team over WhatsApp and happily explained the situation. I was moving to Manchester into a house where the landlord controlled and paid for the internet, included in the rent. This internet was also Virgin Media broadband and one of their more premium packages, so there was no need for me to have any sort of contract still. The chat was extremely frustrating, with the Customer Service Assistant repeatedly using different angles to ask me if I could keep my account. Each message took about 20 minutes to get a reply so it took hours. The conversation went something like this: "You still have 3 months! Are you sure you don't want us to transfer it to your new address?" "No that's honestly okay, my new place has a better version included from Virgin and the landlord pays for and manages it themselves. I would just like to cancel and can pay an early cancellation fee and send the equipment back" "I've just checked your new address and that version is much more expensive, are you sure you don't want to transfer this cheaper one?" "No, I'm not paying for the new one and its a shared house with it included, so please just cancel mine. I have no reason to need it anymore and would like to be out of the contract please". "You will have to pay an early cancellation fee" "That's fine, how much is it?" "Actually Luke our back office team will process regarding the service to the new address, so that you can use your own account" "I don't need it, please listen to me and cancel the contract, I have no need to pay for more Internet through my own account as I already have it through my landlord. Can I speak to a supervisor please?" "I understand Luke, are you moving to the new address permanently?" "Yes" "Have you got any friends or family that can take over the contract for you?" "No" "I understand that you may have already made up your mind , but would like to make sure that you are also not passing out an opportunity to re-negotiate your package with us." "I have no reason to have the package. As constantly explained. Please just disconnect me, I will be making a complaint if this continues" This then honestly continued for about another half an hour. Within the conversation I gave them my new address. Then, so many years later, I have checked my credit and although my credit score is absolutely fine, it mentioned me being in arrears. Now, looking back at the messaging with this customer service assistant, he did mention a cancellation fee but I never received a bill. I'd already moved house and didn't get an email or anything. He did mention it would cost £63 and I must have forgotten about it. My current problem is I've called Virgin, and now they can't access my account due to the security questions about about recent billing and there is none. They cant tell me what I owe, or anything. Despite telling them my new address in the above chat, because im not at the address I lived at in 2022, they can't send me a letter. It almost looks like my account has been closed but there's still an outstanding bill I'm unaware of. The lady on the phone said "well I can take a payment if you have an idea of how much you owe, but I can't tell you how much that is". I cant log into my account and trying to reset the password doesn't work. What? I apparently owe money, but virgin can't tell me what it is or get into my account. How do I know where the money is going, how much exactly to pay, if its going to actually pay off this mystery bill or not? It's just confusing. I would like to make a complaint as well because I have received nothing about this bill for years! Surely they still have some of my details if I owe them this money?? I haven't paid anything yet, but happy to do so if I've genuinely made an error. I just feel like the whole customer service aspect of all of my experience has been terrible. The confusion from which has potentially put me in arrears and affected my financials.First Engineer says cable from pavement to house is broken, second one says no. Not service still!!!
Don't know whether there is communication problem between engineers, or who's right or wrong. Second engineer just fixed some cables, didn't check if it's work, didn't tell anyone and disappeared. No wifi for the a week until the holiday.Simply the worst service ever
Wow, I genuinely don’t know where to start. My complaint and issues go back to May this year!!! We are building a new home and unfortunately VM are the only ones offering fibre at that location. I contacted them to make them aware we would be moving and requested that they come to the house to install a cable from the road to the house (approx 20m) as we were having a new drive way and the builder had installed ducting under the drive for the cable. Our builder also said he wanted the cable in before he laid the drive in case there were any issues. 4 weeks on at the end of June, a VM engineer comes and does a survey. He recommended he supply some free issue cable so we could install ready for the move. No cable arrived, no engineers arrived. Back on the phone. Promised an install team would be out within the week to sort the cable. Another 2 week passes - nothing. Back on the phone. Promised a team would absolutely be on-site “Thursday and we will give you 1 months service FOC as goodwill”. Thursday arrives, no engineers. Back on the phone. No credits given or any notes for the free month. We are now in September and I have spent literally days on the phone, being passed from pillar to post, to the Phillipenes and back. Back on the phone. A civils engineer turns up, does a small cut from the service to our wall and goes. No cable team, no install. Back on the phone. Now after over 5 months of sorting, a very upset builder, the cable team arrive, we help them install the cable as quite simply they were clueless. Cable installed ✅ but as a result of the delay, my builder had to return to lay our driveway and so we posponed our “Movers” team appointment from 30th Oct 23 to 30th Dec 23 - and given I know how seriously bad virgin are, I contacted them prior to make sure they wouldn’t all of a sudden cut us off at our existing address and try to connect the new address. I had this confirmed on the phone and via the shockingly bad WhatsApp message service and I quote “I can confirm no service will be disrupted”. Guess what? We were cut off despite the assurances we wouldn’t be. Back on the phone. A form needed to be completed and a reconnection request submitted. First call I was promised 24 hours, no service. Back on the phone. Then I was told 48 hours. Still no service. Back on the phone. After 57 hours our service came back on, but guess what, he’s the bonus prize…TNT sports had gone as a service (typical on Champions League week), our second box in our bedroom completely stopped working and they sent a new 18 month contact through and DOUBLED our charges 😭😭😭. Back on the phone. Spoke with Yazmin in customer services, seemed as if she was on the ball, put credits on our account to bring the bills down. I then asked if the movers appointment had been put back to the end of December as previously confirmed. It had been moved back to 15th November (honestly you could laugh it’s that bad). She promised it would now be put back to the 12th Jan 24 (at my request) and the TV service should now be as it was previously. I get home last night from work (7th Nov) no TNT sports, second box in our bedroom not working. Back on the phone. Now speaking to David (Geordie accent) in the retentions team. He actually said my account was all over the place and he’d never seen anything like it. My luck. Virgin has only reconnected 1 of the 2 boxes and put us on a different service to what we had before, which took off TNT. He couldn’t do anything about it after 2 hours on the phone, said he would call me back today to sort as it needed the movers team back involved and they had now closed for the day. Had a call back this evening from David, he confirmed we now needed to return a perfectly working box of last week and have a new secondary box sent out to us. He also said in order to get TNT sports back, he would need to put me through to Movers again. 45 minutes later I am now on with some Irish guy who tells me he can’t add any services back on and that the retention team are the only ones that can do it. I ask for David again, not available. 45 minutes later I get passed to some Indian guy who sounded like a robot (issue with his headset I was told), he put the phone down then called me back, issue not as bad but still difficult to hear him. I told him to read the notes as I refused to repeat the story again for the 9th time. He said he could add the secondary box for delivery and put TNT back on my account for a small charge. Honestly my head nearly come off my shoulders. He then said I would have to speak to retentions team for them to get the service back on FOC. I said you are meant to be retentions, he wasn’t, he didn’t have a clue. Put back to retentions at 9pm, I left it ringing for over 30 minutes then was cut off. Still without the service we had prior to virgin deciding to cut us off. Back on the phone tomorrow. Moral of the story, avoid Virgin at all costs. If another provider is only a few pounds more expensive and you would receive a similar package, stay clear of Virgin. They are a complete mess in terms of organisation and internal communication is non-existent. I will be cancelling with them in the morning having had 6 months of non stop issues, lies, bad service. It’s just not worth having to deal with them.