Hi everyone, just wondering if anyone else has had the same experience/what is the best I should do now to sort hits out.

I signed up for Virgin Media broadband in September (my only option was Virgin, as the previous tenant of my house had Telewest installed and all other providers would have needed a BT line resinstalling for a charge). As I do not need a phone line Virgin offered me £10 a month for Broadband only. An engineer came and fitted a box into the room where my computer is (even at that point Virgin have messed the visit up, promising to ring when he arrives and not doing so, leaving me stranded at work and having to rush home to let the engineer in).

After unsuccessful attempts to activate the service, being on the phone for hours to tech support and spending nearly £30! on my mobile calls to Virgin, they said they will get another engineer. Fair enough, he turned up as promised, spent a coupl of hours trying to set things up and no success (modem is not recognised by PC or something along those lines). He said that several other customers had the same problem in the area, and therefore it is nothing to do with the computer - in fact he called someone presumably at Virgin head office and they said apparently the area has run out of IP addresses and someone needs to buy more of those but haven't done this yet (not a techie myself so not sure if anyone knows what I'm talking about). The engineer then said it is out of his hands and until these IP addresses are in place, I won't get a service, it's up to tech support. About a week later I rang them to ask whether anything has been done, and was told they were sorting it and will ring me back. They never did, and I called again, this time got an incredibly unhelpful and rude person who had no idea what I was talking about and proceeded to say it was my PC that was the problem and I should get an engineer to have a look! again!! Nothing seems to be either logged on the system or available to view each time I call, so I had to relay the whoIe story every time I call (spending £££s on my mobile yet again; ironically tech support reimburse you for the calls by putting credit on your account - pointless if you can't get any service anyway!). I  asked to speak to her manager and she cut me off!! I then rang customer services and put in a complaint about the whole thing, the person I spoke to seemed helpful enough and said someone will ring me in the next few days. Well did they heck. It's been weeks now, and I am reluctant to try and call myself - as my phone bills have doubled because of their inefficiency.

What should I do now, is there any other way to contact someone who can actually help and will know about the problem? Customer services dept at Virgin cannot get in touch with tech support (as in are never able to, so they said, unless in exceptional circumstances - and evidently that doesn't make any difference!) What sort of a company is this I have never come across such a lack of communication, unprofessionalism, and frankly crap customer service.

Rant over...oh and they sent a bill to me demanding payment of 15p the other day, after refunding some of the call charges on to my account - the account that has nothing to pay for!

you need to write to this address :

 

virgin media limited

po box 333

swansea

sa7 9zj

 

and complain in the meanwhile ask sky if they will connect you up. They are a bit expesive but that is where i will be moving my bits to once my virgin contract is up. 

We have had a similar experience with Virgin Media when we moved from analogue to digital cable TV. The audio quality was awful and we had engineer after engineer come to try to sort the problem out. Sometimes they were helpful sometimes they tried to fob us off - like the one who proved the audio was okay by playing a stereo signal through a mono TV. Huh.

Unfortunately the only way we resolved it was by threatening to leave. A free upgrade followed immediately and the audio improved.

I know you posted a while ago - I hope everyhting got sorted!

You are not alone. I gave up on Virgin as they became so abysmal after overreaching themselves and ' going cable '. Went for o2 who have proved outstanding with no problems , staff based in the UK who were polite and helpful when I was connecting originally ( broadband wireless was new to me ), also this is a 24/7 technical service with a FREE 0800 number, unlike Virgin with their 25p per minute calls. My brother has no service at all from them even though he is paying for it and I have had to contact them for him as he has NO email service. He purchased a laptop about 9 months ago and has had noting but trouble with them since; he thought the laptop was faulty and has now bought another and THE SAME SITUATION EXISTS. This MUST be Virgin's fault as it would be more than a miracle if 2 different laptops, purchase nearly a year apart had this fault. The only info: he has been able to get from their ' technical ' staff ' is to tell him how to connect the email - something he already knows how ro do and as soon as he tells them this and states he has done it - the Indian call centre clerk disconnects the line. They are unbelievably rude.They are totally disinterested in correcting their own faults, and are, effectively, taking monies under false pretences, as I have stated in an email today. I have advised him to ' cut his losses ' and close the account with them then go to a supplier who actually takes an interest in customers.e.g. O2. and offer to sue them if they talk in terms of contract etc. Charles Dunstone had to let TalkTalk customers walk away from their contracts for similar reasons and Branson's ' empire building ' is in the same boat.

Hi,

you are not alone. I have more problems with virgin media since september 2007.They messed with the installation.They did not install the additional box. I requested. later I came to know that they did not provide the HDMI cable which came along with the service pack. The engineers who visited my house asked me to buy the cable from pc world.I bought it. Later the customer services agree to refund the money. Later another engineer came for the installation he asked for our tool box . luckily we had one.

After all this they messed up with my bill. They charged me for a diffrent package. The customer care services of virgin media should be called as customer careless no services. The customer care number 150 and 151 are useless. Every time I call them about any issue I had to call a 09***** some number which will charge me 35 p for the 1st minute and then 25 p/min.

I was waiting to finish my 12 months contract .Then came a new problem I had to move home and they send me a new 12 month contract from the day of my move.They changed my account number and closed my old account.Soon after the move some of the important things like anti virus and related things stopped working.For each problems I had to call this 09***** number .

My suggestion is that don't sign up for virgin media but unfortunately if you have done try and cancel the account(with in 14 or 28 days) before you lose any money .Inform your friends and relatives about thier carp services.

This is worse than ours ! We got out, luckily. Have you checked to see if they can legally transfer you to a new contract just because you moved house ?. Sounds ' iffy ' to me. Those 09.. numbers are a complete rip-off. They keep you waiting in a queue deliberately as it generates income for them - the monies are split between the telephone supplier ( BT ? ) and the trader, in this case Virgin. Should be stopped. Good luck

I had the same problems myself with virgin there install was terrible because i wanted my modem upstairs they threw the cabl eover the house. Last summer when it got realy hot the signal would just drop out. I phoned them and they didnt belive that they had cabled over the roof. I eventual;y reinstalled it mysel running the calble throguh a viod in the wall the through the loft took me a few hours but it works great now

One thing to say to anyone with Virgin Media: LEAVE!! If you can.

Further to my OP, since then I have had copious problems with them. I was stunned that one company can achieve so many ***-ups at the same time. After I finally got the boradband working, they got my name wrong, set up 2 direct debits, then cancelled both of them instead of one, then proceeded to send me threatening letters for apparent non-payment (ok, should have checked my bank statements better perhaps...and not trusted them lol! Didn't think there was much wrong that could go on with a £10 direct debit!). And charged me for NOT paying by direct debit! I received a couple of letters at least that were duplicate, and one that they could not track as ever being sent (or were lying!) I wrote a 2-page letter of complaint but then decided it wasn't worth the effort, and they refunded me whatever they wrongly took. Not very apologetic though to say the least.

I am moving house soon..and most certainly not taking my broadband with me. I know some people had a decent experience with VM, but my own, tbh, just took the biscuit. All customer service horror stories rolled into one!!!