Engineers keep not turning up

[ArgieD]

Good evening everybody,

I was wondering if I can have your lights.

I've been a Virgin Media Customer for many many years and eventually moved house; I of course called them to organise carrying all existing services forward to the new address. Lovely lady on their phone sorted everything out within 10-15 mins and agreed a connection date for Saturday, 13 October, disconnecting me from the old address the day before (mind you I had already moved to the new prior to that).

However, late on Friday 5 October, I received a call from Virgin Media asking me to agree having to move the installation of services appointment forward to Monday, 8 October. I quickly cancelled a lot of my own appointments (work as a building surveyor) and made myself available for the technician really excited.
Needless to say they never arrived.
When I called Virgin Media, they denied any knowledge of the appointment change and simply shrugged their shoulders. They insisted that the appointment was still on Saturday 13th (today) and more or less suggested I made that up. I was furious. They said something along the lines of "you wanna keep the appointment for the 13th or not? Take it or leave it mate". I felt that I had no other option at the time. I just swallowed my pride.

Indeed, on Friday 12th I received an SMS from Virgin Media confirming the appointment the next day (today).

Today, after spending all day at home waiting by the front door, I decided to give them a call around 16:00 and asked where the engineer was. I immediately suspected another cock up as they could not give me a straight answer and after keeping me on hold for 30 mins, they apologised and said they are going to ask the engineer to give me a call with his ETA straight away.

When of course nobody got back to me, I called again an hour later 17:00 - dangerously close to COB (18:00) - and this time I was told that the engineer had felt unwell ...the night before ?!?!?! and that he could not attend the appointment today. To make things even worse, they said that the next appointment is on the ..30th.

When I eventually spoke to the Duty Manager, I was told that there is nothing they can do and quite frankly got the "talk to the hand " treatment.

My question is:
Can they really get away with lying twice in such blatant manner or is there anything I can do? I mean I would have accepted my fate if they said "Sorry but can't make it" but the fact that one persons says that the engineer is on his way and the other telling me there isn't one really angers me.

Please advise if you get a moment?
Thank you in advance

Regards

Argie

[jempalmer]

Email the CEO's office. neil.berkett@virginmedia.co.uk. I've had cause to complain via this route and it did yield a positive result.

[ArgieD]

Thanks for that Jempalmer...

I'll give it a shot..hopefully he's still employed by them or uses that email account

Cheers

[jempalmer]

That is him and that is the CEO's office email address.

[BenJSmyth]

Let us know what the outcome is.

[ArgieD]

I will for sure. Will use my lunchbreak as an opportunity to send that email.

PS I found it absolutely unbelievable that the entire Virgin Media have nobody to replace and engineer who ...felt unwell for longer than two weeks, after standing up their customer up on two consecutive occasions. Just can't..

---------- Post added at 13:18 ---------- Previous post was at 12:11 ----------

and here is my email sent to Neil, so you can know exactly what happened.

Good afternoon Neil,



First of all please do try to accept my apologies for this unsolicited correspondence; I was given your email address by a colleague who said that you may be able to help.

I will have every single finger crossed that you do not ignore this, as I really don’t know what else to do. I’ll try to keep this brief.



At the end of September, I contacted Virgin Media and requested to take my all current services with me. The lovely lady dealing with me was ever so helpful and arranged everything within a few minutes. An engineer was booked for Saturday, 13 October 2012 – which I was happy with.



However, on the evening of Friday, 5 October 2012, I received a call from Virgin Media suggesting we move the installation appointment forward to Monday, 8 October 2012 “due to problems”. Fearing for a no show if I refused, I kindly obliged and cancelled all my Monday’s appointments at work.



It was around 17:00 on Monday, 8 October 2012 when I called Virgin Media to enquire about the engineer’s whereabouts, to be told by a gent called “Chris” that there was no such appointment and that they will see me on Saturday, 13 October 2012 as per the attached letter. When I mentioned the previous call I received, expressing my concerns of a potential no show for Saturday 13th, I was told not to worry.



Then on Saturday, 13 October 2012, I started once again getting concerned by 16:00 and thought of being proactive by ringing Virgin Media. I was then advised that the engineer is on his way, but after I mentioned my previous misfortune, the polite gent promised to get the engineer to give me a call asap with his estimated time of arrival.



An hour later (17.00), I called again to ask about the engineer’s ETA, to be told this time that the Engineer was hurt by a car the night before so he obviously could not attend.

When I spoke to Duty Manager “Donna”, I was told there was nothing they can do and that the next appointment is for ..Thursday, 30 October 2012 !?! No matter how much I pleaded with them, they were adamant they have nobody else to send over until that date.



Today, to test the validity of the above, I called this afternoon (approx 13:00) on the name of my wife (Alex) as a “new customer” to get availability for an installation date for a different property on our street, and was told that the next available installation date was only next Wednesday, 24 October 2012 !!!



So my question is,

-) Even if I’m to ignore that Thursday’s call warning me about “problems for the 13th“

-) Even if I’m to ignore that one person was telling me the engineer is on his way and another telling me he had got hurt the night before.

-) Even if I’m to ignore that the Duty Manager was adamant there are no engineers available until the 30/10/2012 whilst Customer Services gave 24/10/2012.



Is there anything you could possibly do to alleviate the situation. I’m not at the end of my tether and would appreciate any feedback, as I feel utterly betrayed after being a customer for so many years without missing a single payment (standing order).

Thank you in advance



Best Regards

[joglynne]

Fingers crossed for you Argie. https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2012/10/10.gif

[ArgieD]

Thank you so much,

I got an email back almost immediately saying that "Neil cannot personally deal with this, so give us your details and we'll look into it", which I kindly did.
That response was so instant that I assume it is nothing but an automatic message; I'd be surprised if I hear of them again.

After all, if Neil's email is so readily available on the net and given the sheer number of people getting shafted by VM, I have no doubts I'll hear nothing from them.

Fingers crossed though, who knows...

[ArgieD]

Hi jempalmer again,

do you remember how long (more or less did it take them to get back to you (properly though, not via an automated response).

It's killing me I can't give them the finger for what they did to me, as all other ISPs can only give 3-5 Mb speeds where I live:(

[jempalmer]

You will get an almost instant reply, as you did. My apologies, I should have explained further. If my experience is representative, then you should receive a call within 24-36 hours. Be polite and you will find that they will be very helpful.

[ArgieD]

Thank you again. I will be polite for sure; mind you I kept my composure so far, can't see me losing it all of a sudden.

Cheers

[ArgieD]

UPDATE: I just got an email back saying that they will look into it and get back.

who knows..

[MovedGoalPosts]

CEO office are usually good at prodding around. It won't be Mr Berkett himself, but his team are involved simply to deal with complaint resolution. They do have the clout to bang heads lower down the chain in VM to find out what went wrong and make things happen.

[ArgieD]

UPDATE: I just received a call from them and was told that they apologise for the no show. They also moved the appointment forward by 4 days. Instead of the 30th, it's now the 26th.

Not exactly chuffed to bits as the revised appointment was even later than the installation date I would have got as a new customer, however I appreciate that at least they did something about it in a rather timely manner (plus the person who rang was so pleasant that you couldn't even think of being upset).

So thank you to everybody here; Jempalmer, I owe you a drink or two..

[jempalmer]

We try to help (All of us on Cable Forum, not the "Royal We"). Hope you have a resolution soon. VM, as with any other provider, aren't perfect. However, they do try to sort out any problems quickly. I hope that you enjoy our company here on Cable Forum. We're a good crew, mainly :D.

[Waldo Pepper]

I had a similar issue regarding a broken TV connection. I phoned in a complaint which ended up in India, they sent me an SMS to say there was no problem and were cancelling the engineer callout. I rang the following morning as there was still an issue and was told it was still on for my evening visit. He TXTed me 10 minutes prior to the visit and fixed the problem.

My advice is ring them before about 10am and speak to an English call centre. Outsourcing to India maybe cost effective from a business point of view, but when it comes to the two communicating...it's appauling.

[judgey]

the call center is in Manilla in the Phillipines

[RB2004]

They have both India, and Philippine call centres, whenever I phone usually now its Philippines but I have also got through to an Indian Call centre.