Virgin Media

Without doubt the worst customer experience I have ever had. They will ignore and pass you around until you give up. Avoid at all cost.

Total disaster trying to get credit for "refer a friend" who has activated their account, now 5 months ago. Should be aotomatically done, yet VM do NOT advertise that you have to deal with yet another company, not themselves , to get credited the amount promised .

Don't bother referring, not worth the hassle chasing it up on line and phone

2 failed installation dates over 8 weeks, leaving me without any broadband for 3 of those after having stupidly cancelled my old provider thinking that Virgin were going to be better!! Their Customer service lines are atrocious, cutting me off mid call 3 times while trying to sort out this mess.Each time having to go through the mind numbing password and security routine only to be cut off again and again.

I have never suffered such a stressful time with a company in my life as I have with Virgin, truly awful time. I have given 1 star on each section above and below, but they really do not deserve any stars at all.

I had arranged to transfer Virgin Media TV, Broadband & Phone services owing to a house move and I was due to switch to a cheaper package at the same time (basically, I can get a more comprehensive package for £31/mth less than I'm currently paying, but they never saw the point in telling me). An engineer visit had been booked at the new property but the move fell through at the last minute, so I contacted Virgin to cancel the engineer’s visit and hopefully switch to the new package at my old address...

There ensued ONE & THREE QUARTER HOURS of chaos and comedy by the end of which I had still made no progress whatsoever towards either of my modest goals (that's no exaggeration - I was still literally at step one. Read on!). At that point the "customer relations" centre abruptly closed for the day, with me still in the middle of a WhatsApp chat!

By huge coincidence, I watched Joe Lycett's Got Your Back (light-hearted consumer show) later that same evening and it featured a lengthy segment about Virgin Media and their exorbitant cancellation fees (£240 was the amount repeatedly quoted on the show). So, if you find yourself moving home and you're with Virgin Media, you're going to have to go through the same moving process I attempted to go through below, or you might find yourself having to fork out 240 quid. Hopefully, that's got your attention!

I have transcripts of most of my fruitless and repetitive conversations with Virgin Media. The full saga runs to something like 17 pages. I'll spare you that here (although I do intend to upload it one day - or submit it as a short story to a publisher of dystopian fiction). Instead I'll give you a taste of some of the highlights.

In the period between 16:15hrs and 18:04hrs on 21 September, I was cut-off by Virgin Media on TWO separate occasions: once by a human phone operator (who didn't bother trying to call me back) and once by a WhatsApp chat bot. It’s actually hard to decide which one infuriated me more - probably being ignored by a machine. During that time I communicated with THREE different humans (the phone operator, a guy called P and a lady called E), at least THREE different bots (Mo Movers, Tony Triage and Whatson), plus an array of Info bots and automated messages along the way.

Whilst I was being passed from human pillar to robotic post, I must have been asked to re-confirm my first name at least 5 times - there's nothing like starting again from scratch to make a customer feel special! (The added irony is that I was conducting the webchat via my online account, so I'm not sure why they needed me to give them my name in the first place!)

I was passed between at least FOUR different teams (Movers, Pre Install, Customer Relations & Cable Retention) & this all took place across no fewer than THREE platforms (phone, web chat, social media app). None of these entities, human or otherwise, managed to advance my query one little bit. After the best part of two hours on Tuesday afternoon, I was no closer to resolving my problem.

One of the last messages I received, timed at 17:59, read "As briefly as you can, let me know what your query with the team is today". That is literally step one.

My motivation in all this was one of common courtesy; avoiding taking up an engineer’s time slot that could be used by another customer, avoiding a wasted trip for an engineer. And I mustered up the energy to do this amid the stress and heartache of my home sale falling through only a matter of hours earlier.

The final act was a human (E) passing me over to yet another bot at 17:50hrs – that is just 10 short minutes before the Customer Relations team was due to close - a fact which E must have been aware of, but which I was not because the team I had first contacted were open until much later in the evening. The bot then took a further six minutes to introduce itself with an automated message (How is that even possible? It should be instantaneous, no?) leaving a window of just four minutes to resolve my issue. The computer then suggested we transfer our conversation to WhatsApp (Why? What’s the difference?) despite knowing there were only seconds remaining before that platform shut down for the evening.

The icing on the cake is the introductory WhatsApp message from the Customer Relations team, timed at exactly 18:00hrs, which begins chirpily: “Hello you're through to the Customer Relations messaging team. Our opening times are Monday - Friday 8am until 6pm... We have your query and a member of our dedicated team will be with you as soon as possible...”. I still have this priceless message saved to my phone if you’d like to see.

The Customer Relations bot genuinely initiated a conversation with me at exactly 6pm, before proceeding to completely ignore me and shutting down for the evening. Incidentally, I had always imagined one of the primary benefits of outsourcing customer services to a machine was that it wouldn’t feel the need to clock off in time for happy hour.

My final, tortured, message reads: “This is crazy. It's literally 6pm when you sent this message. Why was I transferred here by the previous person if you are about to close?” followed only by a despairing “Hello?” that still echoes in the silent ether of cyber space. I never received an answer. *

This summary does no justice to the full, Kafka-esque absurdity of my experience bouncing around Virgin Media's quagmire of bureaucracy. Customer service? Not so much.

* EPILOGUE

Update: I did eventually receive an answer to my tortured WhatsApp cry of Tuesday evening. At 08:08hrs the following morning (14 short hours later) I received a WhatsApp from human being #4 of this epic saga. 'V' started her message cheerily: "Hi there, you're through to [V], thanks so much for your patience, I really appreciate it."

Really? Is that it?! One and three quarter wasted hours followed by a further 14 hour wait and we just breeze ahead as though nothing has happened? No hint of an apology, just a barely perceptible nod of gratitude for my "patience". Oh well, hopefully she'll at least have read the history of the chat up until this point and familiarised herself with my situation so that I don't have to repeat myself once again...

Just in case, I sent back a message, somehow managing to outline my frustration and plight in just six short sentences. And here is the next reply I get from Virgin Media via WhatsApp:-

Terri Triage BOT (Yes! I've been passed over to yet another machine!): "Alright [thumbs up emoji] I'll need some info to make sure you get to the right team first..."

Terri Triage BOT: "CAN I TAKE YOUR FIRST NAME PLEASE?" !!!

Me: "Aaaaaaaagh!"

Terri Triage BOT: "Cheers Aaaaaaaagh! Please select a focus area: 1. Broadband, TV & landline, 2. Mobile... etcetera"

And there you have it. I am now offially a step BACKWARDS from where I started out the previous day. When I first contacted Virgin Media, they ALREADY KNEW I wanted to talk about my broadband because of the menu selections I made before initiating the 'conversation'.

This story is 100% genuine - including one of my favourite bot quotes of all time: "Cheers Aaaaaaaagh!" - and I have the transcripts to prove it.

I have started a contract very short time and literally virgin media get everything wrong. I have cancel the contract and this was hard work, trying to speak to customer service almost impossible and when you speak to them they don’t listen to you. I manage to cancel to contract within 14 days and even after a month cancellation, virgin media still sending me emails and phone calls which is ridiculous. Just to friendly advice, save yourself a headache and don’t use this useless, utterly incompetent company.

Disgusting company with incompetent customer service staff. My mum left them giving a months notice and paying to end of that month. They keep sending her bills and harassing her. When you try to speak to someone they pass you over to a queue or cut you off. I think they are trying to make us pay for Branson`s rocket fuel, hopefully he will get stuck in space. Hideous experience and I will never uses their products again. Also you will find the customer service department are trained to avoid people and questions.

Hiked my fixed-price plan price.

Didn't even contact me about it.

According to Ofcom "Virgin Media generated the joint highest level of complaints" this was also reported in 'Which' magazine.

The company doesn't even have 'customer service' email address for complaints. Consequently the Daily Telegraph has recommended emailing the CEO Mr Lutz Schüler. This I did and ten days later still no complaint resolution and I am without phone coverage.

It says something about the ethos of the company that not even the CEO cares if complaints are resolved.

You can google all the Ofcom, Which magazine, and Daily Telegraph references in this review and if you're still foolhardy enough to give this company your money, then you can hardly complain when it turns out to be a terrible wasteful investment.

God I hate this company they are revolting. They and the staff they employ is customer services are utterly useless. They kept us on hold for 20 mins and we had to give up, the person that spoke to us did this on purpose because we were complaining about the terrible service this shower give the public. Virgin Media should learn that customers are important and without them they would have nothing.

I was sold on the VM sales pitch but now realise its just a load of bull. Being the only major cable provider they have a monopoly and their attitude is "take it or leave it."

The broadband reliability and bandwidth in RG5 is pathetic and appalling. I originally had vivid 50 before VM upgraded me to Vivid 100 but rarely got more than 20mbps and that's when it worked. Very temperamental and only worked when it felt like.

I've moved back to a copper wire provider last week on a basic fibre deal and have suffered no issues whatsoever and can stream movies uninterrupted for the first time in 12 months. I'm only getting up to 36mbps but connection is stable and adequate for my circumstances.

Trying to speak to VM customer service to cancel my contract is another saga and yet to be resolved. Virgin Media?? Virgin Mafia, more like..!!!