Virgin Media Are Rubbish

[ArmsFolded]

Virgin Media are crap throughout. They have offers for customers at discounted rates but while they can find you in one way they cannot find you another way and take off the existing customer discount trying to charge more than they should. Getting in touch is a nightmare like talking to a prick wall.
Their broadband regularly breaks down interrupting services and jobs running so they are utter useless - what do you expect from something which has had the “Richard Branson” touch?

My experience entirely. Worst, rudest and most incompetent offshore call centre I've ever experienced. Kept wrongly charging me for 3 months after a house move and refused to cancel or refund anything.

You only get a response if you go ballistic at them on facebook.

I used to think they were great, then I moved home and had more faults and downtime in a year than the previous ten.

The thing that puts me off ever rejoining them was the hassle I had in trying to leave them, I had to speak to four people (two of whom told me outright lies) and it took about an hour and a half on the phone to get them to cancel. (An hour and a half talking, not on hold.)

The trouble is other broadband providers are just as shit.

I've found them surprisingly good.

We spent 18 months with them on an introductory discount and just before that came to an end, they sent a letter telling me it was about to go up to full price.

I rang them and spoke to a lady who was WFH and actually in the same county as me, asked if there were any offers to persuade me to stay and she immediately gave me a good discount that brought the price nearly back down to my introductory discount again, saving me the bother of transferring to another company to get a cheaper price.

Yes they are crap ,but not as crap as sky imo .

I’ve actually found them good. We pay £33 a month.

I have them, the broadband is the best in this area. However when there is a problem the customer services are a complete farce.

We have just joined.
Eagerly awaiting our first bill.... Apparently no set-up fees...we shall see...

VM is owned by Liberty Global

Not owned by Richard Branson for several years

Sky are just as bad, if you ask me. We’ve just had £700 and something credited to our Sky account as we only just got Sky switched over to our new flat a month ago. We moved in at Xmas. I don’t blame them at all for any Covid delays but the number of no shows/showing up at the wrong times, not having a high enough ladder (twice!), not having enough people to operate the high ladder (we live on the second floor), and so on and so on.

The only thing I will say for them is that they did credit our account with the full amount once it was all sorted.

Very much depends on where you live.

The broadband here is great, I’ve been WFH for months and have had no issues. I had one day planned outage, which they informed us of 2 weeks before and in the end was actually only an hour.

Sky locally is dire.

And yet my parents live 5 miles away and there always seems to be a problem.

I will agree that customer service Though. Same with so many of these big companies. My ex’s name is somehow still on the account so they won’t talk to me on the phone, but I can live chat as much as I like. Fortunately I haven’t had a massive issue.

I've never had an issue with them but then mine has worked fine since it was installed years ago. Been working from home since March and the broadband is better speed than many Client offices! My parents moved to them and saved a small fortune over what they were paying with BT. My BT broadband used to disconnected on a daily basis.

I've found them to be awesome. Far superior connection to BT in my area and customer service always up to scratch.

yep Virgin media were pretty dreadful and we left them years ago, but then we had a run in with Virgin Airline and had to speak to their customer services and that made me question the meaning of life, the Universe and everything. They actually hate all their customers. No idea if it's a Branson thing or not, but ugh, I avoid everything tainted by the brand now.

I've found them pretty good. The one time I had an issue, I just asked to speak to a manager and ended up with a pretty good compensation package.

The only thing is they don't do trauma counselling for traumatised teens in the event of the internet not working for three days. Not only that but they laughed when I asked. 🤣

@Blueemeraldagain

Sky are just as bad, if you ask me. We’ve just had £700 and something credited to our Sky account as we only just got Sky switched over to our new flat a month ago. We moved in at Xmas. I don’t blame them at all for any Covid delays but the number of no shows/showing up at the wrong times, not having a high enough ladder (twice!), not having enough people to operate the high ladder (we live on the second floor), and so on and so on.

The only thing I will say for them is that they did credit our account with the full amount once it was all sorted.

We had that with Sky about the ladder. This was 25! years ago and we'd just moved into an old terraced house on a hillside, so was much taller than your average modern semi on flat ground.

I spent hours on the phone to Sky going round in circles about ladders and in the end we had a manager install the dish on Christmas Eve or something ridiculous after several attempts where the engineer would drive up, stand in our front garden sucking air through his teeth, mutter something about above standard height being beyond the reach of his ladder, health and safety and telling us to call the office before jumping back in his van and disappearing.

We had to renegotiate using the online chat (due to covid), took hours/next day to get responses. As soon as we mentioned that we wanted to cancel though, the call centre miraculously re-opened in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day, that was really good timing.

@ArmsFolded

Virgin Media are crap throughout. They have offers for customers at discounted rates but while they can find you in one way they cannot find you another way and take off the existing customer discount trying to charge more than they should. Getting in touch is a nightmare like talking to a prick wall. Their broadband regularly breaks down interrupting services and jobs running so they are utter useless - what do you expect from something which has had the “Richard Branson” touch?

I couldn't agree more. Possibly the worst and rudest customer service I've experienced. Two years back we got an email saying my payments were behind. Checked the bank and nope. All payments all went out as per Dorect debit. No payments missed. Thought it must be a glitch so emailed them. No reply. Rang them and was told it's fine. Then got my net cut off. Right before DD had friends over for an online gaming session for her birthday. Rang them and they said, yes it's been turned off as you owe £276.65. I said well no I don't, I rang about that a month ago and was told that was incorrect, all payments have been made. They refused to turn it back on until I sent them screen shots of my bank account via email to a certain team. Did that via phone net. Waited 4 days and then rang them. Told there is a backlog so no net until sorted. TV then went off. A week later I called again. Told they would put a marker on to look at my case. I was doing some shopping the day after a d got a call from a threatening arsehole from their collections team. They want £500 over the phone now or they're sending in bailiffs. I said it was being investigated and that my bank confirmed all payments made. "Yeah that's what everyone says, now pay up or else". I put the phone down. Got home and rang customer service line. Told the girl no, I don't want to wait longer, you've revoked my service I'm getting repeat threatening calls demanding money, I want to speak to a manager. She thought she put me on hold but didn't. I didn't even have the phone on speaker she was that loud that DP heard her, calling me a c**t and a cheap bitch. All sorts of lovely language. She then cut the call to hold. When she came back on she said she was putting me through and I said, well make sure you put me on hold before you speak to abusively about me again dear. She denied it and I said, you were so loud my partner heard and it's not on speaker. She then put me through. They denied all knowledge of the emails, of the proof, and said I now owed £639. Pay up or else. In the end I went to the Mail's money people as I couldn't even switch to Sky as they put a block on (was at end of contract). Within one email from them some head office woman called and apologised. She waived the 30 days notice, and gave me £100 in compensation. I still had to contact them 6 months later as it was showing as a black mark on my credit file despite them admitting I owed nothing, on fact they owed me. I wouldn't wish them on anyone.

I used Virgin for years in my old house and it was reliable and always worked fine. Then we moved and the new area had endless issues. It seems like it's fine in some areas and shit in others. Their TV boxes were appalling though. So slow and crap.

We switched to Now TV broadband and phone and just use a freeview box for recording now. Saved money and I don't miss all the extra stuff.

We find them OK.

My neighbours are with Virgin. It went down last week for 5 days, no Internet, no TV etc and their eldest was self isolating so school work online. I gave them my WiFi password so he could access school work. Absolutely nightmare, this is the 3rd or 4th time it's happened to them. I think last time it was off for 8 days

I was with virgin media for a few years. The Internet in my house was always intermittent at best. Getting in touch with them was awful and each time I complained about the rubbish internet connection, they blamed my usage, saying it was very high, and no matter who I went with I would have the same problems.

I finally left them when I got a visit from an engineer who said that the engineering team were so busy because they are using the same rubbish underground cables they first used when internet was new. It all needed replacing etc etc.

I have been with BT ever since, and I actually have really fast internet connection and have never needed to call them to complain.
It was such a great decision to actually leave them.