Virgin Media made me howl and cry down the phone

[AnyoneRememberMooncat]

Last weekend I spent 50 mins on the phone to renegotiate my contract which was coming to an end. I ended up agreeing to a telephone package I didn't really want (which I think the agent would get comission on) as it was the best price to get my broadband.

The next day I phoned up and spent another 50 minutes to cancel the package. The new agent put alot of pressure on me to sign up to something else I didn't want but I said no. I got a cancellation number to ensure the telephone contact was not going through.

I was so stressed out that I went into my virgin media account and was seriously thinking about leaving them because of the awful service. It takes ages to speak to anyone and when you do they are foreign so difficult to understand. Then they put you under huge pressure to sign up to something 'new' so they get commission and say you can't sign up to the same thing you already have.

In my virgin media account - I was offered a deal to stay on my same service at the same price. Great. Signed up to this. Got contract by email. Job done. Honestly felt ill at all the stress to basically keep the same service at the same price.

Today got phone adaptors through post and though WTF.

Went into my virgin media account which last weekend was showing the new contract I took out myself for broadband only at £29 per month.
Now my account is showing the telephone package the first agent 'sold' me.

Tried to call them - wait time horrific.
Tried to webchat them - wait time 57 minutes
In desperation phoned the I am moving house number and got through to someone british. I lied and said I was moving house (to my mums house which I have inherited) so I could get away from Virgin. I figured it was easier to do this and just go with someone else.

The man was nice and helpful (and british) and said all I had to do was give them proof of my new address to show I was moving there. At this point I burst into tears and howled down the phone. I admitted to lying and explained why.

I had a flashback to the movie 'The Firm' where Tom Cruise joins a law firm for a great job at a great package and then realised nobody is allowed to leave the firm alive.

Anyway the helpful moving house dept man has contacted IT to get everything sorted (hopefully) and has given me his ID number so I can refer to the phone call we had.

VIRGIN MEDIA - YOU ARE A FUCKING DISGRACE! (Helpful man James not counted in this)

I do understand your frustration op, but nearly every other provider of anything is pretty much the same I'm afraid.

Oh your experience gave me flashbacks to when I was a Virginmedia customer!
They are just horrendous!

I was a customer right through from the year dot when they were ntl world.
Last year I said enough is enough. I told them I'd rather have no tv than be a customer of theirs.
So I ditched them in favour of BT phone and Broadband and an Amazon Firestick. I don't miss my virginmedia tv package at all.
It was annoying that I lost the email address I'd had for 20 odd years but worth it not to have to deal with Virgin media customer services ever again.

Sympathies, I had a similar experience a few weeks ago.
That stupid chat bot thing! It keeps saying it’s almost your turn and leaves you waiting for about another hour!
Hopefully I won’t have reason to speak to them for another two years.

I phoned them a month ago, following the loss of my husband, to cancel some of the sports package add ons that used to cost us a fortune. Automated service, long wait times, operator I could barely understand. She took off all the sports add ons, and a left over childs add on, and the price hardly went down because she had come up with some new package she thought I should have. I complained and said I only needed something basic, as we mainly watch Netflix, Prime etc. she then came back with another option but had reduced the speeds of the broadband I get. I said no again and ended up with a third option that was more reasonable. To be honest I wasn't even sure what I was getting as she spoke fast and had a very strong accent. Oh, and to add icing to the cake, there was a 30 day cancellation policy on the original package we had so I have to keep paying for channels I don't want and won't use. I too will be leaving them when this contract ends.

Virgin used to be really good- what happened? 3 are awful: long wait, hard sell, poor listeners, just awful

I had the same OP they lied to me and said broad band only would be more expensive than the 130 tv package he was trying to sell me despite me telling him I don’t have a tv.

I left and am going to SKY

Just do the live chat (no waiting on hold!), say you are going to cancel, they will try and convince you to stay, but stay strong and they will put through the cancellation.
Then a few days later you will get a phone call from a very polite person with an English accent, who will offer you pretty much the cheap deal you were on before.
Repeat every 18 months.

Sympathies. Don't switch to O2. I've been in dispute with them for a year and they've failed to reply to my formal complaint. I googled how to complain to O2 and found umpteen posts basically saying don't bother, they won't reply. They were right.

Aren’t they all like this?

Don’t try and ring HMRC, NS&I or NHS booking, average wait time 1 hr.

Just leave and rejoin. I do it every contact - always cheaper sometimes 1 day without the internet but no more

The man was nice and helpful (and british)

What has his nationality got to do with it and how did you find it out?

I don't negotiate any more.
I sign up with another provider who then contact VM to say I'm going and to start the process of me moving away.
Then VM ring me up and offer me a sensible price.
Then I cancel the new sign up.

This works I think because we still have a landline which triggers a particular process.
I have tried ringing them in the past and going through all the nonsense of being offered stupid deals that were horrible expensive.

I left Virgin (broadband and TV contract) by sending a recorded paper letter to the actual head office address given in the blurb they send. They accepted the notice and it was a peaceful ending to a contract that had become more and more stressful. I'm with Sky now and couldn't be happier.

I'd been with Virgin since they first set up in my area but gradually they became more and more appalling to try and deal with. In the end I couldn't stand it any more!

I got utterly fed up of them putting the price up to ridiculous amounts at the end of every contract & me having to ring to get it back down, so decided to cancel. First 2 times, as soon as I said "cancel", they put the phone down on me. Third time, the call handler said she would cancel it, but nothing came through. My original plan was to cancel for a month, then get a new deal at my old price but I decided at this point, that I was never, ever having any contract with them again.

I rang again and again, kept being told they would cancel it, but then nothing happened, so I had to raise a case and take it through their arbitration/tribunal thing (can't remember it's exact name), and they did eventually cancel it, but it took ages & a sily amount of time & calls - they must waste so much money paying these people.

TBH I felt like a PP said about being trapped like in the film "The Firm" - at one point I thought I was going to have to stay with them forever, but then that thought pushed me on to fight it. So stupid of them - they'd still have my custom if they'd let me do what I wanted (or stopped shoving the price up by silly amounts every contract). I'm an able bodied, middle-aged professional, who doesn't take shit off anyone, but I always wondered about very old or young people who don't have the fight in them that I do - some people must just end up staying/paying way over what they should.

I'm with Vodafone now, never had any issues, they never push the price up, can always get through to someone, internet is good enough for 2 of us to WFH fulltime. The only thing we don't have is the virgin box thing with the hard drive in, but we don't even miss that now - we can watch everything we need on iplayer, netflix & amazon

I'm afraid it's a fact with a few organisations that you are much more likely to get your problem sorted if you are able to connect to a home based call centre rather than the call centres overseas.
I think it's more to do with accountability than the language barriers. It's a fact that in some of the call centres they will just tell you anything to get you off the line because they are pretty certain they can get away with it because they are anonymous.
I'm not saying that doesn't happen with the British based ones but it's certainly the case with Virgin media that if you are lucky enough to get through to a Briush based one you are more likely to get the problem sorted.

Sorry you went through this. That is virtually bullying.

Change to Plusnet. We moved to them 12 years ago when we moved to an area that doesn't do Virgin (rural are,) and would never go back. Customer Service is second to none. And everyone we have spoken to - on the very rare occasion we have a fault - has very good English.

We were with Virgin for 10 years before, and they were fucking shite. I wanted to leave many times, but DH was determined they were 'the best.' 🙄

What a relief it was when they weren't available in our little rural village! I fucking hate Virgin!

.

Some people in these call centres have strong accents of all kinds and throw in mobiles that often sound a bit tinny or a lot of background noise going on ( sometimes you can hear other calls in the background or someone is working from home and you can hear things) and it can be impossible to hear the person speaking especially as we age and our hearing isn't great even if it's on speaker mode. Which may not be possible to use if you're ringing from work.
I don't have a landline anymore and I miss it as it was much better than a mobile signal, but yet more money, so it had to go.

Oh no! An accent 😱

(Sarcasm)

We changed from virgin media to BT. BT were unimaginably shit and completely useless and like you passed from pillar to post via a call centre abroad who "gave their word" it would all be sorted out. It wasn't. After 10 days faffing about we changed back to Virgin media....and later to Sky!

Presumably he had a British accent?

It is an issue with so many companies using foreign call centres, as there's often a slight delay/quality issue on the line, the person doesn't have English as a first language, often doesn't understand English idiom and is clearly working to a script - all of which put up extra barriers to effective communication.

It would be exactly the same if I got a job in a call centre for customers from the Netherlands - I have basic Dutch, but could not provide them with anything like the same level of service or satisfaction as another Dutch person could.

You've no idea of someone's nationality based on their accent. They could have been raised anywhere.

The chat bots are usually shit as well as they only have answers to a limited number of "problems"....which usually aren't problems, if you have an actual problem you need a real person (who ideally understands the problem) to sort it out!

They are awful. I make DH negotiate with them as he holds his ground but I think we will try another package next time. The straw that broke the camel's back was when he spent hours anf hours on the phone to them about a technical problem which they refused to acknowledge and just tried to upsell, despite the fact we already pay for super-fast broadband. He had to speak to at least five different people before they would send a technician out. He spotted the problem within 30 seconds, which was that they needed a new box. The only way is to vote with your feet.

As an older person whose hearing isn't what it was, a very strong accent (combined with very fast speech) can genuinely lead to difficulties in understanding what is being said, and being able to reply. It's not silly, or affected - it's just getting older. Wait and see.

Yep! This! ^