Let Down By Virginmedia Weve Logged Your Dissatisfaction The Hidden Costs They Dont Warn You About

Author: Angie Petkovic

It isn't often that I air my dirty laundry in public so to speak or use social media to air my complaints, but sometimes, this platform really does provide an opportunity to get something off your chest.

At 7.30 this morning, my emails stopped pinging and there was a deathly silence from the old iPhone. Not a problem and sometimes even a relief, except when you realise this indicates an Internet connectivity problem! At apt, we have a business Internet account with Virgin Media which in turn supports both our PCs and our VoIP phone lines.

Using the 3G function, I logged onto the Virgin Media website and looked up 'known-faults'; as you can see from the photograph, apparently VM were kindly conducting routine maintenance to 'improve our level of service'.

Pulling out the most recent bill and identifying my account number, I put in a call to the 'free phone' business customer services helpline. Unfortunately, this service isn't available out of office hours and I was asked to kindly call back at 9.00am. Great! Here is a rundown of how I've spent my morning, as well as my associated complaints!

7.30am - last email received to the server and assumed start of the downtime. Visit the Virgin Media website and am informed this is routine maintenance (see photo)

8.00am - reach apt HQ and call Virgin Media business customer service - oops, called too early! First six staff arrive at the office. Cost to apt - salaries for six Staff and lost working hours for client projects

9.00am - after much twiddling of thumbs, call Virgin Media again; due to VoIP outage, this 'freephone' service is now charging me a delightful 14p per minute. On the phone for 2 minutes and then a further 6 minutes - cost to apt - salaries for 14 staff, lost working hours for projects and now £1.12 for the phone calls. Wait for a faults team member to call me back...

10.13am - receive a call from the very lovely 'Paul' from the faults department. Paul informed me that a) this was a routine maintenance outage, b) that we should have experienced a maximum 1 hour outage (currently nearly 3) and c) that our 'tunnel' was showing as live for at least the last two hours. Talks me through resetting all the boxes, checking the connection, asks me to call my IT people and then arranges to call back in an hour (which makes it 11.40 - no call yet at 12.10) cost to apt - salaries for 14 staff, lost working hours for projects and £1.12 for the phone calls

10.46am - call business customer services to make a complaint. Get through to someone who says she can put me through to faults - decline and ask to make a complaint. She listens and says that they are 'within their service level agreement, which states they must restore service within 24hours.' I highlight the fact that my problem isn't the outage in principle, it is the lack of notice of planned upgrades, to which she replies it is an unplanned outage! Refer her back to the website and highlight the message which I photographed. At this point she changes tack and then highlights that they couldn't have notified me about a subsequent fault (yes really) but that the planned outage should have been notified to us by text, email or letter, none of which were received. Length of call: 21 mins. Cost to apt - salaries for 14 staff, lost working hours for projects and now £4.06 for the phone calls.

11.00am - IT support arrives - no known problems, all the internal systems working fine. Cost to apt - salaries for 14 staff, lost working hours for projects and now £4.06 for the phone calls, £100 call out charge for the IT Support.

11.50am - miraculous return to service from Virgin Media.

Now, rant over, I have a little message for everyone at Virgin Media 1) Customers should be notified before a planned outage - yes, you do have my mobile, email and address, none of which you used, 2) with business customers more than domestic, there is more cost than just no Internet, 3) please don't just 'register my dissatisfaction' on my account, I expect to speak to someone that can actually help and 4) I look forward to receiving kind reimbursement / compensation for the problem!

Just one more thing - Virgin Media has had the worst outage record for my company since I started it 13 years ago - at the end of the contract, I will be moving and I'd personally recommend others to do the same!

Oh and if you would like to bother giving me a call, I can be reached on the office number 01242 250692 or alternatively you can speak to Victoria.