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)

Of course it's not racist.

How can saying that you can't understand someone because they either have a very thick accent or poor english language skills be considered racist? It's just a fact - you're not deliberately deciding not to be able to hear just because of where they might have been born.

Being easily understood by the majority of people calling you has got to be a fairly key pre-requisite for being a call handler (or at least it should be - all too often it appears it isn't).

The fact he was British meant he could speak intelligible English which (believe it or not) is a decided advantage when you're trying to sort out a complicated situation. I know you're trying to paint this as racist, but I can assure you that the Italians, French, Sudanese and Chinese would also be fucking pissed off with someone who couldn't speak or understand their language to a very good level whilst working in customer services.

Which accent is acceptable then?

Any at all, providing they have clear diction and are capable of making themselves understood - after all there are many jobs suitable for those who can do neither, but telephone-based work isn't necessarily one of them

Agree about the awkwardness of trying to cancel these deals though; as the Eagles sang, "You can check out any time you want but you can never leave"
Or rather you can - by giving written notice and then simply cancelling the payments

I don’t think it’s racist either but the poster I answered was clearly intimating exactly that.

I had the same. It was the lies that made my decision to leave them easy. The day before my notice period was up they offered me the package they said I couldn't have for half the price. Disgusting sales tactic. I cannot believe I stayed with them so longer out of some misguided sense of loyalty ! I'll never ever use virgin again

I've heard about that sort of thing happening when someone has died. I just can't understand that level of stupidity. They actually insist on speaking to someone they have just been told has died!

You can contact them using WhatsApp- details are on their site. It works really well, did it the other week.

I would go without internet rather ever using virgin again.

I got a contract with them years ago, when a student, as they were the only provider who could give us internet without a costly installation and they were awful. They then took money 3 times for the installation that never happened.

They messed up further bills and when I was at the end of the contract which was aligned with my tenancy end date - and they kept saying that I had to pay for another year despite me explicitly saying I would only take a year as I was in the property for 14 months. Because I wasn't imminently leaving they said I'd have to pay hundreds to cancel.

I was on pay as you go at the time and a student so on a tight budget - I spent nearly £30 just getting that resolved.

My street WhatsApp seems to be a virgin media customer support group so I can't see any indication that things have improved in the last 15 years.

I just can't get my head round this when I hear about it happening (which is quite often). How is it possible to be so stupid that you insist on talking to a dead customer?

Well yes an accent which often you can't understand..it might be my age although younger friends have confirmed same issues. Not sure why you're being sarcastic.

When moving house, I wanted to leave Sky and not take it with me to the new address. Having previously had experience of the trauma of trying to cancel, I just told them I was emigrating. Unfortunately, the customer service person was thrilled by this and wanted to chat about where I was going, etc. They were lovely and I felt terrible when I put down the phone!

Unfortunately OP this is neither unique to Virgin Media nor to UK call centres.

I've had a week long circular Kafkaesque nightmare myself between BT, Vodafone and OpenReach. I'm not even getting a good deal now, I just can't take any more stress in trying to get a better one, and hoping they don't touch the line again. I'll take the extra few quid a month for the price of leaving with my sanity. I'm also fairly sure that at least a 'few' of the agents were bots.

Yes they are crap. Try talk talk or community fibre. More reliable service and cheaper.

Virgin customer service was a hideous experience. No idea why we stuck with them (probably because we had a box full of stuff we hadn’t got round to watching) but every contact was painful and there were such frequent faults. When I called finally to cancel, because we were emigrating, they tried to persuade me to carry on paying for the service anyway, and then got angry with me when I said no.
We now live somewhere fairly rural where Virgin have just pitched up with super fast. We’ve stuck to EE and slightly lower speeds, and it’s been unsurprising to see the village FB group go from ‘who’s going for Virgin? The deals and speeds are amazing’ to ‘bloody Virgin, never again’ in about three months.

And yes, having to call contact centres to speak to someone speaking very fast to a script with a heavy accent and often over a bad line is stressful. Particular because those staff clearly are not empowered to really sort anything out. The reason problems often end up being resolved by someone who is clearly a native English speaker is that they are more senior or working in a specialised area with a focus on retention. Companies take the gamble of paying a small number of UK staff more and deploying them like this, and siphoning off the nuts and bolts to the huge call centres abroad. Sadly many of us would disagree with what sort of issues require someone with the authority to depart from the script.

TalkTalk is the only company I’ve ever had contact with that beat Virgin for awfulness. And that was when they missold me something they couldn’t provide at all and then I had to spend months repeatedly cancelling it over and over again .

Then they should all be fucking ashamed - and add British Gas to that list as I nearly had a heart attack dealing with those wankers on behalf of my dear elderly parents - shameful all of these so called ‘Service Providers’ - no one cares anymore it’s disgraceful 😡

Any accent is acceptable provided they can make themselves clearly understood and understand what you are saying. Sadly, with many companies employing the services of overseas call centres, that’s very far from the case.

A lot of people working in modern call centres whether located in the UK or elsewhere do not have English as a first language, have accents that make that obvious, and sometimes are very difficult to understand. It's very easy to work out if someone is a non-native speaker or not.

However, not all companies are rubbish. I have only had good experiences with Plusnet, for example.

Virgin Media are an absolute nightmare.

If anyone has any problems with them, after 8 weeks from the start of your complaint, just pass everything onto the Ombudsman. Keep as much information as possible such as emails or screenshots of the live chats you have ( where they constantly lie ) to help back up your case.

We were with them a few years ago and they were terrible. I spent hours on the phone to their so called 'customer service' as the broadband kept going down. When we finally left them DH pulled out their cables and discovered they were full of holes where the idiot installers had stapled through them.

I'm currently in a battle with Sky to get them to honour an online only offer that I can't apply. Because I'm calling them I can't have the offer despite the fact their crap system won't let me add it. If anyone knows how I can guarantee getting through to the UK call centre please let me know!

That's not nationality that's relevant then.

it's extremely difficult to understand and to make yourself understood when you get put through to India or any other country

Any other country? Even the ones where English is the predominant language?

Agree Virgin are unspeakably awful! I was so happy to leave them.

Another vote for Plusnet - I absolutely love them. When I had to leave them because they don’t do fibre in the area I moved to, they sent me a cheque for the amount I’d overpaid. I didn’t see the cheque for over two years (my own fault) and they actually reissued it for me after I sent them a very quick email. Customer service is so good.

That could be the same for anyone. My nan is late 80s, she is English, I am Scottish and even though I don’t have a particularly Scottish accent (it’s there but it’s quite ambiguous really), she has always rarely been able to understand me properly. Always tells me to slow down and speak clearly and has done for the last 20+ years.

the issue is some companies hire people whose English is not at a high enough competency level to provide customer service.

different people are just not good with different accents. There are some accents I am terrible at being able to understand, others I can understand brilliantly, other people have different ones they can understand.

its also not necessarily an age thing, many people of all ages have hearing difficulties or issues processing speech.