Virgin Media comes top of the flops for customer complaints It may be only a few years since the two were combined, but Virgin Media O2 is topping UK comms regulator Ofcom's customer complaints chart. The report, which covers the period from July to September 2023, found that Virgin Media received the most complaints across broadband, landline, and pay TV categories. According to Ofcom …
I made a big mistake switching to BT TV.
I'm trapped in a two year contract because I didn't plug the TV box in until after my Sky subscription expired so by the time I realised how awful it was I out of the cooling off period.
Never again. Virgin TV is good, Sky is great. Everything else is shite. It's not worth saving a few quid a month.
( Also on three occasions so far my box has just stopped working without warning and I have to send it off for a replacement )
The problem is not just Virgin Media's awful customer contact process, there's a very clear appearance that the company was making it intentionally difficult for customers to leave, and failing to handle complaints or problems properly, and had internal communications and processes that routinely created or magnified problems, and anything not on the offshore call centre's script the agents couldn't handle. In passing, note that the per 100k customers figures Ofcom use aren't total complaints, they're the fraction of unhappy customers who went on to complain directly to Ofcom.
Obviously for those who get billed what they expect, and if the service works they never need to either contact "customer services", nor raise a complaint. Unfortunately, Virgin's flakey cable technology, cheese-pared support, and broken internal processes meant that many people felt the need to complain.
After a good many years as a Virgin customer, I'd had enough but held out until I had an FTTP option, as soon as that was in I left, and will never go back. Virgin Media O2 is a dreadfully managed outfit, who see customer service merely as an expense to be minimised. But as long as people happily tolerate being treated badly, they'll continue to do it. It's like the locked in inflation busting price rises - people accept it, so companies do it more.
My street was built in the 70's/80's and was cable TV from the beginning.
When I moved in 8 years ago BT could only offer me a not guaranteed 2Mb/s. Today their checker says 10mb/s possible.
Virgin broadband is 350Mb/s and I get all of that all the time.
The only time I called support was when the drive in the TIVO started failing. Engineer visited 3 days later and it was replaced.
"The only people who call landlines these days are scammers in Bangalore."
SWMBO is called regularly by her sister who iives a few hundred yards away and neither of us is in Bangalore. My daughter, who lives a mile or so away. My cousin-in-law. Friends to whom I regularly give a lift as they're no longer driving because of age. SWMBO calling her sister-in-law in N Ireland. Other family members. Doctors. Pharmacists. Northern Powergrid to report power failures. We receive and make a lot of landline calls. Until the great switch-off the landline is more reliable than the mobile signal and certainly better quality. After the switch off we'll be in trouble every time the power fails. Yes, I know about battery backup but the last failure took out the DSLAM and that didn't get fixed until the next day.
SWMBO is called regularly by her sister who iives a few hundred yards away and neither of us is in Bangalore.
Ok, ok. Doctor Syntax's wife and sister-in-law are the only people who make calls on landlines, apart from scammers in Bangalore.
Don't take everything so literally, doctor. You'll live longer.
I frequently use the (hands free) landline, when I'm sitting on the sofa and making a call.
Advantages to using the landline;
1) Sound quality is better
2) I can find the bloody thing immediately and I have handsets dotted round the house (yes I know some people never put their mobiles down, let alone cover then up with a pile of papers/leave then in another room).
3)They're less fiddly to hold
4) I can play on my mobile/send texts/look at social media/read the news/etc while I'm on hold on the landline - but not the converse
Advantages to using a mobile.......?
VM and O2 (combined or individually) seem to be in that category of companies that are great when things are working well. But shit if things aren't going according to plan.
They aren't alone in this. Far from it. The pattern is familiar. You may get great service for years. Most people will get great service for years.
But one day, some people will find that something has gone wrong.
And then they find that the company hasn't the foggiest idea how to resolve it. You'll struggle to get through, then the front line staff will insist on going through a totally irrelevant script, then they'll put you on hold to the wrong department, who'll pass you onto another wrong department, who'll promise a call back, but no one will.
Because the culture it totally about sales, but they have no sense of customer service.
Support staff are poorly trained and even worse informed. In VM's case the front line staff often seem to be the last people to hear about a wider problem, offering to send out an engineer to your home to solve a problem that is keeping half the bloody town off-line.
And so it is with most companies - customer support is a necessary evil that's not worth any kind of expenditure whatsoever. Which people here know isn't true...
"...offering to send out an engineer to your home to solve a problem that is keeping half the bloody town off-line."
Funny you mention this as a couple of my neighbours have been complaining about slow downloads and dropping offline all the time (they have the same ISP). Every time they call the ISP, they're sent a new router. I guess it's the only thing the lowly customer service person is allowed to do, as some kind of token gesture. Maybe after the 5th or 6th or 7th router, the problem will resolve itself.
It doesn't seem to be possible to escalate the problem to someone who can query the equipment at the exchange (or junction box/whatever), much less notice that several people in the same area are having the same problem.
"In VM's case the front line staff often seem to be the last people to hear about a wider problem, offering to send out an engineer to your home to solve a problem that is keeping half the bloody town off-line."
In BT's case the front-line staff weren't even informed that there was (presumably) planned work going on on all the connections from the local footway box but offered to send out an engineer at a cost of £80 if there was no fault. I walked down to the village first to check. I suppose we have the OpenReach split to thank for that lack of communication
On complaining that the front desk should have been informed BT marked their own homework by saying it was quite OK. I suppose I should have escalated it Ofcom but doubt the outcome would have been different - they're hardly going to say an issue ultimately of their own making is actually a problem.
I’ve had Virgin (up to 1gigabit) at two different properties.
The download speeds are good.
The connection quality is poor.
Using their box in modem mode improves things but it’s still bad.
The connection quality on Sky fibre is miles better.
The customer services and sales process on both is appalling.
Quote from article “ "As Ofcom acknowledges, the rise is largely due to its investigation announcement in July, which subsequently generated a higher number of complaints than would ordinarily be expected. However, it should be noted that overall complaints about Virgin Media products still represent a very small proportion of our customer base.‘
… no Ofcom, it’s because they are shite… and so are you.
Well. I cannot fault their physical service, as it worked reliably for me for over a decade, but their customer relations was absolutely diabolical. After every interaction with them over renewing contracts, i always had the uncontrollable urge to bathe myself in bleach and pick a fight with knife wielding thugs, just to make myself feel a little bit better and that I wasn't an inconsequential oink.
I wager not one of VM's customers is paying the same as their neighbour for the exact same package. You pay whatever they think they can shake out of you until you kick back.
I have the VM 1Gig service and to be honest, its been pretty damn good. My area was the original united artists fibre that they never lit, but Telewest did and can't really fault it. The price is a bit much, but its a fast service and only recently have there been any issues which is quite a funny process.
You can check the status on their app, which will say everything is fine, the problem is with your kit, we will send an engineer, in a week or so and an appointment is booked. Because you know the problem isn't with your kit, you give it an hour and by then downdetector is screaming with people that their broadband has gone AWOL. Next comes the text message to say that an engineer is en-route to fix the problem which has an SLA of 8 hours. To be honest, the last 2 faults have been sorted pretty quickly. So, can't really complain.
I guess I am just lucky with my area, I hear nightmare stories about other areas. The service though was definately better when they had their local centres in Glenrothes and Knowsley, you could ring them and chances are get a support person who did actually know their stuff. The good old days.
Now, the greed cycle is engaged to gouging raises every 12 months, well, I am out of contract so I guess when that bites, I will be off to another vendor. Shame there isn't anyone local that can offer data at a speed faster than an asthmatic pigeon. Don't fancy putting money in Musks pocket either.
Think the answer here is: Who built and ran the network in the area before VM took over? Telewest seem to have been solid in their work, so if they ran the network before VM, chances are it was done right and is still solid.
Some areas have a bad rep because their network was poorly laid out. This makes maintenance a nightmare and is more likely to go wrong.
VM took over both the good and bad and didn't invest in sorting out the bad while relying on the good to just keep working. Know I was on VM (formerly Telewest) and had zero problems. Moved, couldn't get VM at the new address... They've now cabled the area (for business, not residential). I did agree to get connected, but what I'd agreed to and what was in the contract weren't the same so I cancelled - seems I was lucky as those in the area who got VM installed haven't had a good experience with them.
I can't say I'm surprised.
Having ported my mobile number of more than 20 years to them, one day they just decided to cut me off
Customer services have called me a liar when I reported this, insisting that I had texts and letters telling me this would happen (all I got was an email in my spam folder the day before saying that I asked them to disconnect it)
They don't know why it was cut off since the bill has always been paid on time
And now, when I call in, they put me on hold until I hang up (over 2 hours last time).
To rub salt into the wound, since the mobile is part of my package, I'm still paying for it.
If the local FTTP provider hadn't skipped this area, I'd have left them long ago.
"VM are shit!" and in other news large brown furry creatures observed defecating in densely packed leafy areas.
To be honest been a VM customer since they took over from C&W. never had a single problem with their support desk, probably 'cos I've never had the misfortune to ever had to call it thank god.
My father on the other hand has been waiting 3 years now for them to sort out an email account problem, he calls them once a month ( mostly for fun as he's retired and bored! ) just to check and never any update, still broken!
Ah VM broadband. I'm with them, have been for maybe 10 months, as it was the only option in my area that enabled over 80Mpbs, all other options being vDSL based.
A couple of weeks ago, Monday, my broadband went down (and TV of course). Visits by different 'engineers' every day afterwards, and it took till Friday to fix!
Turned out some contractors pulling cables in for a neighbour on Monday, managed to break the main fibre feed!
Of course no prizes for guessing who the contractors worked for, VM of course, they were fitting the outside fibre cable for a new sign up a couple of doors down from myself, and managed to take out everyone on VM at my end of the street at the same time!
Note: Here all the telco/broadband/fibre cables are in a shared duct under the pavement. So you get VM, Openreach, sub contractors etc, all working in the same ducts.
Is anyone even slightly surprised by these findings. I've been with vermin for many years, back to when they were NYNEX and then ntl. When things are working, they work pretty well. But when they don't, you're looking at a world of pain.
Firstly, it's practically impossible to get to speak to an actual human. Immediately upon calling and driving into the menu system, you're fobbed off to their website, their app, their WhatsApp. Then you're in hold for ages, with repeated exhortations to use web, app, WhatsApp ringing in your ears. If I'd wanted to do any of those things, I'd have bloody done it the first time they were mentioned, wouldn't I??
When you do manage to talk to someone, it's very much a lottery. If it's a relatively simple problem that can be dealt with immediately, you're in luck - the young lad who dealt with my faulty TiVo recently was very helpful. On the other hand, the lady I spoke to while trying to resolve someone's email problems a few months ago was polite, friendly and bloody useless. Generally, quick and efficient resolutions tend to be in the minority.
I have a long standing fault on my vermin landline. I know it's there, and I keep meaning to report it. But I never use a landline anyway, and the thought of going through the menu - hold - web / app / WhatsApp cycle for something nonurgent fills me with dread. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow. Or not.
If you wanted reliable, you'd have a failover from one supplier to a different supplier, using different ducts under different roads, no infrastructure in common, and you'd be in charge of all the backhoe rental companies in the area. With satellite comms as a backup.
I've been with the "not BT" provider in its various guises since long before the UK had broadband. Generally happy, though when I lived at one place the broadband kept cutting out, but a phone call would get me a small refund.
The key thing to remember is to phone Virgin Media and order a cancellation when the price is about to skyrocket after the introductory offer. They'll offer some sort of discount but don't take the bait, go ahead and cancel. They'll call you back with a proper offer within days!
I pay £22/month for 250Mbit down & 25Mbit up, which serves me fine, plus a land line I'll never use. It would have been an eye-watering £64/month!
I was a very loyal customer on a high bundle “ boosted” by volt as I have O2 as well. The customer service is beyond disgusting. Riley bot and I are now Facebook friends after spending so much time with it going around in circles. As A loyal customer I gave them a number of opportunities to keep my business as better priced local options came up. 1st time 90 minutes hold, and then dropped, 2nd 55 minutes and dropped, they are always experiencing exceptional customer demand, maybe give more options online, like a cancel contact button. Their arrogance of increasing prices +4 over inflation ie 17% mid contract, to loyal customers is unjustified. Their left hand doesn’t know what the right hand does. Ie complaints say, your on the top discount, a month later on my “ second” termination notification to them, I was offered a better deal, - my new operator was installed then. They acknowledge receipt of the return of my contract, issue a final bill, change it 3 times, and extend my service, though everything is switched off. I think they still owe me circa £95 but they change that every month even though they have me equipment! OFCOM needs to do something and Sir Richard as they damage the Virgin name.
I agreed a new contract by phone on 28/02 for £80 then this month I was told my bill would rise to £114. I rang to complain and after 6 different phone calls and told 3 times that someone would call me back no one ever did over the space of 9 days. I eventually got through to Emelia, so called customer services. After explaining that I was never told my contract would go up in month 7 when I originally agreed to renew on the phone I was basically told it's in your contract and there's nothing I could do about it. The most awful customer service I've ever comer across, no empathy. Couldn't care less and if I didn't pay they would take me to court. Be very careful in what you think you are signing up for because Virgin Media you are a bloody disgrace and I will tell every one I know about how bad you are.
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