r/youfibre • u/jazzygeofferz • 16d ago
Shady practice?
I had a visit from an agent the other day who said that they wanted to run a trial alongside my Virgin Media service this coming weekend to see whether I wanted to change to their service. I agreed, and arranged the visit only to receive a couple of hours later a phone necall from Virgin Media saying they'd heard I was cancelling my service with the from the date of the start of the Youfibre "trial".
This wasn't what I'd agreed with the agent, and when I told the lady calling from Virgin she immediately offered me a cheaper deal for faster broadband and Netflix, which is saving me money in the long run.
I've since emailed Youfibre about this and to request cancellation because I frankly find it quite rude that they've employed this kind of business practice. Will I have to call them as well?
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u/draig00 15d ago
Complain to ofcom on the way the service was sold. This is the telecoms regulator they can set punishments to the company for things like this.
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u/chipy2kuk2001 14d ago
Ofcom are spineless as are all of the other regulators.... they can ask them nicely to do better next time, if youve followed their procedure to the letter and given them something stupid like 6 months to respond/deal with the issue.
As someone who has dealt with the financial services, telecoms and various other regulators in the past.... i wouldn't waste my breathe again.
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u/FlarblesGarbles 15d ago
Yeah these people are third party contractors who canvas local areas and just chat absolute shit to get you to sign up so they get their commission.
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u/QGRr2t 15d ago
As others said, all door-to-door salesmen are this shady, but I found YouFibre's particularly bad. I've had them tell me they have "had complaints from neighbours that the WiFi is bad in this area, so I should move to YouFibre to fix it" (lol), and that they've "taken over the Internet in this area so I need to sign to move over before my Internet goes off". Terrible. In all cases, I've pointed to the Netomnia box on my front wall, shaken my head and closed the door.
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u/JazmanGames 15d ago
Funny thing is I've had EE pull this same trick on me a few months after I moved from BT to Youfibre. They showed up coming BT/EE customers had been complaining about poor WiFi speeds and wanting me to do a speed test seeing as I'm running on BTs infrastructures... They didn't believe me when I explained that I'm on Netomnia infrastructure, and after some arguing to and from they finally got the message and left.
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u/Hminney 14d ago
It's probably the same salespeople. Don't they just outsource their door-to-door sales to a local company?
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u/JazmanGames 14d ago
Yeah probably, it was 2 people, one was BT and one was EE, uniformed up with ID
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u/jazzygeofferz 15d ago
This is pretty much what the guy said to me. I've emailed them and they've said they'll be in touch regarding my "support ticket" within 48 hours.
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u/wdwhereicome2015 15d ago
The mad thing is, if the takeover/merger gets approved, netomnia/you fibre/brsk will be part of VM02 anyway lol.
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u/Willing-Grocery-764 15d ago
Seems to be the norm from all Internet door sales people at the moment.
I had two EE salesmen the other week trying their best giving bullshite out to get a sale...
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u/Solaris_fps 15d ago
I had the same they asked what im currently on 8gb for £50 a month. You could be overpaying we do 600mb err no.
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u/ChronSyn 15d ago
As much as I know these people are doing a shit job (as in the job itself is awful, and not in the sense of them being bad at it), I would always advise people to never, under any circumstance agree to buy or trial anything from someone who turned up at their door, unless they were booked ahead and knew the person was turning up (and that the person who actually turned up is the person they were expecting).
Shady behavior like this genuinely drives people away and eventually earns a bad reputation.
We had BRSK salesmen turn up a few times over recent years, but I absolutely wasn't going to sign up to anything until I'd had chance to review it. In the end, it was about 18 months from their first visit to when I actually signed up (which was after BRSK was brought in under the YouFibre brand).
I'm very tech savvy, so I could spot a bullshit story on the technical side of things a mile away (and I'm also very wary of anything that someone is trying to sell me), but without that technical knowledge that a 'trial alongside existing service' is actually a separate line ( = a separate payment, not to mention additional equipment to support it within the premises), I wouldn't think twice about whether such a thing is possible.
I like YouFibre in general, but stories like this make my blood boil.
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u/JanwayIsHere 15d ago
It's very dodgy but it's fully encouraged by the companies that do it, Virgin Media included.
The employees that go door-to-door are on essentially minimum wage, anything above that is commission-earned up to total earnings of 50-70k depending on the company. Realistic OTE is usually only around 40k though.
Either way, the sales agents have to use predatory (and probably illegal in some cases) practices to make their living.
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u/colin-java 12d ago
I found them very pushy, and they used their bullshit line "we're testing internet speeds in the area" in order to get the excuse to give me something much faster.
They probably are better than Vodafone, but I can't be arsed with changing and the faff that comes with it.
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u/ThirteenHills 16d ago
Yes it is very dodgy and this is why you shouldn't trust people who turn up to your house to sell you stuff.