Virgin Media Customer Disservice

Now I love technology. I am always using it, always learning more and more about it. I love my computer, I love the internet, I love creating websites, I love my email.

But I hate the Service Providers that we are reliant upon to use all of the above!

Don’t get me wrong, the individual people who work for these organisations are probably very nice people but the organisations they belong to are so far removed from their customers that I really feel like screaming!

For example:

On the 21st October my husband realised that he was no longer receiving his emails from our very old email account that we took out when Cable was in existence under the name of xxx@blueyonder.co.uk

In recent years since Virgin took over we had this account set up so that all emails were forwarded to Live Mail (in place of Outlook - which is sooo slow on the computer) and then latterly they were forwarded to Gmail. All had been going well but upon this sudden disappearance of blueyonder emails I thought that perhaps something had gone wrong with the Gmail account settings and that was why we were no longer receiving them.

After checking all settings (that were correct) it appeared that blueyonder had disappeared. I then went on to our Virgin Media online account to check on their Webmail page and see what the problem was. Well the problem was that the blueyonder account had disappeared!

Ok well I will now cut a long, long story short here before I bore you all to tears.

1. After several attempts online to try and find my old email account there was no joy and so I reluctantly phoned their ‘help’ number. An hour and half later while the technician in India had taken over my account by remote it was discovered that there was “a problem” their end. Would I wait a couple of days while they fixed it?

2. Five days later I tried again as there were still no emails. No joy. Also the technician had changed the user name, passwords etc. So if anyone has had the joy of trying to negotiate their way around the Virgin Media site then they will know what I mean. “Enter username for so and so”, didn’t work. Request username to be sent to back up email address. Several new username and password requests later. I eventually managed to find one that would get me into the Webmail. Low and behold no blueyonder account!

3. Several days later and several more attempts I registered on the Support Forum. Good advice but all basically returned to the “call this number”.

4. Called the call centre number again after getting home from a 12 hour shift at work. “we can see it our end”. Yes but I can’t see it my end!!

5. “Hold on while I fix it”. So I held and held and listened to rubbish music. “Oh there is an issue I need to speak to another department, please hold”. So again I held and held. “Sorry I’m holding on for the other department, I’ll phone you back”

Yes you’ve got it – no phone call back. So I spent my evening holding onto a phone waiting for a technician (whose name I didn’t know) to tell me to ring off and he would ring back, which he didn’t.

So when someone said to me at work today “what are you doing at the weekend” I replied “holding on the phone waiting for someone from Virgin Media to fix my problem”.

I just really wish that you could get through to someone without running round and round in circles for absolutely ages. Then I wish that the person you got through to would actually tell you what the problem really is.

Finally I would just like to know one thing – am I ever going to get my email back?

If not I really think that I should be able to tell Virgin Media “please hold on while I rip up your contract”.  After all they are not fulfilling their side of the deal.

Customer Service does not exist these days and I know that all the others will be exactly the same. Press this button, choose this option, listen to this recorded message and finally if you have had the stamina to hold on this long, speak to a real person who will not solve your problem and will pacify you and then get rid of you because you don’t know who they are and chances are the next time you phone you will get someone else.

Surely there is some enterprising entrepreneur out there that can set up a new boy on the block that will offer what we the customers require:

• Satellite TV

• Decent broadband speed

• Telephone line

And most importantly GOOD SERVICE!