Brand Republic
 
Edition:
UK |
Asia
 
Digital jobs

Jobs

Find over 3000 jobs
 

Directory

 

Gordon's Republic

Virgin Media desperation 

Comments:7   Add your comment
Just how desperate are Virgin Media to hang on to customers? The answer I found after ringing them was very.

I've been seriously toying with leaving Virgin Media ever since it fell out with Sky and lost its basic set of channels.

I'm not the only one. One of BR's other bloggers Alan Munro is trying to do the same and suffereing.

I quite like Sky News and Sky One. I wasn't glued to '24', but would watch it as I would 'Lost'. More keenly I do feel the loss of 'Battlestar Galactica', which I have mentioned before is my favourite show on TV. Losing it half way through the third season was harsh (give me a break I'm a geek).

Still I survived, but I've had enough now and am going to jump ship. The last straw wasn't even anything to do with my digital TV service, but the fact that for months after I thought I had cancelled various telephone services that I hardly used (voice mail et cetera) I was still paying for them. More phone calls to Virgin Media, which has fully adopted NTL's terrible customer service. Endless voice jail menus asking you to push ONE, THREE, ONE and NINE should you want to change your mind.

So I called last night and after being on hold for a mere 20 minutes (the muzak alone is enough to make you hang up on life, let alone Virgin Media), I got through and said I wanted to cancel.

Virgin then offered to cut £20 off of my bill a month either for 12 months or indefinitely. Needless to say customer service guy did not know which. That's handing me back £240 a year. But it still doesn't give me some of the few shows worth turning the TV on for.

I'm thinking.

Published Jun 06 2007, 09:18 AM by Gordon Macmillan
Filed under: , ,

Comments

by Paul Flower
June 6, 2007 9:40 AM
 
Use the savings to buy the DVD box-sets of the shows you're missing and hope that in the interim period they resolve their differences?
 
 
by Gordon Macmillan
June 6, 2007 10:04 AM
 
It's a good suggestion, but its the terrible wait. Not only do you have to wait for the show to finish, but for the box set then to be issued.
 
 
by Tom Lancaster
June 6, 2007 10:24 AM
 
Having had a years experience of NTL/Virgin I'm sure that their customer service is the way they hold on to customers. Last time I complained for having no phone for a month they said they'd credit the rental. Then they naturally double charged me for it instead. Just getting that off my bill was enough. Now when the TV / internet / phone doesn't work I just wait until it does again. I can't call their customer service without a cigarette and a drink. I just don't think I could put myself through trying to leave, so I will probably be with them for a long time. Even when I think about moving flats the thought of having to transfer cable service puts me off. Like smoking I wissh I'd never started with them.
 
 
by Sean Murricane
June 6, 2007 10:53 AM
 
Well, all of Lost season 3 is being added to their On Demand section in a couple of months - and it'll be free to people on the XL TV Pack. It's such a shame, because they do and can get it right, but when they can get wrong they get it SO wrong it really screws up their word of mouth reputation.
 
 
by Clare Midgley
June 6, 2007 11:12 AM
 
After having been a happy sky customer 4 years, when I moved house, Sky couldn't get an engineer out to me for 6 weeks. I begged, cajoled, but to no avail - all the engineers were unavailable. The house I was moving into was already fully wired for cable, and we were already blueyonder customers, so we decided to go to Telewest instead. The call to sky to cancel was astonishing. It took 45 minutes of hard sell by the incredibly aggressive sales chap to cancel it. Suddenly an engineer was available the next day - a Sunday! I got so fed up that I had to leave to get any kind of decent service that my resolve to leave them doubled. The moral of this story - be it Virgin or Sky - they're both exactly the same - getting rid of them is harder than a divorce. Isn't Gallactica available on iTunes?
 
 
by Gordon Macmillan
June 6, 2007 11:17 AM
 
BSG is on iTunes in the US, sadly not in the UK although if you visit alluc.org you can watch anything you like...on your pc.
 
 
by Hannah Lines
June 7, 2007 12:22 PM
 
Their stance in taking on the behemoth that is Murdoch's SKY is reason alone to stay with them. SKY's customer service is also poor - rock and a hard place in the short term. Like many, I hope they salvage some sort of channel package deal after their Murdoch fall-out and restore some of the missing programmes. With Murdoch hovering about Dow Jones as his next acquisition, any dent to his bullying profits can only be a good thing!
 
To comment on this post you have to be logged in

 

About this blog

Gordon's Republic

Brand Republic's daily blog on digital, media and plenty in between.
 

About the author

Gordon Macmillan

Blogging for:

Gordon's Republic

Member since: 03 Jun 2008

Last login: 24 Nov 2009

Total Posts: 1,618

 
 
 
 

Tags

 

Syndication