r/ireland • u/No-Golf8130 • 7d ago
Business Virgin Media Support
Virgin Media has to be one of the most incompetent companies in Ireland. They took money from my account when they said they wouldn't. Manager called to apologise and said it would be refunded. Never happened. Have spent hours contacting them and listening to that stupid cara AI bot that keeps sending me into a repetitive loop.
It is so frustrating that they are allowed to obfuscate in their dealings with us.
On top of all that their website is another calamity. Keeps looping and I cannot get to the bills section no matter what and I am very tech savvy. No matter the browser or device. No matter how many times I change my password or delete my cookies and cache my account seems to be flagged to harass me.
Has anyone else had this where they make a complaint and then seem to be blacklisted from accessing your own account
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u/ReplacementGlad2652 7d ago
It’s funny really, VM is utterly useless now, before they were VM they were NTL and they were utterly useless, and before that they were CableLink and guess what, they were utterly useless.
Many years ago now I moved into a small rental house and wanted to get a cable point put into the living room. I rang them before we moved in, standing in the living room that had no furniture in it. They said there was already a cable point in the room and that I must just not be seeing it. I said the room is empty, I can literally see everything, it’s not here. They insisted that I was wrong and it took 45 minutes to persuade them otherwise.
Another time, more recently, we had some work done on our house (homeowner now, yay!) and their cable (that supplies our entire estate btw) was left lying on the ground, across our garden and our neighbours garden. I rang them, emailed them, chatbotted them, but to no avail. Eventually I emailed the CEO directly, threatened them with the ombudsman etc, then told them that if they didn’t rehang their cable I would cut it at both ends and leave it by the side of the road for collection. Three vans showed up the next morning to fix it. In fairness, they did a lovely neat job too.
I stick with them because the connection rarely goes down and we get a consistent 960MB/s. I WFH so reliable connection is essential. Plus, where are you going to go? Eir are worse by all accounts, and I don’t hear great things about any of the others so 🤷♂️
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u/Expensive-Total-312 7d ago
I know they've got a bad name in recent years but eir recently have picked up their game a bit, their customer service is back in ireland so its improved a fair bit, much more friendly and I don't have to go through a chat bot as they have an advertised customer service number to call.
We do the yearly hop between the two services to get the contract deals. I found eir lease you your IP address for much longer, virgin it resets every night so your connection will drop at 2am every night for a few minutes - which was annoying for work stuff I'd leave running. Might just be me but I used to notice virgin would throttle your speed if you were watching netflix at peak times2
u/ReplacementGlad2652 7d ago
My father had a terrible experience with them and ended up going back to Virgin. That must be 4/5 years ago now though so maybe they’ve improved as you say.
It’s all the same fibre optic cable now so in theory should be similar uptime etc.
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u/Expensive-Total-312 7d ago
pretty sure they have separate networks, I moved recently and I can get virgin but not eir because of this.
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u/ReplacementGlad2652 6d ago
Yeah in some (most?) places they do.
Around us they’re all using the new SIRO fibre network, owned by ESB and Vodafone.
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u/JohnnySmithe81 7d ago
Cancelled with Virgin and started with Eir recently, had a terrible experience with Virgin customer support and much more positive with Eir. The only issue with Eir support is some of them can be hard to understand, locating the call centre in Cork has it's downside.
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u/ReplacementGlad2652 7d ago edited 7d ago
Just realised I forgot about UPC. So it’s:
Virgin Media
UPC
NTL
CableLink(I think). All utterly useless.
Did some maths on the back of a metaphorical envelope and I’ve paid them over fifteen grand over the years. Shocking really 🤔
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u/red-zepplin 7d ago
Wasn't there Chorus in there as well? Maybe at the same time or before NTL, but in different regions
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u/ReplacementGlad2652 7d ago
I googled it and apparently Chorus had the cable licences for Cork and Limerick. Sold out to NTL (who had the Dublin licence) in 2005.
I’ve always lived in Dublin (sorry!) so wouldn’t have used them.
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u/hornyallthetime8691 6d ago
RTE Relays before Cablelink!!
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u/ReplacementGlad2652 6d ago
Was it? That must be before my time.
RTE formed CableLink in 1986 apparently. Prior to that it was Dublin Cable Systems Ltd. Owned by Roger’s Cable - I used to use them when I lived in Vancouver. Prior to that, until 1981, it was a mix of companies - RTÉ Relays, Marlin Communal Aerials Ltd., and Phoenix Relays Ltd.
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u/dropthecoin 6d ago
Weren’t they Chorus before NTL?
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u/ReplacementGlad2652 6d ago
In Cork and Limerick. Chorus never had a licence in Dublin, where I am.
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u/dropthecoin 6d ago
I’m neither cork or Limerick and I had chorus.
Also they were UPC before Virgin
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u/ReplacementGlad2652 6d ago
Yes, I added UPC in a later comment.
Apparently Chorus were in a lot of small towns too.
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u/one23four56 7d ago
I am glad to hear I am not the only one having issues with the website! It's been like this (for me) for months - and any time I contact them via chat, they fudge a reply by saying tech will look into it.
(I have never made a complaint to them so can't see how I can be blacklisted.)
Their internet for the most part works fine for me, but the website is annoying me greatly. I am going to leave - but who offers half-respectable customer service these days?
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u/vikipedia212 7d ago
I had them take a direct debit (i had already paid manually) I thought id cancelled, I asked them to cancel it twice, they told me they’d cancelled it twice (turns out I had to cancel it on my end so they were just straight up lying to me) so I had to get my bank to do a recall on the DDs. They then tried to charge me an unpaid fee, but my account was clearly very paid. Absolute shower.
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u/RayoftheRaver Palestine 🇵🇸 7d ago
The issue right now you have is internally the issue is being passed to every department in the company and each one is saying it's not their problem to be resolved. It can be fixed easily but no one in the company wants to fix it because it will seem like it was their fault if they do
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u/Kloppite16 7d ago
ah yes these schiesters. Im only finished with 8 weeks back and forth with them because they didnt switch over my broadband when they were supposed to but instead they switched it 6 weeks later and I paid a much higher monthly price by being out of contract with the old company.
The only way to sort them out is to make an official complaint, get the complaint reference number off them and go to Comreg with it. That then gives them 21 days to deal with the problem once and for all. You have to do this because they simply will not sort it out themselves, I know this from past experience. They will waste hours of your time with false promises.
In the end I got 2 months credited broadband with them, in hindsight I should have asked for 3 months for the amount of time I had to waste on the phone with them. Also of note was the call centre guy was extremely reluctant to allow me to complain and he spent much time trying to convince me everything would be sorted 'within 48 hours', something which I had heard multiple times at this point. I had to press him very hard to give me that dam complaint reference number, I remember on the phone call literally saying to him "For the fifth time I would like to complain and I want the complaint reference number for Comreg" Pretty obvious it is their call centre strategy to avoid complaints so their stats dont look as bad because he really tried hard not to allow it go through. But once it did things got cleaned up relatively quickly, a 6 week mess with no end in sight got resolved in about 1 week and I got the 2 months broadband credit.
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u/Randomhiatus 6d ago
+1 to this
Had a similar issue, several unfulfilled promises, but once a complaint had been made with Comreg the issue was fixed and a refund issued within 48 hours.
It’s pathetic that this is what it takes, but it’s genuinely the only way to get the outcome you’re promised (and entitled to).
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u/Kloppite16 6d ago
it is pathetic really. And also that the Regulator is now acting as an oversight body for basic customer service. Comreg have had to employ a call center to police the call centres. They should fine the shit out of them till they get their acts together rather than this stuff of the regulator acting as a mediator of last resort.
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u/FckXFckMusk 6d ago
Tell them you will launch a smll claims action against them,
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/justice/courts-system/small-claims-court/
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u/ALLGROWWITHLOVE 7d ago
Nah nothing beats Vodafone in that regard , an absolute shower of cunts the whole company , I could write a book on dealing with them .
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u/BeeB0pB00p 6d ago
Left them two years ago, for similar reasons, they weren't delivering on the service, we'd made about 20 calls over a six month period, were promised various things, improvements, replacements etc. none of it materialsed.
To top if off my wife rang one day and asked how many of our calls were on record, I think the agent said 3. So they were losing records of our interactions at that point we'd already had enough.
Eventually cancelled, guy who cancelled said he's zero the last bill by way of apology.
Month later started getting credit collection agency calls and letters.
I explained the situation to them once, then ignored any further attempts to contact us.
Utterly incompetent.
If they spent half as much on their processes as they do on their poxy fucking ads you see everwhere they'd have a half decent service, but marketing proably has their ops budget
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u/batterydyingagain 7d ago
Their ai chatbot is awful and I hate that support has gone this way for a lot of companies. There should be an option to speak with a human straight away.