Virgin Media Broadband

...a long term customer of Virgin Media and their internet service I just had to write a review regarding the service I have received from them. I aim to keep the information regarding what you get from virgin Media as factual as possible, however I will warn you from now, I have an extremely strong personal opinion of them and when it comes to the service I have personally received this will be my honest personal experience without being sarcastic ...
...virgin Media provide regarding their broadband. I have had many encounters with the customer services team and feel qualified enough experiences to give a good representation of the overall service they provide. I am by no means an internet or broadband expert, but I feel this gives me a chance to explain to the average person, in average terms what their internet service is like...

Absolute pants... here is why...

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I don't usually review companies or services but as a long term customer of Virgin Media and their internet service I just had to write a review regarding the service I have received from them. I aim to keep the information regarding what you get from virgin Media as factual as possible, however I will warn you from now, I have an extremely strong personal opinion of them and when it comes to the service I have personally received this will be my honest personal experience without being sarcastic and also to advise future consumers as to the service virgin Media provide regarding their broadband. I have had many encounters with the customer services team and feel qualified enough experiences to give a good representation of the overall service they provide. I am by no means an internet or broadband expert, but I feel this gives me a chance to explain to the average person, in average terms what their internet service is like...

Absolute pants... here is why...

** Virgin Media **

Virgin Media claim to be the UK's Leading Entertainment & Communications Company. (Apparently... sorry... no sarcasm here!). Thumbs up to them for one reason, as in 2006 they were the first in the UK to offer consumers digital TV, broadband, phone and mobile all from one provider. Some people find it easier to keep all their eggs in one basket so this seems for some to be a beneficial idea. They have over 10 million customers and the Virgin brand is well known in most households.
Virgin media was made after the merger of NTL, Virgin.net, Blueyonder and Telewest. They all merged at various times and for various reasons. One reason was to create a super phone package another was to create a master internet provider. Clearly with the expertise of all these companies they were on something big. They now advertise to have the most advanced TV on demand service and are the second largest provider of pay TV as well as operating the most popular mobile network in the UK and also one of the largest fixed-lines home phone providers in the country.

Virgin has used some great advertising recently to show how great their services are. Using big names to glamorise their services, including the likes of Uma Thurman and Samuel L Jackson. Virgin also sponsored Big Brother until this year (2009) although I can't say that is anything to be proud of.
So, all in all a huge company with an even bigger ego. They seem on the outside to be reliable, popular and innovative. Everything I would want from a company and surely one too trust.

** Virgin Media Broadband - What you get **

Virgin Media offers a vast amount of different internet packages for different prices.
They provide two types of broadband, ADSL and Cable. ADSL broadband uses your phone line to provide your service and virgin media relate to these users as NATIONAL customers. The Cable service uses a faster fibre optic cable which is made from glass and are know simply as CABLE customers. This can get quite confusing so I am trying to make it as simple as possible. Other providers deliver their broadband through copper telephone wire, which means your speed gets slower the further you live from the phone exchange. Optical fibres are made of glass, and they're designed to send vast amounts of information at the speed. Either way Virgin promise to offer Superfast and reliable broadband. I could go into all the prices etc of what each individual package includes but this is unnecessary. There is plenty of information on their website which I will leave details for at the end of the review.

** Virgin Media Broadband - What I have **

I was originally with Virgin.net the internet service provider. In November 2006 after the migration with the other companies and a new look, they became Virgin Media.
I am a national customer and have my Virgin broadband provided to be through a BT phone-line. My mum pays for the phone-line and I pay for the internet. It is easier for us to keep it separate and my mum has been with BT for donkey's years and will refuse to change!

I pay £14.99 a month for a decent speed and unlimited use. The speed will obviously vary for each customer as it depends on the distance you are from the telephone exchange and the land-line quality. They now provide a free wireless kit with a router but I didn't get this when I originally signed up. They also offer PCguard which gives you free security features to help protect your computer, although I already have my own Norton internet security. They also offer other litter freebies such as 30 free photo prints a month but really all of these things require too much effort for so little in return so I just stick to using them as an internet provider and that's it.

Over the years I have been tempted to go with other companies who offer the same service for a cheaper price but due to not knowing a lot about broadband and also not a fan of changing services that I use daily in-case it goes wrong I have stuck with Virgin until now out of convenience. So these are my experiences with each aspect of their service over the past 3.5 years, as it is only since Virgin merges with the other companies that I feel the quality of their service has decreased.

** Broadband Service **

I have to say that originally my broadband service was almost perfect. It was not he absolute fastest however it was reliable. However in the current climate I feel the Virgin Media Broadband service is not as reliable as I would like it to be.
In the past 12 months my broadband service has not worked 4 times. This may not sound like a significant amount. However with the first time being 11 days outage, the second time being 2 days, the third time being 5 days and the most recent time being last week where the eservice was out for 3 days I personally feel this is unreliable and unacceptable. I understand all systems or programmes have an occasional blip and on such a huge scale I believe these blips will happen more often. HOWEVER, Virgin Media have blips that last days if not weeks and still charge you for a service which they are not providing. This for me is unacceptable.

However, in general, 80% of the time their broadband service runs relatively smoothly. The main concern for me is when it comes to contacting the Virgin Media company to enquire about these faults or just in general contacting them full stop. Luckily for me I am out of my 12-month minimum term contract, but it would be most frustrating if I was still tied to these people!
More on their customer service shortly.

** Bandwidth Throttling **

Virgin use a system called Bandwidth throttling, where basically if you use too much of their service, in terms of downloading etc then they slow down your internet service. This is aimed to stop some people taking too much from the network and slowing the whole service down. Some would say this is fair, others would say that as you are paying for an unlimited service then surely you should be targeted because you are making the most of this. Virgin operates a fair usage policy, but they decide what is fair. Is that really fair?

** Payments & Billing **

To begin with a one-off £30 connection & set-up charge applies to all new National Broadband activations. Other then that the monthly payments are only accepted thought Direct Debit via your bank or you can pay online using a debit or credit card. (You get your own account which you can access online- although this is a relatively new feature). I have included this section purely because I recommend that you stay in control and pay using your debit/credit card online. Obviously if you are an extremely forgetful person then this may not be the best option.

In my experience Virgin have messed up my direct debit numerous times. Firstly, when I moved house they continued to bill me even though I did not have a service. They were supposed to stop the service until a new installation date had been agreed. I therefore paid for a month I wasn't using. I have also been given a 'gesture of goodwill by them' of a free month's service. However, any money they refund to you, they refund back to your Virgin Account. If you pay by direct debit this AUTOMATICALLY deducts the amount from your bank every month. It won't suddenly think 'oh, you have £60 in you're account so I wont take a payment this month' no, it does not work like that. Instead your account will continuously remain in credit which is pointless. Therefore stop the direct debit and let them deduct the amount from the remaining credit that is available. However, getting them to set up a new direct debit again is a nightmare as they always end up missing the deadline, leaving your account in arrears or just confusing your bank. Therefore, I would advise you to stick with making monthly online payments yourself. See it as a self-service counter.

** Email **

When you sign up to virgin broadband you are allowed up to 15 different email addresses which is quite generous. However their email system often has many issues. Sometimes it will not recognise your password, other times the actual system is down and can not be used. This is often showed in their status online updates but it is hugely inconvenient. So much so that I rarely even make use of my virgin Email accounts, and I am paying for them! When you call the customer services line, the fact they have an option for if your email account is not working shows how unreliable it actually is.

** Customer Service & Technical Support **

Before I begin, let me share this with you. Taken from LeakedMemo.com this was a blunt letter from an inside source that basically summed up what my issues with virgin are, it was also in the national press and caused quite a stir-

"An inside source has argued that Virgin Media's Installation and fault service is far below a reasonable standard expectable by the general public, and that Virgin Media are aware of this but choose to not address it because it is not profitable enough for them to do so. The letter blames a lack of quality and frustration experienced by customers as a by product of Virgin Media contracting other companies to provide a source of morally questionable cheap labour--not unlike that of western companies utilising Sweatshops. The letter states that its UK based installation technicians are grossly underpaid, are forced into completing unsafe and illegal tasks, are consistently given workloads which are unattainable, and forced to lie to customers leaving the workers demoralised. The open letter has received many more comments from other Virgin Media Workers, most agreeing with the original content. The letter is addressed to Sir Richard Branson, but is yet to receive a rebuttal''

Well I 100% agree with this. Firstly when my internet goes down I have to take responsibility and call the customer services team on a 0845 number. This is an expensive call to make and I often wait on the line for 30 minutes before finding out they have no details about me or my account. As I am a national customer using an ADSL line, they have separate departments for people like me and a separate number for cable customers. Although in the long run all calls end up in the same place! How frustrating! At one point they advised me if I don't pay my bill I will get a letter with my account number on asking for payment. Once I receive this then call them back and they will be able to locate me. Yes. I am serious. What a shambles.

However, my most recent experience was shocking.

Day 1:

My internet light on my router had turned red. This means that for some reason Virgin are not providing me a service and I can not use the internet even though my router connects fine. The first phone call
I made I was advised they have issues in the London area, please bare with them as they are looking into it. Fair enough I thought. 12 hours later it still wasn't working so I gave them another call. The person in the technical fault department went through a whole hoo-hah with me advising me there was something wrong with my router. Ha! I thought. They don't know what they are talking about! This happened last year you see, and they told me the same thing so I went a bought a new router. Only to come home and discover it still didn't work. After telling the lady this on the phone she rather snottily advised me she will raise a fault and when it is fixed someone will call me to confirm. Fair enough. I gave them the benefit of the doubt. But no phone call did I receive.

Day 2:

Fantastic the green light is on and the internet is working. Wait, hold on, no It isn't It worked for, 45minutes maximum before popping off. Then the red light comes on again. I call them again. On the 0845 number. Costing my mum a fortune in calls. I get through and they try and go through the exact same process. Trying to connect my router, saying that there is an issue with my router connecting to their server... etc... etc. I almost wanted to yawn down the phone. Apparently the day before there was a London issue with over 200 virgin internet users being affected. Today there was an issue in 2 postcodes. Neither of which were mine but that seemed to be satisfactory enough for them to try and fob me off. But it was not working. They advised me they had raised another fault and if it isn't working then call back in 20 minutes. Then they put the phone down. Yes I am serious. After being on hold for 35 minutes they put the phone down. I actually had to laugh. I received no call and my internet still wasn't working. By this time I was in dumb shock by the lack of customer service I was paying for.
This time I had completely had enough; I called the customer services team and went through to the 'if you are thinking of leaving us press 3' team. Surprise surprise I got through within 10 minutes. I told them I wanted to give my 30 days notice period and I was moving to sky because their entire service was shocking. They always try and make you stay by apologising, mooching and ahhhing and trying to give you a month's free service. I had already had a month's free service and they messed up my direct debit payments then and I refused to stay with them any longer then I had to. Ironically they send the MAC code (needed to change to another provider) to your Virgin email address within 5 days.) I laughed at that. My service was not working, yet I needed to use their service to leave. Classic!

Day 3:

Day 3 and my internet still was not working. I called up because this time I had had enough. I didn't want anyone to fob be off and I want it to be fixed or at least a decent reason as to what the problem was! The first man I spoke to after being on hold for 35 minutes asked if I had requested to end my service in 30 days. I said yes but told him in no uncertain terms I was 100% promised that I will still get a service in those 30 days as I am still a customer. 'Oh no, he said, I'll have to pop you through to them as it's a customer service issue I'm afraid!' before I had chance to give him what for I heard the lovely Girls Aloud pop song ringing through my ears for the 64th time as I patiently waited on hold... again. You can actually choose your own music as they have you on hold that long.

When I finally got through to this other team and a lady asked me how she could I help. My reply was 'you tell me!' I explained I needed technical help but the idiot put me through to her. She was as surprised as I was and after another spoonful of apologies I was put through to John. John was in technical support. Great I though. I'm sure I've been through the whole team by now and they are all called John! Anyway, he took the right path and did the decent thing of going though my notes and with a lot of humming and ahhhing he went down the route like the rest. Told me to go into my router settings etc. I advised him this had been done 4 times in 3 days. But he asked if I could bare with him. Well. Believe it or not John fixed the problem. You see, all the issues affecting the server, the area postcodes, my wrong'un of a router was all pants. Complete twaddle because the customer services team were just not bothered in my issue. They had a standard script and if that didn't work the next best thing was just to get me off the line and pass the buck ASAP.

But good old John fixed the issue that stopped my internet service for 3 days. Would you like to know what the issue was? Well. The good people add Virgin did have an issue on their servers that weekend and another little blip had occurred. Suddenly the system didn't like capital letters. My password for virgin included the capital T. John asked me to change this to a lower case t and low and behold. The darn green compute light came on!!!

Almost 4 days of no service, 20 different people, an armful of excuses, 4 hours of holding and non-stop girls aloud. All over a capital letter that had been there for years. I ask of you, what sort of service is this. Really? Even John was surprised that the other members of staff didn't advise me of this. Apparently, it's a known issue in the office. Well thanks for the tip John, maybe share that with the team!

Apparently Virgin advertises that they use something called Net Promoter® to monitor and measure customer feedback. Every time a customer has an interaction with Virgin Media they ask how likely we are to recommend them on a scale of 0 to 10. Well surprisingly enough, on my many telephone conversations with all the departments of Virgin Media I have never been asked my opinion. Not once. Probably because they know the answer will be a huge zero!

Virgin media and their customer services leave me feeling extremely agitated, confused and like they completely don't care or listen to anything I tell them. They are extremely pretentious and couldn't care less. Apart from John who is probably sitting in a corner somewhere, the outcast of the bunch.

Whoever wrote the leaked memo I completely agree with you. Nothing is worse then paying for a service which isn't working and not getting any form of decent communication from the only people that can help you makes the situation 10x worse. It doesn't surprise me that the customer services team are lying to their customers, as they seem to get no decent communication themselves.
Despicable customer services.

** Leaving Virgin **

As I said, I am luck enough to be out of my 12 month subscription contract. Therefore I have to give 30 days notice and that is it. If however you are still within your contract, you can leave but there is a fee to pay plus I am sure they will make it relatively difficult for you.
Virgin is pretty good at ending their service once you have all the information you need. The only issues they have are with keeping the service working.

** Conclusion **

If you have not already realised I don't think much of Virgin and their broadband service. Numerous issues have led to me believing they are extremely unreliable.
They are far from robust for a large organisation.
Their customer service is the weakest I have ever experienced. The staff seems to not care and have no idea what they are doing. There is a lack of communication and training resulting in the consumer suffering when they should in fact be getting some of the best service around. All the customer services team are based within the UK so the communication within the company should be more apparent then what it is and what they reflect to the customer should be a lot more professional and friendly.

I would not recommend virgin and I will refuse to go in a contract with any of their services and yes as of Wednesday my service with no longer be with them. Shocking to say the least from what seems to be a professional company. Maybe if they invested more money in their customer services instead of Samuel L Jackson they may actually have satisfied customers.

** Contact Virgin- Good Luck **

If you want to find out more... If you're really sure you want to here is the info you need. Although the amount of numbers there are you are bound to get passed around.

http://www.virginmedia.com/
For help with your TV or Phone and for Internet Technical Support: 0845 454 1111
For National customers - 0845 454 2222
Does your email address end with @ntlworld.com? Then call 0906 301 2222
Does your email address end with @blueyonder.co.uk? Then call on 0906 706 0000
New customers call 0845 840 7777

Summary: I wouldn't even let them talk to the dog. Terrible customer services.
 

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