Nialli's unofficial blog on Virgin Media's UK cable TV services
December 09, 2015
Virgin Media London outage
I'm not sure how widespread this is (Virgin won't tell me) but in SE London we have had no broadband or TV services now for over 24 hours and still no definite fix time.
My 'compensation' for the loss of a day's work (and pay)? £4.13.
Also yesterday morning VM customers in the area received notification of the price rises in February. Nice one, marketing dept.
The Blogger will only be compensated for "losing pay" if he opens a business account with Virgin (at additional cost). Domestic broadband accounts are expressly forbidden from being used for business purposes.
My entire VM estate (BB, phone, telly) was down for a MONTH last year. The compensation I received? One month free. I complained and got another month free as a goodwill gesture (I forget the phrase they used).
I do not expect compensation for lost income (that would be unreasonable on my part) but I do expect, for my £124 a month, competent incident management and customer communications. What I have had are fix estimates stretching from an initial five hours to a current over fifty, and a frustrating conversation with a poorly trained and I'll-informed call centre operator.
FYI, services to the Nialli residence were resumed mid-afternoon on Friday 11th, although other parts of SE London were still reporting issues the following Monday. Outage was caused by construction workers in neighbouring Lewisham severing key infrastructure cables and then Virgin engineers being denied site access to fix them promptly. (I learned this from VM engineering; needless to say Virgin Media Customer Services were clueless)
As a postscript to this, I've discovered that Virgin customers who were impacted by this (and similar) outages don't automatically get credited for the loss of service but have to ring the call centre and request it. If they valued us they would do it automatically, surely?
The logic is that people who haven't complained have not been impacted. Not sure how an expensive automatic refund/credit would show how much they "value" customers?
None of the other providers behave any differently either…
I disagree. Any decent CRM (and I've implemented a few in my career) records customer-impacting incidents and ongoing problems and can credit those inconvenienced for services not delivered automatically. I rang 150 to report my initial problem, but when I rang today they had only credited the account for that first day. The guy on the phone didn't make me fight for my four days of credit but it should be automatically applied to all customers - some people had no BB or TV for over a week. And just because the other providers do it doesn't mean it's justifiable for Virgin to do it. Hundreds of customers will miss out on what they are entitled to because they don't have the time to sit through the 'press 1 for this, 2 for that' inconvenience. It should be automatic. End of. If Virgin started to treat its loyal, paying customers with a bit less contempt the unpalatable cost rises every few months may be more forgivable.
Your tune certainly has changed over the years, Blogger. There will never be automatic refunds unless a regulator forces them (and all the others) to do so.
As with all providers, if you truly feel that you are not valued as a customer, then threaten to leave and a generous retention offer will be offered to you. However, they won't do this automatically either.
11 comments:
It's still working for me with no problem. I'm in N3.
The Blogger will only be compensated for "losing pay" if he opens a business account with Virgin (at additional cost). Domestic broadband accounts are expressly forbidden from being used for business purposes.
I'm not in London...
My entire VM estate (BB, phone, telly) was down for a MONTH last year. The compensation I received? One month free. I complained and got another month free as a goodwill gesture (I forget the phrase they used).
I do not expect compensation for lost income (that would be unreasonable on my part) but I do expect, for my £124 a month, competent incident management and customer communications. What I have had are fix estimates stretching from an initial five hours to a current over fifty, and a frustrating conversation with a poorly trained and I'll-informed call centre operator.
Greenwich here. No service since yesterday morning.
FYI, services to the Nialli residence were resumed mid-afternoon on Friday 11th, although other parts of SE London were still reporting issues the following Monday.
Outage was caused by construction workers in neighbouring Lewisham severing key infrastructure cables and then Virgin engineers being denied site access to fix them promptly. (I learned this from VM engineering; needless to say Virgin Media Customer Services were clueless)
As a postscript to this, I've discovered that Virgin customers who were impacted by this (and similar) outages don't automatically get credited for the loss of service but have to ring the call centre and request it.
If they valued us they would do it automatically, surely?
The logic is that people who haven't complained have not been impacted. Not sure how an expensive automatic refund/credit would show how much they "value" customers?
None of the other providers behave any differently either…
I disagree. Any decent CRM (and I've implemented a few in my career) records customer-impacting incidents and ongoing problems and can credit those inconvenienced for services not delivered automatically.
I rang 150 to report my initial problem, but when I rang today they had only credited the account for that first day. The guy on the phone didn't make me fight for my four days of credit but it should be automatically applied to all customers - some people had no BB or TV for over a week.
And just because the other providers do it doesn't mean it's justifiable for Virgin to do it. Hundreds of customers will miss out on what they are entitled to because they don't have the time to sit through the 'press 1 for this, 2 for that' inconvenience. It should be automatic. End of. If Virgin started to treat its loyal, paying customers with a bit less contempt the unpalatable cost rises every few months may be more forgivable.
Your tune certainly has changed over the years, Blogger. There will never be automatic refunds unless a regulator forces them (and all the others) to do so.
As with all providers, if you truly feel that you are not valued as a customer, then threaten to leave and a generous retention offer will be offered to you. However, they won't do this automatically either.
thanks for the info!
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