Cable Forum - Very disappointed with service - nearly two months, still no install

My letter to complaints department:

To whom it may concern,

Unfortunately I am writing to you with a letter of complaint in regards to my Virgin media cable services request. I work from home three times per week so need access to my landline so it is important that my home phone is up and running.

Sign up –

I signed up for the services back in June in Slough High Street with Andy (07********) who works in one of the mobile Virgin vans to sell on the services. He assured me that Virgin Media was very new to my area, so I was very lucky to get it. Andy asked for a deposit for an engineer to come out, and said that he would call me to arrange an installation date. A few days later he called to say that an engineer would be with me on the 16th June to carry out my installation.

First installation date 16th June 13:00 – 18:00 –

I waited in from 12:00 onwards in hope that someone would turn up to complete the installation. 6 O’clock came and there was no sign of an engineer, or any call to say what was happening, so I called the install team who said to wait until 18:30….Still no sign. I called back and the installation team said there were ‘’construction issues’’ but would not explain what these were. They explained that there would be an engineer in touch before 21:00 that night, or prior to 12:00 the following day. Surprisingly, no one called me back. By this time, there were no incoming calls to the landline, and after calling back customer services it appeared someone had ported the number over to Virgin from our existing BT connection meaning we could dial out, but could not receive calls.

Customer services stated that they’d transfer me to the failed install team, and after waiting 45 minutes on hold, they answered to tell me that it was with the construction team’s manager, he would call me back, I didn’t hold much hope, and with no surprise, no call back to me.

I found it very unbelievable that porting a number back was so difficult, and as of recently I have had a very sick family member who I’ve been awaiting updates on, and they have had to call my mobile in order to do so, this is effectively a failed service. I then contacted Andy (who sold me the service) in a hope that he may be able to help me out, and the usual thing, I’ll call you back, after not receiving a call I called him again, and then got a text to say ‘’sorry I’ve been off sick for two days, I’ll get back to you tomorrow’’. This is a very unprofessional way of communicating with customers. I finally got (another) text saying that he had rescheduled my install for the 14th July (but still had no incoming calls).

Second installation date 14th July 09:30–

I needed to get someone to wait in for me due to having to drive in to work, and using more fuel than I was required to, so I managed to get a family member to stay in.

The engineer (07******) (turned up, laid all the cabling around the house (didn’t actually tac it to the wall correctly) and then asked for permission to drill a (small) hole through to outside, he somehow managed to miss and drill straight through our wood skirting, then had to drill again through the wall. About an hour later he was about to connect the cable that runs through the pipework from outside, and discovered that it had been cut when some tarmac was laid. The engineer then got his area manager Ebrima (07*******) to come out that evening. He turned up and confirmed that the cable had been cut, and that he would need to go away and be 10 minutes to get a drain rod to push through a new cable. 1.5 hours later he returned with a man to push through the rod, but the pipe was blocked….

Ebrima stated that someone from construction would need to do a small 1 foot dig to sort some new cabling out. He said he would be in touch first thing the following morning and it would be sorted, and even gave me his mobile number in case he didn’t call. Much to my disappointment I didn’t hear anything, but had his mobile number as a backup, great, Vodafone voicemail service for his number, got the same the whole day, and over the weekend.

By this point, feeling very frustrated, I called the engineer that came out and he gave me a number of another manager called Keith (07******), I called him and he said he was heading over to another house in Wexham within the hour so he would call me to tell me what was going on. I never received a call. I contacted customer services, very annoyed to log a formal complaint. They said they would get back to me as soon as possible to resolve my complaint. I called Keith again, but he gave further empty promises of coming out and looking at the issue.

Today, I haven’t heard anything.

I find it absolutely disgusting that a company advertising in so many different places about their services would treat a customer so badly. I think it’s appalling that when you are told you’ll get a call back, that no one returns it, Virgin is supposedly a communications company, that let’s face it communicates terribly.

As you can see from the above, I still have no incoming calls, and this has caused unnecessary stress, and wasted a large amount of my time trying to get this resolved.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Craig McCart