Virgin Media Part One (possibly of many)

"Lunchtime is Rant-time!"

Me. Just Now

Long ago, in the dark days before iPlayer, when the internet was the preserve of geeks and just a few normal people, when non-cable broadband connections of over 512k were extortionate and limited to London and a few other selected dignitaries; there was a company called NTL.

Despite its great product, it apppeared that their customer service was managed by a brain damaged chimp with no arms and legs. They made BT look good.

Then they became Virgin Media, and suddenly (you hoped) that things would get better. Richard Branson would VA the company, take on SKY and win better media service for us, the cheering loving public.

Sadly not quite.

Having just moved I need internet, phone and tv services. Looking at SKY and VM, it appears that VM have the best deal. Then I notice the little * that says "When you take a phone line for £11 a month". Luckily it was still cheaper.

So I called them up, and got a few bits of info from a helpful guy named Dan.

Then...

I called again to ask about installation and found:

1) Though my street is cabled, its not on their database so I need to get an engineer out to look at it.

2) Get given a phone number for the engineers that doesnt wrk

3) Call back, person seems unable to comprehend what I want

4) Call again, get given an alternative number which works

5) Leave a message asking for them to look at it, having been told only that "should be done within days". Clearly VM don't realise that most people are lost without the internet, I dont wish to spend weeks waiting!

6) Waited

That was Thursday, still no reply. Asked someone yesterday to look into it, and nothing...

I shall keep you posted. You'd think Virgin Media would like to help new customers... they have about a week before I go back to Sky.