A family has lashed out at Virgin Media Mobile for leaving their pensioner mother “in bad shape” after a saga that included wrongly debiting €5,000 for a €50 phone bill.
They have accused Virgin of shoddy customer service, just months after communications watchdog ComReg warned the company about standards.
It was only last August that the communications regulator, which polices the telecommunications sector, revealed its concerns about Virgin’s customer service.
Now, elderly Mary Fitzgerald, 72, and her son Luke, 39, have told the Irish Mirror that they endured a three-month ordeal due to “brutal incompetence” without “a word of an apology” and say they do not want other customers to endure similar torment.
Luke said: “It’s been nuts. It has taken so long to get sorted and the domino-effect in my life and my mother’s life of trying to resolve these messes has been incalculable, with work missed, stress caused and no real apology or explanation.”
His mum Mary said: “No-one apologised to me after all the trauma. It’s left a bad taste in my mouth. It’s been a nightmare. The experience has scarred me.”
Marketing consultant Luke explained: “It all started last November and only ended recently when Virgin repaid the €5,000.
“We went through months of contacting Virgin in store, by phone, web chat, email and on Twitter. It was so frustrating.
“Mother got so sick to the stomach with the stress that she cancelled a trip to Canada for Christmas.
“We’d spent weeks trying to get things sorted and we were killing each other in the process, trying to figure out what was going on with Virgin with no support from anyone.”
He added: “It began when I learned how much mother was paying with another company, so I decided to move her to Virgin.
“I have an account with them and it had been pretty much hassle-free.
“I thought it’d be simple enough to get her set up and, as the monthly bill was so low, I said I’d look after it for her, being a helpful son and all that.
“Mother went into a Virgin shop for them to set up her new account with her existing mobile number.
“Somehow, they managed to give her a different number. When she went back, they sent her to a different shop to get the phone unlocked.
“Whenever mother rang from her phone, there was a different number appearing on our phones - yet none of us could call back to this mysterious number because the line wasn’t working.
“That is unbelievably bad service. You couldn’t make it up. We spent hours either standing in queues at Virgin shops or waiting on hold on the phone or online.
“I live in Dublin and mother lives in Waterford. She went to the Virgin Media shop three more times to look for help.
“They eventually told her to call Virgin’s customer service, which I did for her, as my name was on the bill, but they wouldn’t talk to me, only her.
“By early December, we’d made five or six calls but no-one could explain what was going on.
“Virgin finally got the account working last December 9, but there was no word of an apology, despite multiple requests for a manger to call us.
“The phone was useless to mother in November. The service wasn’t there, yet we still got a bill, but I didn’t want to waste any more time ringing Virgin.
“It was to be paid by direct debit, but I then got a letter, saying that I owed a late payment fee, so I decided to ring them at that stage.
“I was on hold for an hour-and-a-half but didn’t get through. I then got another letter, saying that I owed a double late payment fee.
“I tried live web chat and calling and emailing them.
“Eventually, I was told that my payments had not been received because the operator took down the wrong IBAN.
“The IBAN error was corrected and I paid the late fees anyway to get my mother’s phone active. I emailed them with a complaint but no-one responded.
“The bill was €50 for the two initial phone bills and the late fees – but, then, the agent who was taking that payment on the phone charged me €5,000 instead of €50.
“As soon as I saw the €5,000 debited, I rang them, tried again via live chat, and also on Twitter.”
Luke tweeted that there was a “total lack of urgency in resolving it” and told his 1,600 Twitter followers: “This is soul-destroying sh*t!”
He said that he tried to reach Virgin Media by phone, email, live chat online, and on Twitter with tweets and direct messages (DMs) to get help.
After Luke tweeted about it, Virgin tweeted back to ask him to move the conversation into DMs and he was eventually reimbursed for the €5,000.
Luke said: “I emailed them with a formal complaint. I was given €50 credit on my broadband account as a gesture of goodwill.”
Virgin Media said in a statement to the Irish Mirror that the “amount that was inadvertently charged” was “refunded straight away the next day”.
The spokesperson added: “We have apologised to our customer and we’re happy to have resolved this matter for them.”
The fed-up Fitzgerald family has decided not to lodge a complaint with the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg).
Luke said: “We’ve had enough red tape to last a lifetime in the past three months and I’ve zero confidence they’ll do anything or it’d be worth the hassle.
“But it would be great if they took action. I asked Virgin multiple times for my queries to be escalated internally and it hasn’t been.
“It’s a story of brutal incompetence and complete lack of empathy for the human side of the damage caused.
“It’s never been about the money or compensation for us.
“I’m just angry that they’ve left a 72-year-old woman in pretty bad shape and not once has anyone acknowledged that or reached out to her with a simple apology.
“I was shaken by it, taking time out of work, missing valuable client work and snapping at everyone around me at home.
“The name Virgin Media will be a trigger point in our family for many years to come.
“The sad truth of it is, I just couldn’t be arsed changing providers as they’re all as bad as each other.
“Money’s money, but it is the complete disregard for customers. This is the worst case I’ve ever seen, bar none.”
ComReg, which can be contacted via its comreg.ie website, is responsible for policing and regulating the electronic communications sector.
It can seek a High Court order for a financial penalty of up to €500,000 for breaches of the European Communities (Electronic Communications Networks and Services) (Access) Regulations 2011 and can also seek a declaration of non-compliance and a failure to comply could lead to contempt of court proceedings.
Last August it expressed concern about customer service at Virgin Media, which won several customer service awards in 2018, saying: “ComReg is concerned by the recent problems that customers are experiencing in contacting Virgin Media’s customer service.”
