A few months ago (beginning of October) I signed up to receive telephone, broadband and TV from Virgin.

An engineer came out at the begging of the saga and was told, by the landlords, that he was not allowed to drill any holes or secure any cables as there was no permission to do so.

Second attempt we got a phone call to say that they needed to replace the cables as the old cable where damaged.

Day one on the third attempt somebody turned up and replaced the cables. Day 2 the engineer turned up to install and guess what, he couldn't get at the cables and they needed to be made longer.

Fourth attempt today and low and behold the engineer cannot do the Job as the cable issue has not been fixed.

At this moment I so angry all I want to do is cancel my order, but the wife will not let me as she doesn't want BT or Sky.

I have already made a complaint. I feel I need to go to someone higher. Any advise on what to do or anyone work for virgin?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

You could try posting on their support forum @

http://community.virginmedia.com/

but it's already full of similar tales of woe.

Welcome to the Virgin club...er....maybe we should change that name....anyways, Virgins products are brilliant, when they work but if they fail, well, not to put too fine a point on it, you're .

The customer service is without a shadow of a doubt, the single most frustrating experience known to man. Dangling your privates in an industrial threshing machine is less painful than trying to get any sense, or indeed,, anything out of virgins customer services.

In fact, I suspect that anyone with the money to take them to court under the trades descriptions act, would most likely win.

In short, they are incompetent bastards of the highest order who will be first against the wall come the revolution.

Hi - just hold on for a couple of ticks - we'll verify that for you.

That's great!

Thanks.

Your experience is important to us.

Virgin media are complete nob heads, I had no end of trouble with them. However I sent a complaint email to them (can't remember the address) and a guy rang me back from an english call centre within a day or 2 and everything was sorted, plus I was given a bit of compensation.

This is the email I sent to them;

I have been a Virgin Media customer for less than 24 hours and am already frustrated.

The package that my girlfriend and I ordered is;

Internet – L
TV – XL
Phone – M
Extras – V+ box with HD activation
Discounts – Free installation
£50 credit on our first bill

The package that has been installed is;

Internet – L
(The wireless router will not connect with my laptop. It works if the Ethernet cable is used directly to the laptop however)

TV – XL
(with no HD activation and the standard HD box installed)

Phone – M

I rang your customer services yesterday afternoon and was put through to what I assume to be an Indian call centre. The lady customer services employee was no help whatsoever, giving the following information;

1, I was told that a standard non-HD Virgin box had been installed and a different HD box would be required. I told her that I was stood there as the installation took place and a HD box had definitely been installed – this is how I know my HD channels have not been activated. She argued that I was wrong until I gave up.

2, To get the V+ box I would have to pay £70. £20 for the parcel and £50 for the installation. I ordered a V+ box so should not have to pay for it to be delivered or re-installed. The V+ box is free when taking out the XL TV package, so why would you send me the standard HD box? The guy who installed the TV said he had no V+ boxes with him and if he did he couldn’t have given me one anyway as his system said I didn’t order one.

3, She couldn’t activate my HD channels as she could not make any changes to my account within the first 48 hours as her system wouldn’t allow her. I was told to ring back after 48 hours.

4, I obviously said I wasn’t happy with this and was told instead to ring back today and speak to another colleague (even though she said that I couldn’t make any changes for 48 hours).

5, I didn’t even mention the fact my wireless router wasn’t working as I was completely fed up.

This is not a good start to my experience with Virgin media. Please can you advise how I can get the services I ordered as I am wary of ringing your customer services again and going round in circles.

To be fair, they're all the same...

In order that we may serve you better, please key in your 16 digit number followed by the hash key...

1234567876543211

Thank you, please hold for a customer service person.

'Queue a shaky version of Greensleeves for 22 minutes'

"Hello and thank you for calling Virgin media, can you tell me your 16 digit account number please....?"

And this is after going through the 'Press 1 for...' sequence that doesn't actually give you any option that you'd ever actually need.

It rhymes with bunts.

I think I posted on here about my experiences with talktalk.

It can be summarised as follows:
- Moved house, requested move phone/broadband
- Engineer #1 booked for 4 weeks time. No-one turned up.
- Complained.
- Engineer #2 booked for 3 weeks time. Engineer #2 and #3 (!?!) turn up at different times and don't finish the job
- Complained again
- Engineer #4 booked for 3 weeks time. Turns up and gets it working in a few minutes.

What a bunch of nobs.

I got about £50 back in the end. Doesn't quite cover taking 3 afternoons off work

I'm not sure about this, personally I'd give it to BT.

I suspect the service could be whichever provider you choose. I currently use VM for everything (broadband, TV including Sky Sports etc, 3 mobile phones).
Whenever I have a problem they sort it out straightaway.

Mind you, I drink with a guy that works for them, and living a (fairly crappy) town I get the service via cable. The internet speed is brilliant, and any problems that I have had have been sorted pronto. I just think I am lucky on this front ,

Tim

To balance it out a bit, I've been with sky for ~4 years and moved three times. So far so good.

The main issue is the wait for the BB to be activated. For some unknown reason it takes 3 weeks from the date I've rung to transfer our service to the new property to get the BB working. Nothing can get the date moved earlier. I've tried several phone calls to different people in the UK and abroad, shouting, complaining, threatening to cancel the whole package etc. Incidently threatening to cancel tends to get you a temporarily discounted service, but unfortunately not the BB activated sooner.

At least the moment I moved in the TV worked straight away, as the properties have had a dish preinstalled.

I had a similarly frustrating experience with Virgin Media. Following a number of days/visits/emails trying to get the issues sorted, I tweeted several disgruntled messages (still polite though!) with a #virginmedia hashtag. Within a day I had an email from the customer support team and a dedicated technician from their Merseyside call centre (now closed?) was appointed to help me. The guy was really good and seemed to work ridiculous long hours, always responding promptly and spending hours testing stuff.
It didn't ultimately solve my main beef (broadband speed too low), but it did improve matters and I felt I'd certainly had my money's worth out of their technical services.
Give it a go!

WHen it's good it's great. We had Cable installed back when they first put it down our road in the 90s.

About every 6-18 months a new person in our area will decide to join Virgin, cue an engineer going to the manhole cover outside our house and disconnecting us, to connect them. It happens that often.

Last time after two days of trying to explain this to an Indian call centre, I was told to ask for "tier 2 tech support", (after the usual "Switch off the cable modem and switch it back on after 20 seconds" routine.

When the engineer arrived, I told him not to bother checking in the house, to check the manhole. "That's impossible", he said, I explained that it has happened a lot and, in a very "I will humour you but you are wrong way", he went outside to have a look. 5 minutes later service restored.....

"It won't happen again" he said, "Yeah I know, you have put a plastic tag on our connection" I told him. "Thats what the last three engineers have done too"....... 8-/

Darlo Nick_Nick, my neighbour had exactly the same problem, the only way I could solve it, was to set up a guest network, it's something to do with how they have implemented the 54N wireless protocol/WPA security. Try setting up a Guest network and use MAC access control.

Just followed Jims path and have tweeted. (I said I would never tweet as didn't see the point) Guess what they tweeted back after a few minutes! Quicker than any response I have had!

Don't underestimate the power of social media for stuff like this. Every time you tweet bad things about a brand, you're acting as an anti-advert!
Glad they responded - hope it gets sorted for you.

In there tweet they finished with ^PS. What does that mean?

No idea! I'll try to find out from the expert (Mrs C)

Well after filling in a form online as requested on twitter I recieved zero communication so twitted again and was told they did not recieve my form. I think I shall be looking at other options while waiting for them to get back to me!

GGGGrrrrrr