48-72h response time leading up to 2 weeks and ongoing.

[Chayce]

I have been a customer with Virgin Media for about 3 years now. 1 year so far with the 50MB broadband and 3 years with the sim-only VIP plan(Unlimited everything) which initially cost £15 then £16.50 and now £19.00. Virgin Media made a big blunder back then where they had set up a separate direct debit for the new price without my approval. So I was paying for both the old price of £15 and the new price of £16.50 for a few months before I realized what was going on from my biannual bank statement.

The current price increase prompted me to search for a new contract/tariff and Virgin Media just happened to have a phone deal which I am interested in so I pop down to one of their stores to sign up for the Sony Xperia Z3 handset contract with the free tablet. The staff who assisted me said my credit history is perfect but my account have been blacklisted for some reason and he told me to call 789 from my mobile to get it sorted out.

So on Thursday 14th January, I made my first call to the 789 number to request the cancellation of my current contract and to sign up for the Xperia Z3 deal with the £10 tariff. The friendly lady at the other end of the phone asked for my password and what color I would like my new phone to be in and then went on to provide me with some spec of the new phone despite asking if I had checked out the phone spec online already.to which I replied, yes. At the end, she said my account had been blacklisted and that she need to submit a form to another department which would normally take 48h-72h so I was asked to call back on Monday.

So on Monday 18th January, I made my second call to the 789 number and requested the same thing and went through the same scenario as my first call but this time with a friendly guy. He told me, my form/submission haven't been "picked up" yet and that he will resubmit my form and said I should call back on Wednesday. He noted everything down and provided me with a reference number: 3902238859. Great. I thought. He sounded professional.

Come Wednesday 20th January, my third call to the 789 number. Deja vu. After I went through the familiar exchange of dialogues, I explained to the bubbly girl that I had called twice already over the past week and she put me on hold while she attempted to sort things out. Once she got back after like 5 minutes or so, she apologized for the long wait and triumphantly told me she got her manager to make a decision on the spot to personally call the fraud department tomorrow morning(it was closed when I called) on my behalf and that she will call me back the same time the next day.

Nobody call.

On Wednesday 27th January, 2 weeks after my first call. I made my fourth call to the 789 number. I didn;t want to sound rude or unfriendly so I played out the same script as the first 3 call and am still greeted at the end with the same frustrating and unreliable crap customer support from Virgin Media. I was promised another callback and the lady even took down my house phone number but I never gotten a call on my mobile nor house phone.

I am at my wit ends on what to do. For a company that provides communication services, their own communication between departments is non-existent. My next £19 bill is due on the 5th February, is that payment for the following month or for the previous month? I am thinking of just canceling my direct debit via internet banking without going through virgin media customer support because I have read reviews that they will try to delay and squeeze out whatever they can out of you or use a debt collecting company for not canceling through the proper channel.