Virgin Media, www.virginmedia.com Review

Overall Rating

I moved into a student house with a friend and my girlfriend at the start of September. We were initially going to go with BT as it was cheaper (line is £11 + O2 Broadband at £7.50 a month and I have had excellent service in the past). Anyway, turns out BT couldn't find the house and would only give us a line if we paid the installation fee ~£125 and if they found a line they would refund us, we didn't want to risk it so we decided to go with virgin which worked out to be £22.75 a month (based on line rental at £11 and broadband 10MBit with first 3 months at £16 per month) compared to ~£19 for BT, not much in it we thought. Anyway, looks good, free delivery and very easy to order, I was quite impressed! Then the fun began... We got an email within a few days telling us that they couldn't install it until the 10th of September even though we ordered it around the 24th of August their engineers were too busy so we would have to wait. I rang them and said could I install it myself as I remember seeing this on their website as an option. I was told this was not a problem at all when would I like it delivered I had a choice of morning/afternoon or all day so I chose a date/time that was convenient. I then had to get my girlfriend to ring them back to rearrange the date as I wouldn't be there for the first date, again no problem we were told so we were quite happy (significance of 2nd call you will see later). So we move into the new house and the box arrives and I set about installing it, I manage to get the broadband to work, even though their broadband client isn't very helpful when other wireless networks are available from other houses as it seems to cling to them and you can't select which network to join (I have heard that if you uninstall it you can use normal microsoft wireless controller which fixes this problem). I then find the phone doesn't work so I ring virgin again and they send an engineer over within a few days (I thought they were too busy to install it?-but they can come and fix my phone without knowing how long it will take??) Engineer comes over and fixes the phone, turns out it was disconnected down the road (maybe because it was a BT line last year??) I should point out that in the installation pack there seems to be no information about your phone number and I only worked it out by ringing my mobile once the line was fixed.

So it's now fixed, installed and working! Is this the end of my troubles? Nope, only just getting started! The engineer very kindly suggested that if I rang 150 (customer services) they will refund me for the time the phone was not working which is great and they did which was very nice of them.

I then get my first bill through, I'm expecting it to be £16 but it comes through as £50! I ring them, and it turns out that the delivery was £25, even though I could have chosen the all day delivery which was £15 and I have been charged £25 for my broadband and line rental (i.e. full price). I ring up and complain and they refund the line rental but tell me they can't refund the delivery I have to write to "customer concern". So I dutifully write to customer concern and get a letter back politely telling me they will contact me within 7 days. Looks like it's getting sorter so I leave it to them. Anyway, about 21 days later I get my second bill, this time is it £25 (I paid the first one minus the refund for the line being broken because otherwise they charge you about £10 for a late payment). Again I ring 150 expecting they will just refund the difference like they did before, a little annoying but not the end of the world. I'm told that they can't do it, that the operator knows nothing of the sort of deal I signed up to (the 3 months reduced rate with free installation which is still running as of 23/10/09). I decide that I'm just going to get it sorted by customer concern, they told me in their letter they were going to ring me so I knew they had to have a phone number. After some trawling of the internet I found it! It is 01256 752 000 and is based at the virgin HQ (if you ring, ask to speak to customer concern and they should put you through). I ring that number and get through to someone and mention the letter and explain what has happened and why I think it happened. The woman suggested "why don't we go halves?" I was shocked and simply stated that I wasn't prepared to go halves as I was never told I would be charged full rate or a delivery charge (I would have at least taken the cheaper delivery...). Eventually she agreed to refund me the delivery cost and the line rental (and to do the next months as well) but said that she would have to put a note on the file to say no refunds are allowed to my account after these. I thought this was quite rude but I had achieved my aim and decided if anything else did go wrong I would just ring them again.

After all of this I have decided NOT to use virgin again once my contract finishes. For me the speed of the broadband is not noticeably different than I had before on 8Mb with O2 yet the customer support is very difficult to get through to (remember I rang them 21 days after they wrote to me and I had not heard from them in that time). I was not told I would be charged extra for my line rental or that there would be delivery costs and to top it off I got a customer concern worker who tried to haggle with me and only eventually agreed to refund me! It seems to me that their engineers being too busy to install would imply they should employ more staff or use the ones that fix lines to install (I self installed within about an hour and I was reading the instructions!).

If you have a choice, go with someone else, I wonder now if it would have been better to go with BT, and O2. I wish my experience had been better, but I'm afraid I will probably never use virgin again.