Virgin Media - A Leopard Can’t Change Its Spots
Well my broadband connection from Telewest ntl:Telewest Virgin Media just died. I immediately called the technical support line and was greeted with a new chirpy voice on the IVR, rather than the usual Liverpudlian accent. I was hoping that my first experience with the new re-born company would be a good one.
Well, it will probably come as no surprise from my title that the whole experience was awful. After plodding through annoying IVR messages for about 90 seconds and then a 2 minute wait, I was eventually put through to an out-sourced call centre. I know it’s a bit unfair as I used to work for Telewest and I know what the drill is supposed to be, but the lady I spoke to was hopeless. She didn’t go through the full set of tests and seemed determined to just book an engineer visit as soon as possible.
Despite my protestations, this is where we ended up so I’m going to be without a connection until TUESDAY when the engineer will arrive to replace my modem. That’s a long time to be without broadband….
I know that it would be unreasonable to expect that Virgin Media would turn around the historically poor customer service of ntl (and to a lesser extent Telewest), but so far things have got worse for me.
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Comment by Ajay on 16 February 2007:
I thought customer service was an issue only in my part of the world, guess we’re not the only lucky ones!
Comment by Everton on 16 February 2007:
Ahhh that explains it! Virgin Media’s call centres are out-sourced to India!
A lot of companies in the UK get a lot of flak for doing this. I don’t agree with the criticism as the quality varies e.g. the call centre that Netgear uses is very good. However, Virgin’s/ntl’s is shocking
Comment by bomski on 28 February 2007:
I can’t believe this! i have had intermittent problems with my broadband since the switch to Virgin; i too also experienced the unbelievably bad call centre staff (i asked the agent to test the line - she proceeded to ask me to count the number of cables coming out of my modem!)…
I hope that this move of call centres is only temporary as previous service from Telewest tech support has been sterling for me!
Comment by Everton on 28 February 2007:
To Virgin’s credit my connection did start working the next day as it was an area fault, and a nice lady called me to check that everything was ok and to cancel the truck roll.
However, the call centre lady should have known about this….
Comment by Bosco Brand on 18 April 2007:
I think this shows a lack of commitment to customer service on the part of Virgin. The first person a customer with a problem talks to should be someone who is informed and is ready to help. I used to subscribe to a company with poor service before recently switching to a residential t1 line, and it was such a hassle dealing with outages and issues.
Comment by brettiex on 18 April 2007:
I’ll have to agree that I’m not a fan of call centres in another part of the world and my recent phone calls would indicate this is the case.
I believe the best people to support issues are the poeple who have the an understanding of the service and have adequate knowledge of the potential problems that can be encountered.
My recent call left me with someone who didn’t have a clue and was likely reading the screen. My problem likely requires a format of my V+ box and as the problem is astetic I’ll likely leave it until I’m in a possition to format. I told the lady I wouldn’t be formatting the box but she just kept reading what would happen when the box was formatted.
By contrast I have spoke to custormer services (formerly Telewest) and they were very good. If this is a picture of how Virgin Media are changing the service to improve it then I’m definately not happy.
Comment by neil on 1 May 2007:
Not agian,!!! thers no getitng away formt his company. i treid them abt 6 month ago on there up to 8mb adsl it was a very poor service was never getting nayting over 1 meg , had bt out to test the line in th ehouse etc and surprsie the line was fine.
i took me 3 months of frustrating emilas , a very large phonebill and trading standards to get shot of them.
Then came blueyonder i was saved, i had a service that was working and stable.
low and behold over the next few days it became shitting virgin media without any warnnings, now im gettng the same old problmes aguina with my connection, slow, dropping and dying.
and the resposmne i got form tech suppotr was it could be your net explorer , were nto ment to say this but try firefox.
i was liek wtf!!
he sed if its still ike it in a week call us back and thnaks for letting us know.
Comment by Andrew on 4 May 2007:
I too have recently had my first experience of V customer services since the switch. Previously I was with Telewest and the service was 100% excellent. Whenever there was a problem I always knew I could call up, speak to a genuine British person who genuinely understood what I was saying to them and could intelligently help with the problem.
I am devastated about the apparent switch to an Indian call centre. The person on the other end of the line (after a 15 minute wait) clearly had no clue as to the nature of the problem with my On Demand TV and could not help resolve it. Instead I was told I would get a call back within 2 days. That was a week ago and nothing. Calling again has just resulted with exactly the same outcome. Useless.
Comment by PhantomTa2 on 8 November 2007:
It’s terrible. When it was Blueyonder, I never had any problems with the service or the line, since Virgin took over, now we’re all treated to “fair usage” which in itself is a joke and have had problems at least once a week. I signed an unlimited contract, and when it was Blueyonder, that meant unlimited. Also, I’ve been throttled the last 5 nights even though the previous 4 nights I hadn’t downloaded anything past 4PM, (I made a point of it), and today I haven’t downloaded anything at all, and still I’m throttled. I phoned the lovely Indian Tech Support, first time the call shut off for no reason, second time the representative said his ID didn’t let him log into the North West of England and third time, he seemed to know what he was talking about, but crapped himself when he realised I also knew what I was talking about. It’s a damn joke.