On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 08:55:32 +0100, Brian Gaff wrote:

I have to say myself that I've had nothing but good service from Virgin
media. They come when they say they will and even rewire whole sections
of a street to get the line back up again.
its a little dearer than bt, but in this world i think you get what you
pay
for. Companies who are always having offers to get people on their
system obviously compromise on something. People on the ground cost
money as faults cannot be predicted and hence they can be busy one
minute and not the next.
Brian

My experience of Virgin Media has been pretty good right through from
the days when it was NTL. Outages, unlike those on poor man's broadband,
aka ADSL, have been extremely rare over the years and more to do with
when NTL merged with Telewest (over a two or three month period afaicr)
and then when NTL/Telewest bought the Virgin Media brand name (and a
whole lot of problems with the ADSL network they'd inherited with that
deal which compromised the reliability of their cable customers for at
least a six month period before it all settled back down to their
previous level of exemplary reliability).

On the very rare occasions when I've had to report loss of service, the
response has also been exemplary so I can't complain about the service or
its customer support staff. However, there have been times where Virgin
Media have behaved like insurance company swine whenever they've embarked
on a campaign to recruit more customers.

It's not the special 6 or 7 quid a month 6 month introductory offers for
a service level being charged (at the time) at the normal rate of 22 quid
a month to their existing loyal customers that annoys me so much as the
fact that these Johnny come lately customers were being offered an
immediate upgrade from the 10Mbps service, not to the promised doubling
for free 20Mbps speed promised at some time during the next 12 months but
an upgrade to 30Mbps for which they'd be charged the full 22 quid a month
at the end of the introductory period, leaving their existing *loyal*
customers to be treated like second rate garbage which really annoyed me.

I've no problem with VM making special introductory loss leader offers
to build up their customer base but I think it's a total disgrace when
they provide an immediate upgrade to a speed that's 50% faster again than
what was vaguely promised to their existing customers already paying the
full wack.

Sadly, it seems the insurance swine started a trend in maltreating
existing loyal customers simply in order to entice new custom. It seems
very few service companies these days attach any value to "Customer
Loyalty". It's almost as if they *want* to generate 'Customer Churn'
contrary to the tried and tested adage that "It's far easier to retain an
existing customer than it is to recruit a new customer".

In VM's case, I suspect they're abusing their high quality of service's
holding power to just short of its breaking point in order to maximise
their return on their investment in such a highly reliable service and
its support infrastructure.

ISTR a year or so back that VM had promised to upgrade the standard
30Mbps service to a 50Mbps service. I'm still patiently waiting but I
have a feeling that VM rescinded this particular promise a while ago.
Does anyone happen to know what the score is on this promised service
upgrade?

--
Johnny B Good