Since 24th of August I have had an intermittent broadband service with virgin media. As the fault transpired on the Friday before bank holiday and the broadband service line kept terminating in India rather than the UK and i wanted to talk to someone in the UK, I decided to wait until the following Tuesday to report this fault. On the 28th of August i contacted virgin media and they sent an engineer out on the 29th for a am appointment but he turned up at 1-30pm, at 8am until 1-15pm the broadband service would not connect when the engineer attended the connection was working, the engineer replaced my modem and hung around until 3pm and the service remained connected until 5-30pm when it disconnected and would not connect again.
So i telephoned the broadband service line again at 25p a minute to ask for another engineer to visit and hopefully this time one would attend whilst the fault was apparent. The engineer was again booked for the following morning he arrived at 1-pm and the service was not connected, he blamed my computer for being at fault he also contacted another engineer and he to blamed my computer for being at fault he said he could do no more and left in a huff.
I immediately took my computer to my Father house less than a mile away and plugged it into my fathers Virgin media board band modem Low and behold my computer connected to the internet and remained connected until I disconnected it 2 hours and 10 mins later. I returned home when the computer connected and left it running at my fathers house and telephoned the premium rate broadband service line again. They booked me an appoint meant for the following Monday the 3rd of September. the computer still refused to connect to the internet at my home address and was not connected when the 3rd engineer attended on Monday 3rd of september.
Now this engineer was reported to be at the top of his game and the best engineer they had for this area but he to could diagnose the problem. he left after about an hour in disbelief that he couldn't get the connection working he to was inclined to blame my computer, yet it worked fine around the corner at my Fathers house.
Now not knowing what was to happen next i telephoned the broadband service line and spoke with a gent from the swansea call center he said I needed a cable re-pull which is basically replacement of the cable in the street between the street cabinet and the house, ok fine something else to ponder another element of the diagnosis of the system to eliminate.
The gentleman booked the cable re-pull or at least that is what he told me and this would be done on Friday the 7th of September yes you've guessed, it never happened an engineer appeared out of the blue on Thursday the 6th of September at 2-30pm and i told him that the re-pull had been booked when the engineer tried to confirm the re-pull he was told that the call centre staff were not authorized to book a re-pull and no re-pull had been booked for friday the 7th of september.
What a huge headache and it got worse not better. The engineer that attended on Thursday the 6th of September said he would book the re-pull himself as he was authorized to do this, he then left my home saying that customer services would contact me when they were ready to replace the cable in the street. On friday the 7th of september I telephoned Virgin media customer services to give them my mobile number as i could not wait in indefinitely for someone to call, i then went out and returned at 6-30pm only to find a calling card left by an engineer called Mark Dyer at 16-50pm it said I tried to fix the fault but I'll need to visit your home to complete the work. As you weren't mat home at the arranged time a ten pounds charge plus vat will be applied to your next bill, I immediately telephoned customer services and threatened to go back to BT if they billed me for a call that was not arranged. the connection to the broadband service remained disconnected except for a couple of hours on Sunday the 9th of september and again on the afternoon of the 10th of september.
The service has until today 22nd of September remained off and i have been unable to reconnect. I eventually found the customer complaints phone number 0845 650 3131 and spoke to a very nice lady by the name of Ms Hall who chased the cheidf engineer several times in the last 10 days or so and his name is Trevor Smith.
Mr smith promised me on the telephone last week that he would attend my home when the cable was replaced in the street on Friday the 21st of September but it took Ms hall at least three phone calls to Mr Smith to get him to contact me and each time Ms Hall telephoned Mr Smith she called me back to see if he had phoned me and much of the time the answer was no he hadn't.
Mr Smith is apparently quite an arrogant character and resented the fact that I deemed it necessary to contact customer complaints, who were just hassling him, he has since been reported to his superior for being very rude to the customer complaints staff on the telephone and promising them he would call the customer when he actually did nothing.
Anyway when he finally did call me after being chased by Ms Hill on three separate occassions on the same day he said he would be here on friday the 21st of september as I mentioned earlier. On the Friday I waited and waited and by 2pm I was getting a little worried that no-one was going to turn up so I phoned Ms Hill and asked if she would telephone Mr Smith and confirm for me when he was going to turn up, Ms Hill agreed that hmy having no contact from Mr Smith was worrying and telephoned him to check up on his arrival time, as it turned out Mr Smith has gone on holiday for two weeks, so where does that leave me? just as Ms Hill phoned me back a re-pull team arrived at my front door, I handed the phone to one of the three young lads and Ms Hill spoke to them.
All this re-pull team did was complain about being left work that should have been done by somebody else, NOT MY PROBLEM and it never has been I am just the idiot that helps to pay your wages.
They didn't want to replace the cable in the street and it took quite some arguing with them to even get them to run a new cable on the surface to the street cabinet and connected it to my house to see if there was a problem with the cable in the ground.
As it turned out the cable was not at fault and the whole matter has now been referred to the network department but no-one has told me who or when they will be in touch, as I understand it Ms Hill is on holiday now for three weeks so she is also out of the equation and she was the only person willing to chase these idiots up and kick them up the backside and get them moving.
DO NOT GET VIRGIN MEDIA UNLESS YOU WANT ALL THIS HASSLE WHEN YOUR SERVICE DEVELOPS A FAULT. as I understand it the old companies ntl and telewest broadband have been broken up into franchises and now they all have their own managers ever heard the saying to many cooks soil the broth here we have the same situation to many managers and no-one is communicating with anyone least of all the customer.
So I sit a twiddle my thumbs waiting for the network team to contact me why on earth couldn't they leave me the network teams phone number? Now 24 days on my board band is working today but at present it is difficult to detect whether or not it will be working tomorrow and it may well not be. I have been billed for my usual services this month and I am going to stop the direct debit next week at the bank I will not be forced to wait another month for the brain dead few to get their backsides into gear and sort this crap connection out.
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