Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to give a word of warning to anyone who is thinking of moving their telephone/TV service to Virginmedia, and to let people know how they treat their customers.
On Monday night, I received a phone call from the British Consul in Bolivia to say that my brother had been taken very seriously ill whilst on holiday. My sister in law, who was with him, was unable to use her mobile phone inBolivia, and the hospital where my brother had been taken could not arrange for her to make international calls. The British Consul gave me the hospital number and asked me to contact her. She was totally alone in a country where she couldn’t speak a word of the local language with her husband critically ill in hospital. Needless to say, I have made a number of lengthy telephone calls toBoliviathis week, also to my nephews inAustralia, and subsequently toChile, where my brother has now moved and is dying. Obviously, you don’t consider the cost of the calls at a time like this, and I assumed that I had spent round about £100 in phone calls through our Virginmedia line.
At lunchtime on Friday, I received a call from Virginmedia’s Debt Prevention Team asking to speak to my husband (our account is in his name). He was at work, but I gave them the account password and they then told me that they were concerned that there had been a lot of unusual international activity on our phone account. I was initially quite impressed because I thought that they were checking that it wasn’t being used fraudulently. I told them that I had been making the calls, and that it was the only way my sister in law could contact anyone whilst my brother was dying. Virginmedia then told me that I had spent £111 on calls, and unless I paid £60 with my debit card there and then, they would block the line from making international calls. The assistant wasn’t in the slightest bit interested that one of my closest relatives had literally hours to live and I needed to keep in touch with my sister in law. I didn’t have my debit card available, and they wouldn’t accept a credit card payment, so I had to wait until my husband got home from work to make the payment. In the meantime, they blocked me from making international calls to my sister in law who was trying to cope with her husband dying on the other side of the world.
My husband called the accounts department at Virginmedia when he got home. He paid for the international calls, and expressed his extreme disgust and shock at how they had behaved under the circumstances. The woman he spoke to was clearly reading from a script, and would only say repeatedly that she ‘was sorry for any inconvenience that had been caused’ and that it would take up to 48 hours to have our service restored.
We have been customers of Virginmedia since they took over NTL, and had been continuous customers of NTL’s predecessors for around 15 years. Our monthly bills average about £70, and have been paid by direct debit every single month without fail. To block our account under these circumstances for the sake of £111 leaves me speechless. But not as speechless as the email I received from Virginmedia this afternoon asking us to complete a customer satisfaction survey on the call my husband made to them yesterday! We will be responding appropriately.
I will find a way of contacting Richard Branson to let him know how his staff treat their customers, and will be posting this anywhere I can think of, but in the meantime, if you are thinking of changing any of your services to Virginmedia – think again.
