fortisflyer75
Established Member
Is anyone else who has been with Virgin Media/Mobile for a long number of years noticing they are becoming less competitive and actually customer service is deteriorating especially with calls centre's been handled by off shore countries like the Philippines?
I have been a VM customer last 11 years for BB & phone only and a Virgin Mobile customer since 1997.
With Virgin Media I was paying around £67 for 60Meg BB and XL phone and a few years ago Virgin sold it to me to go with a Virgin large TV package with big standard box even though I only use Sky for my TV they said doing this would save me £4 on my current bill so thought why not as I knew from their POV doing this is one foot in the door to gradually try and leverage more money on bigger and better set top box offers equating to more income to them and essentially the £4 gain would be wiped out the following end of tax year with their normal price hike they all now do which cancelled that out but recently due to some other stuff happening I decided to tighten my belt up a little and looked at my packages carefully for the first time in ages and phoned Virgin Media up regarding my home package and after the British call centre helped me by providing some info and making some decisions from there to tailor the package to what i currently needed I said drop the TV I don't use but need to upgrade the XL phone to XXL and reduce the BB speed from 60meg to 30 as I do not heavily use it for downloading big files or streaming much so they managed to do this for £41.76 a month and apparently dumping the TV which was given at no extra charge a few years ago saved me £15 a month!?
So I was pleased with this despite not been told by the guy who sorted this out on the phone was done at a 18 month discounted rate which I don't know what it is meant to go up to come the end of that term, only first knew of this when i got the first re-amended bill through with the new package listed and thought well another phone call in 18 months time to haggle but recently in last couple of months I for the first time ever when my Virgin Mobile two year contract which was up for renewal even with long term customer loyalty deal done was far worse than the offer made two years prior and was not much better than any other network was offering out there especially now Virgin Mobile has changed it's financial way they sell Monthly contract phones and dumped the 08 phone packages on monthly high end contract smart phones which was one of the main attractions to my last mobile tariff from Virgin but basically without going deep into the mobile side of this even after the retention's department making me a further offer it was still no where near what they offered two years earlier or vastly different to what is available else where anyway so the day thought I would never come I actually left them and went with another mobile network for two years with a new handset and three months into my revised cheaper Virgin Media package I have the following has happened:
Two weeks ago whilst on holiday I get a Virgin Media call from a Philippines cal centre to talk about my package and doing a deal as been a loyal customer but as I was outside with ambient noise and several minutes later the lady not understanding my posh Essex phone dialect I could not understand the lady all of the time with her local dialect but was able to deduct she was saying to me as been a loyal customer the wanted to look at my package and make it cheaper if they could and offer me a faster BB speed with a new shiny HUB 2 wi-fi router as I currently only have the HUB 1 Wi-Fi router and it was not until the end of the conversation with me explaining my recent revised package which I dumped the non used Virgin TV she then slips in a new TV package which come with (I think a Tivo box) (even though the guy who dealt with my initial revised package a couple of months ago said to have TV switched back on would incur something like a £70 fee to re-activate as they was deactivating that service for me) but anyway the price was then higher than my new revised price so said to her please can you phone next week when I am back from my holidays as it was just getting more complex and confusing on a mobile phone with background noise so she said fine.
Come following Monday I miss the first two calls and then since then I have received two to three calls a day from them without fail and most of the calls I have not been able to answer and as it has continued each day after each missed call it has escalated to an immediate voice mail been left by them with no recording which then triggers my networks friendly text reminder i have a voice mail all in 5 seconds of call ring ending. eventually yesterday evening I am actually free to take the call knowing it could take a while and once again it is the Philippine call centre the other end and after the usual scripted can I call you Mr. First name basis with still emphasising the MR. every time they call me by my first name I am having the usual problems of her not understanding me and vice versa so stop her in her tracks and say sorry the line is bad this end and explain dialect making it hard for both of us to have a free flowing conversation which could end twice as fast if it was a British call centre so said to her it would be best if a British call centre called me for reasons above and after taking two attempts to get her to understand this as she was just keeping to the script they are given I clearly said please get the UK team to phone me please, she said okay and bye.
Tonight I get a call again from Philippines (after one missed call from them today) going through the same groundhog call so try stopping her before she can go further but has selective hearing and try's to ignore me trying to explain stop there because.... then after deciding to listen took a further two attempts of me ending up been rather blunt telling her no more call's it is getting silly two to three calls a day and the dialect issues over the phone please only call me again if it the UK team and she said sorry and bye!
With all the above I have gone with been a fairly happy Virgin customer with the odd couple of issues which were usually dealt with swiftly at the time and resolved but last two months have gone from Virgin Mobile been very uncompetitive with their stiffer tariffs with less value for money and again as always half cocked offer on handsets to all the other networks which has improved last few years although still far from perfect have left them after 18 years and now this with the Virgin Media side with an harassment amount of daily phone call attempts and then always the Philippine call centre which is a two way language barrier and been obviously scripted for sales and not been able to diversify in conversation when you ask them a challenging question and they play ignorant going back to glossing over your question and go back to the script of talking about the product they are offering you.
For those of you still with me on this structured rant which I never really do I am very fast getting disillusioned with their working practices and deteriorating customer service as well as not been as competitive of late with their Mobile phone packages which lead me to leave them after 17 years of loyal usage.
Just to cap off I also had a technical issue with my BB over last three months or so but thought it was my laptop causing it to have issues with drop out with the router but still happened when I got a new laptop and last month got quite severe to the fourth week of it happening finally calling them out as drop outs where halting internet usage all together and that was a mess with their service with false call out texts and cancellations finally got fixed and was a faulty junction box issue and replaced my Hub as it seemed to be part of the issue possibly and when I asked on the phone about reimbursement for lost internet usage over at least last month which they can see on their records of service performance history to your line they said you have to email customer support explaining it all now days instead of them been able to just adjust your bill over the phone to reflect any service loss so is this true? has anyone else experienced this or have I been fobbed off?
Also noticed since downgrading from 60 meg to 30 as part of my cost cutting package exercise they have supercharged me once again to 50 meg on my BB without any prior fan fare emails notifying me like they normally do when they supercharge or upgrade your speed so not sure why they have done that after I've basically downgraded to the 30 meg service from 60 recently?
To wrap up for anyone bothered reading this far has anyone started to experience this type of service from them or think that their level of standards is slipping in terms of customer service or the way they are operating currently?
Don't get me wrong I had heard some "horror" stories down the years about other Virgin customers having issues with them but most part all my experiences with them every time was positive in the way they dealt with things unless it is just my turn to go through it all and I've been lucky down the years until now has just been all a coincidental timing wave of issues lap up on my shores all at the same time?...
I have been a VM customer last 11 years for BB & phone only and a Virgin Mobile customer since 1997.
With Virgin Media I was paying around £67 for 60Meg BB and XL phone and a few years ago Virgin sold it to me to go with a Virgin large TV package with big standard box even though I only use Sky for my TV they said doing this would save me £4 on my current bill so thought why not as I knew from their POV doing this is one foot in the door to gradually try and leverage more money on bigger and better set top box offers equating to more income to them and essentially the £4 gain would be wiped out the following end of tax year with their normal price hike they all now do which cancelled that out but recently due to some other stuff happening I decided to tighten my belt up a little and looked at my packages carefully for the first time in ages and phoned Virgin Media up regarding my home package and after the British call centre helped me by providing some info and making some decisions from there to tailor the package to what i currently needed I said drop the TV I don't use but need to upgrade the XL phone to XXL and reduce the BB speed from 60meg to 30 as I do not heavily use it for downloading big files or streaming much so they managed to do this for £41.76 a month and apparently dumping the TV which was given at no extra charge a few years ago saved me £15 a month!?
So I was pleased with this despite not been told by the guy who sorted this out on the phone was done at a 18 month discounted rate which I don't know what it is meant to go up to come the end of that term, only first knew of this when i got the first re-amended bill through with the new package listed and thought well another phone call in 18 months time to haggle but recently in last couple of months I for the first time ever when my Virgin Mobile two year contract which was up for renewal even with long term customer loyalty deal done was far worse than the offer made two years prior and was not much better than any other network was offering out there especially now Virgin Mobile has changed it's financial way they sell Monthly contract phones and dumped the 08 phone packages on monthly high end contract smart phones which was one of the main attractions to my last mobile tariff from Virgin but basically without going deep into the mobile side of this even after the retention's department making me a further offer it was still no where near what they offered two years earlier or vastly different to what is available else where anyway so the day thought I would never come I actually left them and went with another mobile network for two years with a new handset and three months into my revised cheaper Virgin Media package I have the following has happened:
Two weeks ago whilst on holiday I get a Virgin Media call from a Philippines cal centre to talk about my package and doing a deal as been a loyal customer but as I was outside with ambient noise and several minutes later the lady not understanding my posh Essex phone dialect I could not understand the lady all of the time with her local dialect but was able to deduct she was saying to me as been a loyal customer the wanted to look at my package and make it cheaper if they could and offer me a faster BB speed with a new shiny HUB 2 wi-fi router as I currently only have the HUB 1 Wi-Fi router and it was not until the end of the conversation with me explaining my recent revised package which I dumped the non used Virgin TV she then slips in a new TV package which come with (I think a Tivo box) (even though the guy who dealt with my initial revised package a couple of months ago said to have TV switched back on would incur something like a £70 fee to re-activate as they was deactivating that service for me) but anyway the price was then higher than my new revised price so said to her please can you phone next week when I am back from my holidays as it was just getting more complex and confusing on a mobile phone with background noise so she said fine.
Come following Monday I miss the first two calls and then since then I have received two to three calls a day from them without fail and most of the calls I have not been able to answer and as it has continued each day after each missed call it has escalated to an immediate voice mail been left by them with no recording which then triggers my networks friendly text reminder i have a voice mail all in 5 seconds of call ring ending. eventually yesterday evening I am actually free to take the call knowing it could take a while and once again it is the Philippine call centre the other end and after the usual scripted can I call you Mr. First name basis with still emphasising the MR. every time they call me by my first name I am having the usual problems of her not understanding me and vice versa so stop her in her tracks and say sorry the line is bad this end and explain dialect making it hard for both of us to have a free flowing conversation which could end twice as fast if it was a British call centre so said to her it would be best if a British call centre called me for reasons above and after taking two attempts to get her to understand this as she was just keeping to the script they are given I clearly said please get the UK team to phone me please, she said okay and bye.
Tonight I get a call again from Philippines (after one missed call from them today) going through the same groundhog call so try stopping her before she can go further but has selective hearing and try's to ignore me trying to explain stop there because.... then after deciding to listen took a further two attempts of me ending up been rather blunt telling her no more call's it is getting silly two to three calls a day and the dialect issues over the phone please only call me again if it the UK team and she said sorry and bye!
With all the above I have gone with been a fairly happy Virgin customer with the odd couple of issues which were usually dealt with swiftly at the time and resolved but last two months have gone from Virgin Mobile been very uncompetitive with their stiffer tariffs with less value for money and again as always half cocked offer on handsets to all the other networks which has improved last few years although still far from perfect have left them after 18 years and now this with the Virgin Media side with an harassment amount of daily phone call attempts and then always the Philippine call centre which is a two way language barrier and been obviously scripted for sales and not been able to diversify in conversation when you ask them a challenging question and they play ignorant going back to glossing over your question and go back to the script of talking about the product they are offering you.
For those of you still with me on this structured rant which I never really do I am very fast getting disillusioned with their working practices and deteriorating customer service as well as not been as competitive of late with their Mobile phone packages which lead me to leave them after 17 years of loyal usage.
Just to cap off I also had a technical issue with my BB over last three months or so but thought it was my laptop causing it to have issues with drop out with the router but still happened when I got a new laptop and last month got quite severe to the fourth week of it happening finally calling them out as drop outs where halting internet usage all together and that was a mess with their service with false call out texts and cancellations finally got fixed and was a faulty junction box issue and replaced my Hub as it seemed to be part of the issue possibly and when I asked on the phone about reimbursement for lost internet usage over at least last month which they can see on their records of service performance history to your line they said you have to email customer support explaining it all now days instead of them been able to just adjust your bill over the phone to reflect any service loss so is this true? has anyone else experienced this or have I been fobbed off?
Also noticed since downgrading from 60 meg to 30 as part of my cost cutting package exercise they have supercharged me once again to 50 meg on my BB without any prior fan fare emails notifying me like they normally do when they supercharge or upgrade your speed so not sure why they have done that after I've basically downgraded to the 30 meg service from 60 recently?
To wrap up for anyone bothered reading this far has anyone started to experience this type of service from them or think that their level of standards is slipping in terms of customer service or the way they are operating currently?
Don't get me wrong I had heard some "horror" stories down the years about other Virgin customers having issues with them but most part all my experiences with them every time was positive in the way they dealt with things unless it is just my turn to go through it all and I've been lucky down the years until now has just been all a coincidental timing wave of issues lap up on my shores all at the same time?...
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