Ask Richard #11

I am unsure how to get a satisfactory answer so am posting here in desperation as the previous post seems to have got a response at least. I would like to share a brief description of my experience with the customer services provided by Virgin media. My experience was as follows: 1. I called the customer service team as I was unhappy with my broadband and wanted to see if I could get a better deal. I was told to call back in a month when a range of new offers would be released and offered a free month to persuade me to wait which I was happy to do. 2. I called back a month later to follow up and find out what the new deals were. During this phonecall I spoke to numerous agents who were unable to offer any new deals, weren't able to tell me about the full range of services and kept passing me to different departments - none of which were able to meet my needs. This phone call lasted approx. 4 hours, was very frustrating and could've been sorted very quickly if your operators were trained on all services. During the phonecall I logged on to my PC to investigate the offers on the website and was able to find offers that none of your operatives were aware of. When I mentioned this to different operators I was told a variety of different things about this including that: I was wrong; the deal wasn't available in my region (even though it's a national website); the deal was only for new customers. My experience was so poor I decided to close my account and change to a different provider. 3. When I got my final bill it included a £23.50 disconnection fee. I wasn't in a contract period so didn't feel that this should apply so I called the customer services team again. This time I was told that this was a new fee that was levied by BT and Virgin had no control over it. I was advised to pay the balance minus this charge and then take it up with BT directly, which I did. When I spoke to BT they didn't have any idea of the charge and that they couldn't help me so they referred me back to Virgin. When I called back I was told that in fact no fee had been applied even though I had a letter explicitly stating that it had and the previous customer services representative had acknowledged it and told me it was from BT. Unsurprisingly I was a bit confused at this point and said that I would like to dispute the fee. The advisor told me that he could email me details of my account to my personal email address to show me the breakdown of the bill. He stated that the fee that had been quoted to me in writing and over the phone previously was in fact never added to my bill, it must've been a mistake in the letter and by the previous advisor. Naturally, I was keen to see evidence for this so gave my email address. This email never arrived. 4. Before, I could get round to contacting you again to proactively chase paying the money that I was told I owed, but was never substantiated, I received a letter from a debt collection agency chasing my "debt". Needless to say, I am furious that it has reached this stage. How can you justify passing over a disputed fee to a debt collection agency?! This will now affect my credit history when I never said that I couldn't pay, I just disputed the disconnection fee which should never have been levied. I have now paid the fee but still want to pursue this issue with Virgin. I will also be passing the matter to Ofcom and trying every route possible to try to get a sensible response from your company. Any response would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

where can i get a red

My student daughter has just moved into a property in Liverpool with some other girls and subscribed to a 20MB Virgin media package on Saturday. Unfortunately they had problems installing this and tried very hard to contact someone. I was also asked to help and spent all Sunday afternoon trying various numbers, selecting a multitude of options and listening to music when I suspect that no one was working and I was just running up phone fees. Your customer service sucks, my daughter spent hours again today and journeyed back to the shop that sold them the package but they advised tat they were only a sales outlet. She eventually found herself talking to someone in India who she had trouble in understanding and they couldn't help. May I suggest that you and your senior executives experience the service you provide to consumers in order to appreciate just how bad it is? Thanks