[weesteev]

Originally Posted by douglet

As you may well know a few things have changed with Virgin Media/Blueyonder technical support.

As Virgin Media is heavily in debt due mostly to NTL, some things have changed in the way you recieve your support.

You now call an 0906 number charged at 25p/min plus 10p to connect, now the first problem with this is that you rarely get thorught to the right department IE if your Ex NTL you normally get through to Ex Telewest and vice versa for Ex Telewest customer, this is partly due to there call routing system and how poor it is.

After all this you will be lucky to get through to some who speaks English as their first language, the problem with this is that I used to work for Virgin Media (BY Tech Support) and I couldnt understand what the hell they were on about. So im not especting anyone else to.

the India call centre's in Puni and Delhi are being constantly monitored by agents from UK call centre's Mainly Liverpool, and they all know how bad they are and so do Virgin media, but they dont care about the customers its all about how much it costs to man the phone.

Agents in India get paid per call they take so its in their own interests to answer as many calls as possible, as MORE CALLS TAKEN = MORE MONEY, its all basic maths. Thats why your either rushed off the phone given poor technical support or even hung up on.

in UK call centres agents have whats call and AHT (average handling time) last I heard it was 610 seconds not that long when you think about it.

The main point of writing this thread is I was lucky I got out, but for those who stayed their bonus this quarter was the sack about 40 of them, this is in the call centre in Liverpool, an Ex Telewest centre.

Now this is where it all gets a bit misty as all of the above was to my knowledge very true. but now is a little cloudly due to the fact ive heard the story from many existing members of the tech support team at Liverpool.

Virgin Media is all Outsourced a little like this - Virgin media - IBM -Adecco Managed Services. One long line of absoloute incompitance.

Virgin are so heavily in debt that sacking its best technical support agents who earn around 13-16K Per anum is the only solution to get them out of the red, as if!! they are slowly but surely sourcing all its technical support to India, well they have been preparing them for the past 3 years or so.

They may keep a small skeleton staff in the UK but only so they can Advertise the fact they have UK call centres, but do you think they will pass the saving on to customers, an even bigger LOL it will all line the pockets of Virgin Media shareholders, like Mr Branson.

also whats happening is that the people who support you television and fixed line telephony will also be trained to support Blueyonder as they are only on 12K Per anum, these are the blonde bimbo type of scousers who can smile and say thank you and sorry but who dont know the difference between a file and a folder, ask them what SNR means and and they will probably tell you its a new alcopop or something.

This is the future of you tech support. Now don't get me wrong I love my cable modem but I don't need to call them for support, I don't think id love it as much if some bimbo was trying to explain to me about a High TX or RX load.

Now a few words of advice if ure told ure due a credit for the cost of the call to tech support as it was a virgin fault them make sure you account is credited, its down to the agent to do it and most of the time Indian agents don't know their **** form their elbow ****check ure bill****

Well that was completely misadvised nonsense from an unhappy ex staffer. Well worth taking with a pinch of salt and certainly not true. I can understand if you are unhappy but theres no need to speculate about a situation you dont know enough about (like pay for outsourced agents).

Those "blonde bimbos" in Liverpool are at risk of redundancy as all telephony support is being switched to Nottingham. These "bimbos" were actually highly trained members of staff who knew the telephony switches inside out, it will be a sad day to see them go! Please dont pass comment when you werent in a position to work with these guys on a daily basis!

Virgin is not so much in debt that it has to sack staff, it is streamlining the business as there are a lot of duplicate positions. You would notice the company is actually in a positive cash flow situation after the recent financial results.

The problems with the internal IVR system are being caused mainly due to the multiple billing systems, the last system is due to change over by the end of October which should make a big difference with call routing as well.

If a customer disputes a charge to tech support then speak to customer care to discuss the issue.

The premium rate charge is in place to deter non BBI fault calls, calls are refunded if a tech is required or the modem needs to be swapped (or there is a known fault in the region).

Outsourced agents work for IBM in India are paid a salary, not per call.

I can completely defend our outsourced partners as there is clearly a language barrier but the learning and development team are working with them to support the customers. It has been clearly stated before that "if it doesnt work we are pulling out". Its not all doom and gloom!