from employee experience the virgin media procedure goes something like this :-
Indian agents read from a script so no matter what the issue is they will 99.9% of the time ask you to reboot your pc! then the usual thing is to try and find fault on the customers side i.e- virus's/spyware then blame that.
check for issues on the network, although if nothing has flagged up already most agents don't have the sense or training to investigate further and use appropriate tools to identify a fault, at that point they usually lie and tell you there is an outage or blame spyware.
Technical support agents are encouraged to refer customers to 'PC HELP' run by a company called Becogent at £1 / min as VM/IBM have a referal rate, there are actually posters encouraging this posted round the Liverpool call centre, so alot of people use this as a get out clause.
Basically if VM believe it not to be a fault on their network then its the CUSTOMERS fault. [END IF]
Nut while we all sit back and blast VM as I am now, we have to take a step back and look at who manages VM technical support, IBM who are incapable of managing people effectively so then outsource to Adecco Managed Services. This line of command creates confusion and al impacts on the customer. Generally its the technical support managers employed by IBM who bugger things up all trying to climb the ladder and make themselves look good at the cost of peoples jobs. These are the people who will be out the door within 18 months and on to ruin the reputation of another unsuspecting company.