Fecking VirginMedia!
Get the sense that I’m just ever so slightly annoyed?
Last Friday morning, our ISP — in their infinite wisdom — decided to carry out a little unplanned “maintenance” which involved disconnecting everything without warning. TV, phone, broadband — the lot.
OK — so we were cool with that once we’d tried contacting them and got the “We’re doing some maintenance” message (or the “We are trying to fix a fault in your area” message — it seems to have been pot luck as to which “reason” you were given). We were even really chilled out when we still didn’t have a ‘net connection by their “deadline” (midday). Or 3 hours later.
But when it hit 5pm and we still didn’t have a connection (but everyone else in the area did), the awful truth started to dawn. Virgin Media had fecked up again…
You see, we have two lines and two cable connections. And every previous time that they had carried out a mass disconnection, they had “forgotten” to connect one of our lines. Specifically, the one for our broadband connection. The one that also provided the feed for the second TiVo box that we are currently paying through the nose for. Oh — and yes — the second phone line that we are also paying for.
But — hey — all it would take is a call to customer support and they’d fix their error lickety split.
Wrong!
This time, we were informed that they would not send out any technicians until all of their “maintenance” work has been completed. The fact that said work has been completed didn’t seem to matter. The earliest they could send anyone out would be Wednesday – six days after they had cocked up the re-connection. By now, it was too late to speak to a senior manager (they all stop working at 5pm, apparently), so we would have to wait until Monday to speak to a senior member of staff.
The automated call 32 minutes later asking us to compete their “How did we do?” survey was just taking the proverbial at this point.
Monday finally dawned after a weekend spent negotiating who was watching what and when on the one working TV (in a house with 3 adults & 1 teenager, this is why we got the second TV feed in the first place), so we again tried to contact a senior member of staff.
This time, we were promised a call back in 15 minutes.
One hour passed…
No call back.
Two hours passed…
No call back. Did we want to wrestle with the Indian call centre again and take pot luck on whether we could actually understand the person we were trying to talk to? No thanks.
Three hours passed. Still no call. By now it was 5pm again.
The next day (Tuesday), we tried again. This time, we actually got to speak to a senior support manager. Who promptly told us that the first person we had spoken to on Friday had lied about the lack of available technicians! And who — when asked why we had not received a call back the previous day — simply shrugged it off! And this was a customer support manager? At no point were we given an explanation or an apology — just a “the first person lied and hey, these things happen” brush off.
Today (Wednesday) — 6 days after they disconnected us — we finally got our connection plus second TV feed and phone back again. Still no apology.
Sod this! I’m looking for a new supplier!
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