News - Virgin enters tech support market

[HEXUS]

Virgin Digital Help is Virgin?s first new consumer business for three years and claims to ?make digital stuff work?.

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[Bob Crabtree]

Can't say that I'm expecting this to dent my business - far from it.

My suspicion (and I hope I'm wrong - for consumers' sakes) is that this will be just another source of horror stories.

Back around 2000, I received a press release from a big company (not this company, I hasten to add) that had started offering consumers a similar sort of service and claimed to have on tap a whole series of "experts" you could ring for help on a chargeable basis.

Hoping for the best but expecting the worst, I called up pretending to be a consumer with a problem and spoke to an appropriate expert who, sadly, turned out to be nothing of the sort. The whole business would have been laughable had it not been so sad.

And, on the subject of sad, I recently set up a client's new Dell Win7 (64-bit) desktop PC that I'd helped him buy - only to find that the Hauppauge PCIe hybrid TV tuner stopped working after a few days.

Spent a merry time on the phone speaking to Dell know-nothing first-level support - but was left pulling my hair out (having been cut off twice on previous calls, while hanging on) after being told that the solution to the problem was to do a reinstall of Windows 7!

I asked the guy why he suggested this and he said he'd talked someone through doing this just the other day and it had cured the problem. When I asked him if he thought it was an appropriate suggestion and a permanent cure or temporary, he effectively admitted he didn't know.

My big concern there, of course, is that a re-install would have possibly doubled the amount I needed to charge my client who was already set to pay me a goodly sum of money for setting up and optimising the PC, copying over data from his old PC (inc email databases, not just pics, docs n music) and installing half a dozen key apps (inc MS Office), as well as hardware such as a printer and a scanner.

In the end, I spoke to (okay, shouted at) someone in sales about this daft advice and demanded my client get a refund on the TV tuner card.

Having done that, I pulled the card out and grabbed the drivers off the Dell's HDD.

I'll be testing it one of my own Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit testbeds.

My very strong suspicion is that I will find that the hardware is faulty - and at that point, I'll be speaking to Dell again.

Cheers

Bob
(Oh, and no, I wasn't wearing any kind of HEXUS hat during my dealings with Dell)

[Andeh13]

Oh lord alrighty, based on their tech support for their OWN internet services I wouldn't trust them to teach me how to fold paper!

[Saffy83]

I am also quite sceptical with Virgin's motives especially as there could be a chance that they could be cross selling their own products whilst offering this gadget help...

[Jay]

Don't BT also do this? Who uses them?

They can't support their own network god help you if you think they can support yours.

[vinnyT]

Thing is, this isn't going to catch out hexites (or anyone else who can use google), but those poor people who have only just ventured into the IT world and have no one else to tell them any better.

'Course I could be wrong, the service may be exemplary, doubt it though.

[Yosh]

Thing is, this isn't going to catch out hexites (or anyone else who can use google), but those poor people who have only just ventured into the IT world and have no one else to tell them any better.

'Course I could be wrong, the service may be exemplary, doubt it though.

The problem is in general, those sorts of people are going to listen to a big company as opposed to a one man outfit, and they wonder why they keep getting ripped off.

I think it will be useful to the general customer base who do not have other option, or don't wish to use google and sort their own issues. There must be a market for it.

[SuicidaL]

Oh lord alrighty, based on their tech support for their OWN internet services I wouldn't trust them to teach me how to fold paper!

I am also quite sceptical with Virgin's motives especially as there could be a chance that they could be cross selling their own products whilst offering this gadget help...

this is a seperate entity entirely and has nowt to do with the vm bb services. vm is still ntl:telewest under the skin but with a different name leased for x amount of time. this is a virgin virgin product (excuse the pun). i doubt this would affect most apart from the technophobes.

one thing would be intresting is to see how their tech support is. if it's better then they better sign them up for vm's tech support - well couldn't be much worse (and that was aimed at bangalore bill and his mates, never had issue with uk tech support - that is if you can get through to them).