A Virgin Problem

[mysterytrain]

Hi everyone. I am currently dealing with an annoying Virgin Media issue and I am hoping that someone on this board might be able to help me a bit.

I moved house exactly two months ago. At my old place, I had a a Virgin broadband size L package including TV and telephone, and only encountered the odd Virgin wrong bill error every now and then. Otherwise, everything was honky dory.

Three weeks prior to the moving date I contacted Virgin Media to try to ensure that switching my old contract to my new place, a rented flat, would not bring about too much of a delay and cause as few troubles as possible.

During my first telephone conversation with the customer service I learned that apparently my new home was not registered as an ordinary address with Royal Mail. Thus I was asked to contact my landlord, as this needed to be arranged first. Interestingly, I already knew that some of my new neighbours did have BT broadband cable and so I thought this shouldn't be too much of a fuss.

I asked my new letting agency to contact the landlord and arrange not only for the Royal Mail registration, but also for his declaration of consent for Virgin to roll in their cables to his newly refurbished premises.

Nothing happened for two weeks until I contacted Virgin again to ask whether they had received registration and consent. To my surprise they informed me that my landlord had denied Virgin access to the building.

I didn't question the landlord's decision as I remembered that when cable was first installed at my old house, the Virgin guy left a huge hole above one of the doors which, despite promises, was never fixed thereafter. So I could understand that maybe the landlord wouldn't be too keen on any new holes in immaculate walls or cables lying around.

I was told by the Virgin customer service that my only option, if I didn't want to cancel my account (which would have been expensive as I just recently had upgraded to the size L package and still had 10 of the 12 months to go), was to switch to Virgin Beyond Cable for about £15 a month while taking on a BT landline for about £13. Even though this was worsening my overall package from 10Mb cable broadband + TV+ phone line with free weekend calls £26 to "up to" 8Mb phone line (effectively about 4Mb) + BT landline MINUS TV £28, I thought I had no other choice than to go for it.

The switch was not as smooth as I hoped for and I didn't have broadband access in my new flat for about 10 days. This was annoying already, as I rely on internet access not only for surfing, but also for work purposes.

Three weeks later, when talking to my letting agency, I accidentially came to know that my landlord indeed gave his consent for Virgin laying out their cable four weeks ago and that thus I was misinformed by Virgin in the first place. That meant I should never have had to switch to Beyond (throtteling) Cable in the first place.

I called up the customer service where a helpful Derren acknowledged that the change was completely Virgin's fault and informed me over the course of a week and several delayed phone calls that I indeed could change back to my old contract but that I had to pay for the cancellation fee of £160 for my new BT landline myself.

Apparently, his boss denied any help towards these costs from Virgin's side, but Derren encouraged me to write to the Customers Complaints Services of both Beyond Cable and Virgin Broadband itself.

I sent off my complaint letters three weeks ago and yet only heard from Beyond Cable who told me that they would not charge me with any cancellation fees if I wanted to change back to Virgin Broadband. How nice.

As I hadn't heard anything back from Virgin Broadband, I rung up the customer service again, with the result that they still would not want to pay for the cancellation fee, but said they would add free landline calls to my package as compensation. I told them I would still rather want to wait for the Complaints Centre to reply and wait for their "offer". Unfortunately, I haven't heard from them as for today and to be honest, i am not expecting it any longer.

My question is, what should I do next? Should I write a second letter? Should I take the rather dissatisfying compensation offer of free landline calls (which would not quite add up to £160 for me over the course of a year)? Or could there be a possibility to completely switch to BT without paying cancellation fees to Virgin?

Oh, I nearly forgot- when I checked my bank account I experienced that three days ago Virgin had charged me the price for my old size L package without sending me a bill for that plus the charge for the new package. Beyond annoying.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Debbie

[Conniff]

Try emailing the big boss with the full story

[CONTACT DETAILS REMOVED]

[heartopp]

Originally Posted by Conniff

Try emailing the big boss with the full story

[CONTACT DETAILS REMOVED]

He is away on holiday at the moment or so I have been told. You will get one of his underlings... I would recomend that you send your email to
[CONTACT DETAILS REMOVED]
Manager, CEO Office

But dont expect much from him, he really does not understand the concept of customer care...

[mysterytrain]

Hiya! Thanks a lot for the addresses, those are really hard to get by to.

I tried Neil's address this morning, but no reply yet. At least it didn't bounce back, hah.

I had a very unpleasant talk with someone from Virgin's Customer Support yesterday evening who basically said there was no problem. He seemed to be annoyed by having to read trough all the notes on my account and then even became quite rude when I insisted on the facts.

He said that the reply from my landlord arrived late (I know it was only a time frame of two weeks max, my landlord lives in Switzerland) and thus when I rang up 2 weeks after my first inquiry, the case was already closed and apparently that's why I was told that the landlord declined to bring in cable. This all happened in May, even before I moved in, so I would have had enough time to sort things out if I just had been informed what really had happened.

I tried to bring across that "not yet received a reply" and "declined to install cable in the premises" are to completely different things, but the customer supporter then started to become very rude. I demanded his manager but he only laughed. I mentioned that everyone from customer support I talked to so far at least acknowledged that there indeed was an error on Virgin's side and that Beyond Cable even agreed to let me out of their contract. His answer was, "They are talking ****!"

The phone call was about 45 min. long and afterwards I felt heartbroken about the level of unfairness.

I just hope this will get sorted soon. Right now, I seriously consider just to pay whatever is needed to move to Sky. But than, my old Virgin package really was better than what I have seen so far from other providers.

Thanks again,

Debbie

[heartopp]

Originally Posted by mysterytrain

Hiya! Thanks a lot for the addresses, those are really hard to get by to.

I tried Neil's address this morning, but no reply yet. At least it didn't bounce back, hah.

I have the email address of 4 people who are in the CEO Office, and Mr Mitchel is the CEO Office Manager. [UNHELPFUL REMARK REMOVED].

[brett48]

Hi Debbie
Try writing to CEO at PO Box 238, Wythenshawe, Manchester M22 0WJ or calling them on 0845 234 0752 or faxing them on 0161 296 2725.
It worked for me!
VM screwed up my DD date on a recent package upgrade, resulting in a late payment fee and failed DD bank charge. I got zero joy from the distant lands of the 'customer service' call centre, precious little more from Customer Concerns, and just a verbal offer of a refund from the DD team which faile to materialise in black and white as a credit on my bill.
To their credit, Mr Mitchel's flunkeys replied promptly to my letters and eventually came up trumps with a credit for both the late payment fee and the bank charge.
Brett