zaax
30-07-2011, 11:53
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/07/30/0315207/Tens-of-Thousands-Flee-From-BT-and-Virgin
Quite a few people have commented saying that it's no surprise that people are leaving BT - they're more expensive, utterly useless and switching DSL providers isn't as much hassle, whereas Virgin is a different case since their technology is actually better - why would people want to leave? The reasons are numerous, let me just give a few examples:
*Call centre staff are outsourced.
80% (if not more) of the call centre staff are outsourced to Indian call centres. This immediately creates a language barrier, particularly with anyone from Scotland as the outsourced staff can't understand the accent.
*ALL Call centre staff are severely undertrained
The offshore agents are barely trained at all, as they're trained by people who have been trained by people who have been trained by someone from IBM (whom Virgin contracts to do all their support) who hasn't actually done the job. The net result is that it takes agents months to get even remotely familliar with the tools and equipment Virgin uses and that's assuming they last that long.
Onshore isn't a great deal better. They have a dedicated training team, however the training period is 4 weeks. That's for EVERYTHING the job entails, from fixing modems, to wireless, to email and Virgin security. Years ago before wireless and the value added services were a factor, the training period was 6 weeks.
Additionally, the training material is GROSSLY out of date. It dictates that 2 days are spent learning how to adjust the frequency of a modem that is no longer used by Virgin. If a customer still has one of these modems, it is meant to be replaced immediately because it's well over 3 years old (more like 6). However, the training material is controlled by Virgin, who refuse to let the training team touch it. This means trainers are forced to train out old, outdated material and try to squeeze in the "real" material when and where they can.
The hiring process is even worse. No consideration is given to how technically minded you are, or how much you know about computers. I've seen people show up for customer services roles and been told they're going to do Technical support - despite barely knowing how to use a computer themselves.
*The VM Hub and Superhub
BT have a "home hub", whereas Virgin have relied on dedicated modems and separate routers for years. This meant that customers had to have 2 separate devices to get wireless and the wireless routers weren't Virgin specific (unlike the modems), meaning that customers could say they were broke, get new ones and sell them on ebay. So Virgin decided to do an all-in-one soultion, much like BT's home hub. There were two models - the VM hub and the "superhub". The VM Hub is a DOCSIS 2 device, the super hub is DOCSIS 3. The problem? Both hubs have issues, serious issues. The wireless range on the regular hub is ABYSMAL, you can literally lose the signal from being in the same room. The Superhub is SLIGHTLY better, but still nothing on a dedicated router. But can you still plug in your own router? Nope, VM deliberately disabled the DHCP options within the HUB, meaning you have to rely on it (although a patch is coming that will enable "gateway" mode). Other issues include the firewall causing connections to drop randomly, the hub would occasionally and for no reason decide to stop leasing IPs from the network, forcing the customer offline and so on. The list goes on and on and it still isn't fixed - most customers that went from a dedicated modem to a SHUB or HUB have regretted it and wanted their old modems back, but Virgin won't let support staff issue modems any more, so you're screwed.
*Sheer incompetence
The hubs are just one example of how useless Virgin are at implementing ANYTHING - they recently changed their website to "make it better" and give customers more control of their accounts, but instead it locked many customers out of their accounts entirely. It caused emails to get orphaned from accounts, meaning support staff wouldn't even attempt to reset a password or fix it because they couldn't pass Data Protection. Eventually Virgin admitted there was a problem and put a process in place to have their IT staff manually fix the account, but this process wasn't trained out, it was sent in an email that many agents just didn't get. The ones that did get it, it was pot luck if they could be bothered. They were told to tell customers it could be 3-5 working days. Or was it 5-7? Oh it might have been 48 hours. It was different depending on who you asked, but it didn't matter because a massive backlog appeared that meant customers were without emails for at least 2 weeks, sometimes over a month. And what was the customer to do? Nothing. Call in again, shout at someone else but they weren't the ones fixing it, so it would do no good. Compensation? Sorry, the email service is "complimentary", tough luck. Oh what's that, you've lost business? Well you shouldn't be using a residential email service to run your business. In other words - Virgin has your money, you can **** off.
Other examples of incompetence - the Modem virgin Brought out for their 50meg service, the Ambit 300, someone literally FORGOT to renew the support with the company that manufactured them. They only realised when a bug was discovered in the firmware that caused multiple-threaded download speeds to drop sharply and the support company told them tough ****. They had to negotiate a new support contract and was more or less scammed into paying through the nose due to not having a choice.
*Some Virgins are more virgin than others
Virgin outsources a LOT of their **** - and I mean a lot. The techs that come to your door are outsourced, the call centre staff are outsourced, they're not part of Virgin and thus they get **** on constantly. Virgin contracts IBM to do all this, but then IBM contracts other groups, recruitment agencies like Manpower and Adecco and collectively, they pay their staff pittance. The wage for new starts in the UK, who support ALL technical faults from broken modems and SNR issues, to setting up your wireless, remoting into your machine and setting up emails, etc. is £12,200 per year. On a 37.5 hour contract. That's right - it's barely minimum wage, so is it any surprise that they just don't care about you, the customer? What's more, their contract is ****** - a week's notice, holidays have to be booked months in advance because there's never enough hours free, your shifts can (and have been) be changed less than 48hours before you're due in. There hasn't been a pay rise for over 8 years. This is why they have recently started Unioning up, this is why people don't stick around for long and thus why nobody ever seems to know what they're doing - because they've only been there a few weeks to replace the droves of people who have recently left, in a never ending cycle.
*The techs are useless
If it comes down to it and someone has to come out to your house, good luck. Half the time they just don't show up because if they don't do a certain number of jobs in a certain time, they get penalised. They have 15minutes per job, that's it. So if your modem or STB needs replaced, that's them overrunning - heaven forbid if they need to replace the coax. And because of this, it's easier to just say the next guy didn't answer the door. Sometimes there's nothing they can do and a 2-man team needs to come out (for a repull, as an example), only that tech can book this, nobody else can. And they forget to book this a good 40% of the time - the result being, your problem doesn't get fixed for weeks, you call back in only to be told that the call centre staff can't book the repull you need and so we'll have to send out ANOTHER tech just so he can book it. And if he doesn't book it? Well, lets just hope you don't need your service for at least 6 months.
This list goes on and on. This is why the staff don't care. This is why people are leaving. This is why people are happier with a ****** 6meg DSL service for the same price as Virgins 10 or 20meg service.
Quite a few people have commented saying that it's no surprise that people are leaving BT - they're more expensive, utterly useless and switching DSL providers isn't as much hassle, whereas Virgin is a different case since their technology is actually better - why would people want to leave? The reasons are numerous, let me just give a few examples:
*Call centre staff are outsourced.
80% (if not more) of the call centre staff are outsourced to Indian call centres. This immediately creates a language barrier, particularly with anyone from Scotland as the outsourced staff can't understand the accent.
*ALL Call centre staff are severely undertrained
The offshore agents are barely trained at all, as they're trained by people who have been trained by people who have been trained by someone from IBM (whom Virgin contracts to do all their support) who hasn't actually done the job. The net result is that it takes agents months to get even remotely familliar with the tools and equipment Virgin uses and that's assuming they last that long.
Onshore isn't a great deal better. They have a dedicated training team, however the training period is 4 weeks. That's for EVERYTHING the job entails, from fixing modems, to wireless, to email and Virgin security. Years ago before wireless and the value added services were a factor, the training period was 6 weeks.
Additionally, the training material is GROSSLY out of date. It dictates that 2 days are spent learning how to adjust the frequency of a modem that is no longer used by Virgin. If a customer still has one of these modems, it is meant to be replaced immediately because it's well over 3 years old (more like 6). However, the training material is controlled by Virgin, who refuse to let the training team touch it. This means trainers are forced to train out old, outdated material and try to squeeze in the "real" material when and where they can.
The hiring process is even worse. No consideration is given to how technically minded you are, or how much you know about computers. I've seen people show up for customer services roles and been told they're going to do Technical support - despite barely knowing how to use a computer themselves.
*The VM Hub and Superhub
BT have a "home hub", whereas Virgin have relied on dedicated modems and separate routers for years. This meant that customers had to have 2 separate devices to get wireless and the wireless routers weren't Virgin specific (unlike the modems), meaning that customers could say they were broke, get new ones and sell them on ebay. So Virgin decided to do an all-in-one soultion, much like BT's home hub. There were two models - the VM hub and the "superhub". The VM Hub is a DOCSIS 2 device, the super hub is DOCSIS 3. The problem? Both hubs have issues, serious issues. The wireless range on the regular hub is ABYSMAL, you can literally lose the signal from being in the same room. The Superhub is SLIGHTLY better, but still nothing on a dedicated router. But can you still plug in your own router? Nope, VM deliberately disabled the DHCP options within the HUB, meaning you have to rely on it (although a patch is coming that will enable "gateway" mode). Other issues include the firewall causing connections to drop randomly, the hub would occasionally and for no reason decide to stop leasing IPs from the network, forcing the customer offline and so on. The list goes on and on and it still isn't fixed - most customers that went from a dedicated modem to a SHUB or HUB have regretted it and wanted their old modems back, but Virgin won't let support staff issue modems any more, so you're screwed.
*Sheer incompetence
The hubs are just one example of how useless Virgin are at implementing ANYTHING - they recently changed their website to "make it better" and give customers more control of their accounts, but instead it locked many customers out of their accounts entirely. It caused emails to get orphaned from accounts, meaning support staff wouldn't even attempt to reset a password or fix it because they couldn't pass Data Protection. Eventually Virgin admitted there was a problem and put a process in place to have their IT staff manually fix the account, but this process wasn't trained out, it was sent in an email that many agents just didn't get. The ones that did get it, it was pot luck if they could be bothered. They were told to tell customers it could be 3-5 working days. Or was it 5-7? Oh it might have been 48 hours. It was different depending on who you asked, but it didn't matter because a massive backlog appeared that meant customers were without emails for at least 2 weeks, sometimes over a month. And what was the customer to do? Nothing. Call in again, shout at someone else but they weren't the ones fixing it, so it would do no good. Compensation? Sorry, the email service is "complimentary", tough luck. Oh what's that, you've lost business? Well you shouldn't be using a residential email service to run your business. In other words - Virgin has your money, you can **** off.
Other examples of incompetence - the Modem virgin Brought out for their 50meg service, the Ambit 300, someone literally FORGOT to renew the support with the company that manufactured them. They only realised when a bug was discovered in the firmware that caused multiple-threaded download speeds to drop sharply and the support company told them tough ****. They had to negotiate a new support contract and was more or less scammed into paying through the nose due to not having a choice.
*Some Virgins are more virgin than others
Virgin outsources a LOT of their **** - and I mean a lot. The techs that come to your door are outsourced, the call centre staff are outsourced, they're not part of Virgin and thus they get **** on constantly. Virgin contracts IBM to do all this, but then IBM contracts other groups, recruitment agencies like Manpower and Adecco and collectively, they pay their staff pittance. The wage for new starts in the UK, who support ALL technical faults from broken modems and SNR issues, to setting up your wireless, remoting into your machine and setting up emails, etc. is £12,200 per year. On a 37.5 hour contract. That's right - it's barely minimum wage, so is it any surprise that they just don't care about you, the customer? What's more, their contract is ****** - a week's notice, holidays have to be booked months in advance because there's never enough hours free, your shifts can (and have been) be changed less than 48hours before you're due in. There hasn't been a pay rise for over 8 years. This is why they have recently started Unioning up, this is why people don't stick around for long and thus why nobody ever seems to know what they're doing - because they've only been there a few weeks to replace the droves of people who have recently left, in a never ending cycle.
*The techs are useless
If it comes down to it and someone has to come out to your house, good luck. Half the time they just don't show up because if they don't do a certain number of jobs in a certain time, they get penalised. They have 15minutes per job, that's it. So if your modem or STB needs replaced, that's them overrunning - heaven forbid if they need to replace the coax. And because of this, it's easier to just say the next guy didn't answer the door. Sometimes there's nothing they can do and a 2-man team needs to come out (for a repull, as an example), only that tech can book this, nobody else can. And they forget to book this a good 40% of the time - the result being, your problem doesn't get fixed for weeks, you call back in only to be told that the call centre staff can't book the repull you need and so we'll have to send out ANOTHER tech just so he can book it. And if he doesn't book it? Well, lets just hope you don't need your service for at least 6 months.
This list goes on and on. This is why the staff don't care. This is why people are leaving. This is why people are happier with a ****** 6meg DSL service for the same price as Virgins 10 or 20meg service.