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View Full Version : Virgin Media accidentally disconnect 2000 customers!


matt_p
18-10-2007, 7:30 PM
Having a bit of a broadband nightmare at the moment. Was happily surfing away yesterday morning, when suddenly everything went dead. After exhausting all my usual troubleshooting routines, I called Virgin.

Turns out that while consolidating customer databases, they accidentally set 2000 customers' accounts to disconnect. Me being one of them. The lady said that they'd been given a form to fill in for this, so she took my details down and sent them off to their IT team, telling me I'd be back up in 24 hours.

24 hours later - still nothing. Called up again and was told that 24 hours was actually 24 'business' hours, not 24 real hours. Silly me for misunderstanding :rolleyes:. So, naturally, I asked how many business hours were in a day, because if their IT dept work 8 hour days, then obviously that's 3 days to reconnect. She had no idea. Hmmm.... Anyway, she told me to call back at 3pm if still not connected.

3:30 I called back. This time I was told that reconnect time was actually 48 hours. And that's 48 business hours at that. I explained that I had a technical test link in my hotmail waiting for me, which I need to get done before a job interview tomorrow. They said that they had no way of prioritising, and in fact, apart from submitting forms, they had no way of communicating with the IT dept whatsoever.

Started to get a bit mad, so I spoke to a manager. Explained that I desperately needed internet access, and eventually got a tenner credited to the account. She again reiterated that they had no way of communicating with their IT dept, or any way of escalating any IT issues (don't believe that for one millisecond)

All in all, I'm thoroughly hacked off. They're quick enough to cut you off if you miss a bill, but getting them to reconnect a fully paid up and never in arrears account is seemingly impossible. The fact that this has happened because some DB admin doesn't know how to do their job is totally infuriating.

So, stuck on dial up. Struggled my way through the tech test, but it wasnt exactly 56k friendly. If I don't get the job I'm going to send Virgin a bill for the £25k I missed out on! :devil:

Absolutely useless.

Drew232
18-10-2007, 10:47 PM
matt they cant directly contact the IT dept thats the truth.
I work for the blueyonder broadband tech dept.
It sounds like a linerunner issue thats the software that reconnects you and if thats down then it will take 3-5 days to fix. they will be 2000+ hits to go thru
once its fixed.

matt_p
19-10-2007, 9:47 AM
Thanks for the info.

Very disappointing to hear that a business-critical application can take 3-5 days to fix. That is absolutely shocking for one of the UK's biggest ISPs. In fact, if you hadn't said you worked there, I wouldn't have believed it.

Sounds like Virgin need to seriously invest in their systems.

matt_p
19-10-2007, 10:30 AM
So, just got off the phone to Virgin again. The 48 hours was up and still no connection, despite what the customer services manager said yesterday.

This time though, I spoke to a much more helpful gentleman. He said that my details were coming up on one database, but not on another. He then said that they had a guy sitting in their dept specifically dealing with these database migration problems, and that he would see to it that it is fixed in the next couple of hours.

Far better stuff than I've heard previously, so I'll wait with baited breath to see if they can follow up on their promises. 48 hours on dial-up is more than enough for me - I can't imagine how we ever got by on it!!!

Drew232
19-10-2007, 3:05 PM
matt are you business customer?

matt_p
19-10-2007, 5:36 PM
No, I'm not a business customer. If I was, trust me, I'd be at their office pointing repeatedly at the SLA and talking about solicitors!

Still not connected. Think the helpdesk team have been properly briefed now on what's going on, because both times I've called today they have known instantly what I was talking about, whereas last two days they've had to dig through the notes first to read up.

Apparantly I was reconnected at 10am this morning - lady just now said that there's a note saying reconnect complete at 10am, but I'm still listed as disconnected. She's emailed off another request asking them to do it properly this time. She reckons three hours, but the guy this morning said two, so I'm not holding my breath.

:(

Drew232
19-10-2007, 9:46 PM
im off work this weeks on so i havent heard anything.
Are you with NTL , blueyonder or virgin.net matt?
but does sound like a problem with hits going thru to active your modem

matt_p
19-10-2007, 10:07 PM
Hurrah, I'm reconnected!

Drew - I'm with NTL > Virgin Media. Seems like they have finally got on top of the database problem, everything came back online about 3 hours after my last phone call.

Thank god for that!

Drew232
21-10-2007, 9:44 AM
dont get me started about NTL lol alot of their tech support are hopeless lol

chris57
24-10-2007, 8:19 AM
dont get me started about NTL lol alot of their tech support are hopeless lol

They will be in good company at VM then wont they:rotfl: