Virgin Broadband Reviews

My experience in detail: I order M250 Fibre Broadband and am given the date 03.10.2024 for installation.

That is then changed the following day without explanation to 05.10.2024.

On Friday 4th October, a female representative rings me at 12:55 PM while I am out at lunch. She tells me she will ring me back at 3 PM the same day. She does not.

I wait in on Saturday 5th October. No one arrives and I again receive no notification. I sign in to my Virgin account and see that my installation date has been moved to Monday 7th October. No notification received.

I contact their customer service via WhatsApp. The conversation takes three hours. I am eventually told that the work requires local council approval and that it can take up to 10 to 15 days.

Eventually, a fourth installation date appears: Tuesday 22nd October.

At 2:34pm on Thursday 10th October I speak to Komal from their preinstallation team. She assures me that I will get a much earlier date than the 22nd. This cheers me up. She asks for a special favour – that I give her the top rating of 4 in the automated text that will follow. I say 'sure'. She tells me to wait 24 hours after the text from the engineers announcing that the preinstallation is complete before calling for this earlier date.

I do exactly this at 7:08 PM ‎Friday, ‎11 ‎October ‎2024. After a long wait I am told that I will not get an earlier date and that I will be waiting until the 22nd.

I call them again the following day. I am told "concern team will get back to you in 24hrs." They don't. After 25 hours, I reply via WhatsApp and am told "my name is Harsh and you can mark my words that you will definitely going to receive the call back within next 2-3 working hours." Guess what? They do not. Just marking your words there, Harsh.

It is a catalogue of screw ups, misinformation and general incompetence that is beyond belief. Requiring local council permission is beyond their control. Everything else is not. The standard of English of their customer support is horrific. I have to make them repeat things constantly. They speak too fast, their intonation is all over the place and they don't know how to use prepositions correctly which when discussing technical aspects of media installation makes them close to useless.

It's one of the worst customer experiences I've ever had and I haven't even started with them yet.

I was with virgin media broadband for 20 months. I moved house while I was in contract which was £17.99 for 21 months. When I moved house I agreed to keep the same contract but they charged me more than £60 every month. After calling for several months they gave me a £280 credit but continued to take £60 each month. When it was due for cancellation, they didn’t let me cancel the contract and kept me for another 3 months even though I disagreed with the date I still couldn't cancel. Now they say it’s a mistake by staff. I was overcharged and lost a lot of money.

Tempted by low prices and promise of fast speeds, I am now trapped in a hell of no or intermittent service, and non-existent technical and billing support. My broadband has been out completely for days on end, and also intermittently cutting out for four weeks. Virgin neither warns, apologises, nor compensates us. I’ve had to conduct important meetings from my phone sitting on a wall outside the house.

When I have tried to contact them I get obsequious apologies and absolutely zero help. I submitted a complaint; they responded that “we just checked your service and it’s fine, we are closing this complaint” - even though their records should show that engineers and subcontractors had been sent to our road every day for two weeks! Oh and here's an email saying the prices are going up by 8% - received on a weekend when I yet again have no service.

In despair after an online presentation and online PhD examination had to be cancelled because of unplanned outages, I tried to cancel my contract. Was told I owed £200 in penalties for early cancellation. I refused to pay so much money for such a faulty product. They said, call 150 and speak to the technical team. I can’t call 150 because my landline is out. I call the costly number from my mobile and try to get through to technical support and get a recorded message - “there’s a fault in your area” - then bumped straight back to the main menu. It’s impossible to speak to a human or get hold of anyone who will take responsibility or can help us.

I have lost huge amounts of time and am going mad with stress and frustration. The worst consumer experience I’ve ever had, and it has been the same for every Virgin customer in my road - all of whom are switching at the first opportunity. If my suffering helps one other person to avoid this horrible catastrophe of a country, that would make me feel a bit better. The regulators should shut them down; they should go bankrupt. Going to try to post this now before the broadband goes down again

After contacting Virgin Media for my contract renewal, I was lied to. They denied it, then lied to me again, promised a phone call back that never happened, then lied again and then got the contract changed against my will, when I tried to cancel, I was lied to again, only after contact from the ombudsman I could finally close the account down and change. Never again Virgin, zero star is too much for their appalling customer service

I set up a broadband contract with your company in late 2022. The original set-up was problem-free, and we were fully up and running in our old flat on day one. Unfortunately, due to the current renting market and cost of living, our landlord chose to sell their property, meaning we needed to find a new home mid-way through our contract.

I had no issues maintaining the Virgin Media contract and transferring it to our new property if possible. So I phoned your team well in advance, 4th October, a month before our moving date, 4th November, to ensure this would be ok, and I was advised that it would be possible. Also, Your team could install it on our move date. I was delighted with this and gained my new landlord’s permission to have the installation.

The problems started three days before our moving date when I received an email informing me that the set-up would be delayed because it required permission from the two adjacent homeowners. This late notice did not give me enough time, and I needed to interact with neighbours myself when I was not even living at this property. This delay was unsuitable as I work from home, edit videos, and upload large files; my partner is a game developer. However, we were willing to try to connect with Virgin Media for the sake of high speeds, and I thought this might only leave us a few days without internet, so I worked on the permissions.
Unfortunately, the couple at number 7 were away on holiday and number 6 was an elderly lady living alone. It was challenging to ask for permission as any cautious person would be weary of a stranger knocking on their door in the evening, asking for personal contact information to get Wi-Fi with nothing more than an email from Virgin Media to validate the request. Why could your team not write to the owner of each property officially, allowing me to advise them to expect a letter, and could they help me. I think this would be a better process, especially for customers who are just moving in and unaware of neighbours, so it may be an improvement point for you to consider.

In the meantime, our existing service was stopped on November 2nd at 11:59 pm, a day early. Again, I was willing to overlook it as I thought it wouldn't take long to get a connection again.

Eventually, we gained permission, and I provided it to [email protected], who 1st emailed me requesting the details. They took three days to reply, confirm receipt, and longer to take action. Eventually, both neighbours received emails with permission forms and instructions to print, sign, and scan back in before sending it back. Again, your process of using only email electronic interactions meant that this was a problem, as neither of them had access to a printer or a scanner. So I had to ask me to arrange to print the forms, which I had to go to my parent's home, at my cost, as I also didn't have access.

I got the forms completed, but both neighbours wrote conditions on the form to make sure they got restoration of their property to their satisfaction. I then called customer service to speed up response and was advised there’s no direct way to speak to the “residential wayleave” department. You can only reach them via email, which wasn’t a fast response time again, and as I continued down this timeline, responses only got slower.

At this point, customer service finally offered a pocket Wi-Fi, which was irritating since no other time I phoned before was this given this option, and I advised I worked from home. I accepted this offer and received a pocket Wi-Fi with 250GB capacity until December 14th. I had already been without Wi-Fi for 10 days (I had to increase my mobile contract to cope with its use at my own expense).
The email response from the "residential wayleave" department. It took five days this time, and only to advise of a new problem, in that they couldn’t accept the forms, as they had been written on, not just a date and a signature. I didn’t see how this was an issue since their additional comments were making clear their expectations, and no one had advised how to share any expectations of the neighbours. The form still permitted with their signature. So, I had to repeat the process, inform my neighbours, and return to my parents to print off new forms. I got these back, but it took five days for any response, with no way to speed up the process as the team is uncontactable.

We were now three weeks without Wi-Fi, and the pocket Wi-Fi couldn’t support a working household with a 250GB data limit, so we had to constantly limit our Wi-Fi usage to stretch it out and make it last.
I was told that the earliest your team could install was December 14th, six full weeks after we moved in! You seem to get put to the back of the queue whenever you need to answer a question or issue raised by the uncontactable "residential wayleave" department. I asked to escalate this and spoke to someone on the pre-installation team. They said there was nothing they could do to bring it forward due to external work and then credited £75 to my account to compensate for the delay, as it was the best they could do.

I asked if I could speak to someone to help your company improve this process for future customers and was told I could raise a complaint. However, based on their experience, nothing changes as these processes have remained inefficient and have been this way for a while. Hence, I decided to write a review due to this lack of customer acknowledgement which does not align with the customer-first organisation policies.

I then waited patiently for the 14th and took the continuing financial impact as I had to travel to cafes or family members' homes. I use my phone data to do my work. Unbelievably, I received an email on December 11th, just three days before installation again, saying it was delayed. This was followed by a phone call from the company to tell me that the install date will now be the 30th of December. This would make it 8 WEEKS after my initial set-up date.
I had no confidence that the new date would be met! So I demanded to be released from my contract with no penalties and compensation, as the failure to deliver an acceptable service in an acceptable timeframe has long passed.

They released me from my contract with no exit fees and when I asked for the £75 credit on the account to be sent to me to help cover the cost I had taken waiting for them to provide a service, I was told they could not do this. I proceeded to ask why this was and they said that they had cancelled the account and therefore it should be sent to me automatically. I never received this!

I am appalled at the process and treatment of this affair and the lack of urgency to complete my move process and keep my business. I have been left out of pocket during a cost of living crisis and the company Virgin Media showed no remorse or customer care for causing me stress and an unnecessary financial burden.

Their website states "customer first company." But this is a lie!