Virgin Media Broadband woes

[Denigor]

I write here as a warning to all considering Virgin Broadband.

Are you sitting comfortably?

This summer our Virgin supplied broadband started to fail, most mornings, for hours at a time. It happened most mornings. Sometimes I'd call to report it, getting through to the India call Centre, who followed their script and got me to restart my wireless router, home PC, all the usual. Then they'd arrange an engineer visit.

The engineer visits were always in daytime. Never a weekend or evening option, even though I'd be willing to pay for that. So, I'd always have to take time off work for it, or arrange for my wife to do the same.

Typically the cable modem would synch up at around midday, solid 'ready' light. Then we'd receive a text the day before the engineer visit telling us that the problem in the area was fixed, so the visit was cancelled. I'd have a day off from work for no point at all. That day the service would be down again. I'd ring up, and the next engineer visit would be in a week hence, meaning another day off needed to be booked.

The engineer did visit us once, and 'replaced the taps', it made little if any difference to the service. I don't need speed of internet, but I DO require reliability. After two months of this I decided to change my service to BT. I chose BT because we didn't have a (known) line into the house, so I needed BT to install the coppper pair anyway. I called Virgin to explain that I was about to change because of reliability reasons. They did nothing. Their only interest was on proice/packages: they could do nothing about reliability and weren't prepared to look into it, just tellign me to ring in every time to the faults groups.

I ordered a BT package on June 30th 2010 which included a DABS voucher for £75. Great! They raised a port order into Virgin for the phone line. I called Virgin to ask that the TV package and broadband be discontinued at the end of July. All fine.

The next day, the internet was down again. But this time the modem 'ready' light didn't come on at all. Something had changed. I called Virgin tech support (India?) on 150 and they went through the usual scripted process of getting me to power cycle my PC etc. Finally they put me through to another department.

**Why, when transferred between Virgin employees, do they typically do a 'blind' transfer? I have to re-explain who I am, my security details, and the problem, and even which department has transferred me every time! **

** Why does tech support ask me to reset my wireless modem and router, even when I tell them that they are not physically connected to the cable modem? To rule out any chance of the home network causing the fault, complete disconnection of equipment should isolate the problem down to between the headend and the cablemodem, right? **

Eventually some nice UK guys (the second being a techie in Liverpool) told me that they had accidentally turned off my broadband early. To re-activate it they would need to **delete my entire account services and re-add them again**. They did this, and in doing so they had to *cancel my telephone porting order*. They told me that they couldn't ring BT to re-arrange it, I had to do this myself!

OK so my broadband service is returned, and I call BT immediately. BT tell me that I 'must not worry' because the order is *confirmed*. There is NO WAY that Virgin can cancel it. BT were wrong on this.

Three days later BT cancelled the engineer visit because the port order had a problem (of course). I had to re-raise the order with BT. The new install date is August 11th. This means I lose-out on my £75 DABS voucher from BT which times out for installs after end of July. All because of the initial accidental turn-off by Virgin.

I therefore had to call Virgin, to ask them to not turn off the broadband service until the end of August. They told me this was ok and done, and confirmed the porting order for August 11th could be seen, for good measure.

Now the Virgin service works OK until July 31st 2010. Then they turn off my Broadband, AGAIN. It's supposed to be on until the end of August! My PC is able to log-in to the Virgin/NTl 'walled garden' alone. (So it's not broken, it's an account problem). My phone and TV services are still OK.

I call Virgin support on Sunday 1st August. They spend 20 minutes asking for my cablemodem MAC address (They don't have it on record!?) and trying to send messages to it. Finally she puts me on hold, asks his manager for help, and tells me I need to talk to the cancellation team to address it. But the cancellations team doesn't work on Sundays. I ask her to sort it out with them for me. She says she can't, I have to do it myself.

I call the cancellation team on Monday. I speak to a nice guy who asks who I am, my password, my account details for 5 minutes and makes his checks. He tells me he must transfer me to another group to help. He transfers me to someone without any handover once again, and I have to explain AGAIN who I am, my account number, my password, and my problem.

This gentleman told me that he can get my broadband up again but only by raising a new Work Order. The system he uses only allows one work order at a time on an account, so he must cancel my port-order in order to re-raise my broadband acount again.

Now remember, Virgin cancelling my BT port order has already cost me £75 in vouchers at this point, plus hours of phone calls and a cancelled initial BT visit. I simply can't go through this again. I tell him "no", do not cancel the port order, just get my broadband back up until the end of August as agreed on previous calls.

He says that 'computer says no'. To be perfectly clear, I asked him to confirm that I want the service, I ordered the service, they turned it off wrongly, I am prepared to pay for the service, and he couldn't give it me because his computer system wont allow it. He confirmed this is the case.

I gave up at this point. I told him not to do anything else. I will have to do without internet until August 11th, and I will go with BT and have the ability to change to any other DSL provider any time BT service drops in quality for me. I don't have that choice in the world of cable (Please ISP's: push Offcom & Virgin to allow local cable unbundling, the speed is good and you can surely beat them on service).

At all times the Virgin customer service was polite. I was polite. They often apologised and I felt for them: whomever is designing and delivering their internal operational processes needs to be given a kick in the rear.

We have cancelled the direct debit for fear of them charging us too much (we are on a package, as the broadband has stopped 11 days before the phone and TV, we should pay accordingly). I'll see what they invoice us before paying.

Final note: We have received some phone calls from Virgin asking if they can do something to keep us as a customer. These guys don't have any wish to improve Virgin or the services they offer. All they want to do is compete on price packages. If you start a conversation about the way faults are escalated and handled they don't want to know.

I was so happy with NTl then Virgin for so many years. They have had to work very, very hard to lose me as a customer, but they managed it in the end.

Be warned.