An angry Edinburgh dad has scrapped his Virgin Media account after a week-long ordeal with their customer service team.
Richard Wilkes, from Clermiston, has spoken of his disbelief at being passed pillar to post by Virgin’s customer service team on Whatsapp.
Alongside him is another customer, who does not wish to be named, who has complained that Virgin Media have charged them £100 for a service they are not using.
He says that if they continue to operate in this manner, then more people will follow him in leaving their business.
The dad wished to pause his service for around two months while renovation work was carried out on his home but he was unable to do so.
The frustrated Edinburgh resident said that they tried every day for a week to try to bring about a solution but was left with no other choice than to leave Virgin Media altogether.
He told how multiple, long, drawn out and often confusing conversations with a mixture of customer service bots and real life humans left him with no answer at the end of each day.
At the end of his tether, he expressed his desire to quit Virgin’s services through its Whatsapp customer service - a process that would take several days.
On his ordeal, Richard said: “I started off trying to cut my services during a house renovation of roughly two months but at the end of seven long days, being hacked off and totally disappointed with the lack of care and service, I decided to cancel my contract.
“Every day I was asked if I wanted to continue my chat and even though I explained what I required I ended the day going back to their moving service even though I told them almost daily not to do so.
“Virgin needs to get their staff to read a message after a machine has put you in a direction of your choice.
“There were many times where I told them what I wanted and eventually they would tell me that they would sort it but never did.
“Being sent back to the same place you started every day hacks you off and certainly lets you know how little they think of customers by offering a service that doesn't work.
“After a couple of days we decided to cancel Virgin all together and will now be going with Sky as it is a no brainer.
“If this level of service keeps up on the WhatsApp chat then other customers may end up doing as I have.”
Another customer, who does not wish to be named, has also complained about a Virgin practice that charges customers a bill for a service they will not be using after they leave.
They said that they made the decision to reduce their Virgin Media package to broadband only after their bill was about to rise from £79 a month to £97 for the full TV Bundle.
The cost of living crisis was cited by the individual as being their main motivator as they felt the TV bundle was “not value for money considering the lack of content they offer.”
But after contacting Virgin Media’s billing team to inform them that they would be reducing their package.
They were met with a monster bill of £97 for the upcoming month, a month in which they were not receiving services outside of Broadband.
Upon calling Virgin Media, they were informed that they would have to request the refund once the charge had gone through, something that leaves the household around £100 short for an unknown period.
This was due to the automated billing service run by Virgin. They said that although the change was made well in advance of billing, that their systems had already produced the bill and that as a result nothing could be done.
On this issue, they said: “It is an absolute disgrace that a company sending a man to space is charging customers because they have antiquated systems that do not allow for a bill to be updated weeks before it is due.
“They asked me to tell my bank to cancel the bill but Santander said that it was not possible. They added that Virgin should be able to stop me from being charged in the middle of a cost of living crisis.
“They will end up with no one left if they keep treating people this way.
“You would think with the rise of streaming services that they would treat their customers better but all they are after is looking after themselves.”
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: “We apologise to Mr Wilkes for the poor customer service. We’ve now closed his account and offered a goodwill gesture, which he has accepted.”
It is understood that the anonymous Virgin Media customer was contacted regarding a refund on their account.
