Virgin Media broadband

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Don't recommend*

  By RReed 12 Jun 2010 01:50

You wouldn't believe that Richard Branson is such a nice guy yet he own's Virgin Media. I have never been more disgusted with the way a company treats it's customers. Their broadband service is tempramental at best or completly offline at worst.
I'm embarrased to say that I have been with them for about 2 years now but this is only because they offer the fastest connections and I need the high speed's. If i had a choice to use other ISP's I wouldn't waste another second with Virgin Media.

I warn anyone thinking of signing up with them to think again, it's really not worth the headaches your going to get. They will be the nicest and friendliest bunch of people in the world while their selling their service to you but once your a contracted customer prepare for the lies, the fob offs and the rude staff as well as a poor service.

When I first signed up I got their 20Mb package but the highest speed I got was 8Mb even though I live only one mile from the exchange. I would lose my service at least once per month so each time I had to call their PREMIUM number to speak to a tech guy to get it fixed. I would say it would usually take 3 or 4 different premium rate calls for any one issue and when you've done this as much as me you start to notice a pattern. I am convinced that Virgin Media support staff have been told to tell customers anything to get them off the phone because every single time I have had to deal with them, I always find one member of staff is saying something completly different to another member of staff. I've lost count of the times I caught them out on a lie and when I complain about this I'm told that I am the liar. Shocking isn't it!
I have no idea why I then went up to their 50Mb package. My thinking was, it was all new technology and their providing brand new equipment so I took the risk that this would be better. It actually got worse.
I'm now on first name terms with two people in the Virgin Media CEO office. These guys are actually very helpful but I suspect they have little respect from their staff because they are forever making excuses why something wasn't done.

In six months of service, my 50Mb connection has been okay for 2 months and this is a generous estimate. Even so I am still forced to pay for the FULL service. As I write this my connection is down. It has been running at 0.10Mb for the last 48hours and they say it will be working tomorrow but I'm not expecting it to be.

I've already filled a claim with the Small claims court to get back all the money spent on support phone calls and for a refund of the times I had no service as well as loss of earnings as I need my internet to work. My phone costs for ringing support over and over again in the last two years adds up to...wait for it.. £1.563.03p I was shocked when I added up all my itemised bills to virgin. Shocking isn't it?

Well as you can see I'm not going to recommend you sign up to Virgin. In fact I recommend you run in the oposite direction and never look back. If you ever see, meet or talk to Richard Branson tell him to sort out Virgin Media. because of my experience with VM I will never use another service or product offered by Virgin because if this branch of the brand acts like this, I'm not going to risk my money with any other branch.

You have no idea how much I have helpped you if you take my advice.