Virgin Media Review

Overall Rating

Cheaper than all the other providers

Everything - this is why they are cheaper than all the other providers

A bit of history to put you in the so called picture...
We had Sky+ £53 a month,
BT line rental (we never actually use the landline, we live off our mobiles) £45 a month
Wireless Broadband with Netvigator now called NOW £18 a month
So logically we thought all of the above for a mere £30 are we stupid or what?

So we booked it, things started well. We had our date booked for our installation on August 18th 2007, so we contacted BT and made arrangements to hand over our service to VM and port the number (still no intention of using it) We contacted Sky and thanked them for there service but we can get most of what we watch cheaper and again thanked NOW and emailed the world that we would be on our new email soon.

The day arrived, and so did the install team, two geniuses straight from a Harry Enfield sketch!
oooooohhhh aaaaahhhhh ermmmmm (cup of tea me thinks to show faith)

They brought our shiny new V+ box, we thought what the hell we're making such a saving we'll pay the £150 for their version of the Sky+/HD box.

You also have to remember that Virgin Media have taken over NTL so it's using their existing cabling network that was so thoughtfully put in all those years ago by those hard working caring chaps who dig up your gardens and paths and plant a cable, unprotected about 3 inches under the ground!

So they open up the little grey cover on the front of the house and more ermmmms, it would seem that this cable was in fact in use by our neighbour, "was it we asked?", "Ermmmm yeah" was the climax of the moment! Do they not have their own I queried "ermmmm No" wow you could have knocked me down with a Virgin TV Setup manual (if they ever thought I would have actually needed one, but they obviously didn't)

Anyway, they actually manage to resolve this by adding a splitter device to share the cable, (clever stuff this) and then they run a line up the house into the loft. Then they have a clever idea, why don't we use the Sky cabling that's already here and running down the back of the house and feeding the kit in the lounge. (you have to realise that I am not actually aware of this clever plot!) I get asked where I would like the broadband, so with much excitement I show them into the third bedroom(ha ha ha, most of you have one of these it's what they call bedroom 3 so they can hike your council tax up, but the only thing you can get in there is a cot) I digress, back to the two geniuses, and their ability to solve problems...

After approx 30mins of shouting between the loft and the lounge the time has come to turn on the V+ box and see what happens...and amazingly it works, so before they could tidy up I asked if they had the cable for the HDMI link as this is why I bought it, "ermmmmm, what's that?" OK! a little bit of a stunned response, so I explained and they thought, oh yeah we got one of those in the van, we took it out when we opened it up yesterday! Hmmm I thought wonder if they left out the installation manual etc at the same time. So we got the cable and with the power of all three of us we managed to actually set it up to work via the HDMI link, everyone learnt something that day I can tell you.

Ok, what about the Broadband, here you go one CD. What no setup, help etc. Nope not a sausage that's your problem in short. OK I thought, working in IT for the past 17 years I thought, that was something I would rather tackle without the aid of the chuckle brothers.

Oh...... wait a minute, what about the phone? Ahhhhhhh, ermmmmm you see the problem is... the cable is broken and we will have to organise a re-pull, a what? a re-pull, oh right what's that then? Someone else will have to come and relay the cable as it is damaged. When will that be? later this afternoon, oh ok, I said like a complete pillock! and off they went.

Approx 3 hours later the door bell goes and it's my neighbour, guess what they have no phone has someone been doing something to the VM line? (now you can be assured that we get on great with our neighbours and still do) It would seem that the cable has been damaged and they have no phone either, no problem I tell them and explain the situation.

Now you may think I've rambled and rambled in this review as I have nothing better to do and you would be right, as it's now 3 months and the neighbour and I still do not have a phone, I do not even have a phone line into the house, we have between us made over 50 calls to VM and repeated our stories in such a way that if we got royalties we would be as rich as J.K. Rowling, we have had 3 teams all appear to do a re-pull only to say they can't until the construction teams have made a hole in the path to make access to the cables.

So this is where we are now, we have both cancelled our direct debits for services we do not have, we are both leaving VM and going elsewhere and we are strongly recommending that everyone steers well clear of VM.

Members' Comments onpeds's Review

• Clair on 23rd Oct 2007

  I can't remember the last time I laughed reading a review so much, it was very well written.

• NikkiBergh on 23rd Oct 2007

  I found this review helpful because..it mirrors my bad experience with Virgin media.