Virgin on the ridiculous
I am a Blueyonder internet customer. That is to say, I was a Blueyonder internet customer, until Telewest was amalgamated with NTL to become NTL:Telewest, and then renamed Virgin Media. They weren't perfect - one major deficiency being their refusal to allow me to self-install a modem in spite of the fact the cable has been laid in over 12 years ago, and their insistance that they can't install without their chimpanzee having a copy of Windows to sit in front of - but until the last week I thought their service was acceptable, at least. Better than BT, who are a bunch of crooks. I'd smugly sat here hearing the horror stories about NTL customer service in comparison, and felt reasonably happy with my choice. Not any more.
Last Wednesday my 'phone lines died - completely dead; no dial tone; no crackle; no nothing. Of course, I had no alternative but to call them up from another line - specifically a mobile. "I must inform you, sir, that you are being charged 10 pence a minute, plus your standard connection charge for this call." Since when did a faulty service become a profit centre? 17 minutes later (of largely waiting on hold, after jumping through silly hoops to satisfy the requirements of the chimp's script, in spite of the fact that it was quite clearly NOT my telephone equipment at fault, given that both lines had dies simultaneously) and "I'm sorry sir, I cannot fix this fault - it will have to be escalated to the engineering team". No shit, Sherlock! That, strangely enough was why I was calling to report the fault. Three minutes later the lines were both working again, but not before I'd had to spend 5 quid plus talking to a monkey.
Today my unmetered dial-up service isn't working. 4632 packets transmitted, 17 received. I'd say that's pretty much fucked. But can I report it? Can I bollocks. Trying to 150 to talk to someone and simply report the fault, and every path I follow ends up with a recorded message or "please phone our technical help line on 0906 blah blah for only 50p a minute". Yet again, they try to skin their customers to turn a service fault into a profit centre. Whatever happened to customer service, and talking to someone to simply report a service fault?
In spite of my difficulties with BT, I may end up having to bite the bullet and go back, just so as I can rely on having a service, even if they are too shady for words.
