Friday, November 09, 2007

Wiping the Smile Off Branson's Face

Well I must say Gatwick Airport has been a bit of a revelation. Credit where credit's due. But then again, I suppose arriving at 5am guarantees a lack of queues. Malaga here I come!

As I sit here in the departure lounge I have just been reading Tom Utley's column in the Mail. Mr Utley and I do not always agree, but his column today reflects an experience most of us have had when dealing with call centres. He's trying to cancel his Virgin Media cable tv, but they just won't let him. In the end he just cancelled his direct debit. They're now threatening him with debt collectors. Nice.

My point here is that I just wonder whether newspaper columnists should use their columns to parade experiences like this. I have little doubt that someone from Virgin's PR department will be on the phone to Mr Utley profusely apologising and that assuring him that no further action will be taken. While I am sure Mr Utley will be delighted that his nightmare has come to an end, I think of Mrs Miggins of 32 Acacia Avenue, Hornchurch, who won't be quite so lucky.

On the other hand, maybe Mr Utley's refusal to give in to the might of Virgin will encourage more of their dissatisfied customers to do the same thing. Let's hope so. Perhaps that might wipe that irritating grin off Branson's face. I doubt it, but it's a nice thought.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't want to cancel, I just want the service they intimated Id get. I was offered up to 4 meg if i gave them my land line calls (i hardly make any , so that's easy) at no extras cost. I started off at 3.9 meg which was great, then 3.7,3.5,3.2.2.9, you can see where its going, now in the evenings i get 356kb, which is actually worse than the .5meg I was getting originally.
BT will not look into it unless you are getting less than 400kb nor will Virgin. They blame BT, BT say its not their fault. The online help is usually overloaded and you leave an e- message. They dont reply. So you end up on a premium rate call line. This has happened to me several times, and it was only last night that a helpful chap said he would report it as a problem, but it might take 5 working days to sort out....
If they wind you up to 401kb, your'e no longer a problem, and you cannot complain.. I feel as tho' I was sold a pup.
I'm thinking of going back to half meg and taking my phones back....
Some service eh!

Anonymous said...

Branson is one of the most irritating men in Britain. He plays it all caring capitalism when in reality he runs one of the worst organisations for customer service in the world. Of course NTL's problems pre-date Branson but he has owned it long enough now to have sorted it out if he had any interest in doing so. I don't like the power of Murdoch but at least he seems to be able to employ people who know how to run contact centres.

Anonymous said...

I know how to put a smile on *your* face Iain ;)

Anonymous said...

Here, here! Anything to get that idiot off the airwaves. Had to fly Virgin transatlantic once - never again. The experience was defined for me by being handed a choc-ice during the film in such a way as to be made to feel it was somehow quite extra ordinary. I'll take BA any day.

How about lists, just for fun you know, of the top most over- and under- rated business people. Go on Iain, you know you want to.

Anonymous said...

No Iain, arriving at 5:00 am does not ensure that there are no queues at Gatwick. Last year I arrived at 4:45 am only to join a 2 hour queue for a BA flight to Funchal. Queues for other airlines were not nearly normal(whatever that is).

Anonymous said...

Personally I have quite a good impression of Richard Branson but I do think the Virgin reputation has been seriously contaminated since they moved into broadband provision.

Bernard Levin more than once devoted entire articles to moaning about companies, particularly gas and phones if I recall correctly. He usually got the particular problem sorted but it made no difference to the overall service.

strapworld said...

I recently moved to North wales - home of my ancestors! only to find my mobile telephone does not receive any signal in our cottage. Nor or many of the local roads.

So I wrote to vodaphone and pointed out that whilst I do have a contract with them which has months to run they are obliged to give me a service. I objected to be paying money each month for nothing. They agreed and cancelled the contract there and then.

Full marks to Vodaphone.

Anonymous said...

Check the small print on the contract. Some of these cable/mobile phone etc companies' contracts specify a time-frame tie in, usually either one or two years, during which period the contract cannot be stopped. Mr Utley and Mrs Miggins may well be in breach of contract if they try to stop early.

Understanding Uncles said...

Virgin Media manage to time and time again exceed my already high expectations of incompetence.
Whether it's being bounced from department to department on the phone while being told contradictory information ("You need to activate", "You're area doesn't need to activate you need a pin", "This isn't the department that deals with your area", "You don't need a pin you need to activate", *transferred to original department*!) or being instructed that I just need to wait for a CD to arrive that's different to the one I already have and that it'll have my pin in. The CD will eventually arrive only for me to discover that it's EXACTLY the same as the one I have and without a pin!

If possible I'd never use their services.

Unsworth said...

There's a balance to be struck here. I'm very pleased when journalists name and shame companies who are so totally inflexible (and crass) in their dealings with the public. Utley was right to cut off the Direct Debit - I did the same with the truly appalling Talk Talk (Carphone Warehouse or whatever it calls itself these days) as a result of their broadband fiasco. Subsequently various agents have threatened court action, but I've always demanded that they issue proceedings immediately and told them I intend to counter-sue. I'd relish a day or so in court with such people. Never happens, of course.

But sometimes journalists entirely lose sight of their audiences, talking about problems which bear no relationship at all to most people's lives.

This is quite revealing. For example, the trials of not having a nanny at present, or the tribulations endured on their last Caribbean Cruise, or how Courchevel has really gone to the dogs these days and so on.

Anonymous said...

Poor Mrs Miggins. She ha been the unsuspecting butt of my jokes for many a year. I had no idea she lived in Hornchurch.

Anonymous said...

I also decided to cancel my broadband/tv deal with Virgin. They moved their support call centre to India from where no-one could speak English that was intelligible to me. I also was unable to contact anyone to tell them about my decision so in the end I cancelled my standing order and then sent them a letter by recorded delivery telling them I'd cancelled my standing order/contract.
I've always felt strongly supportive towards Richard Branson. Unusually, and unlike most other high profile businessmen who've "risen without trace", his progress from schoolboy to multi-millionaire is clear and seems to be free of money laundering, child labour, political bribery and slush funds. Charges that he courts publicity are nonsense when seen against the daily publicity onslaught of Fatty Green pawing Kate Moss yet again.
But I can't forgive him for moving his support services to India then charging 25p a minutes to for a next to useless service.

old and angry said...

More power to Mr. Utley.
These people need bringing down a peg or two,"Won't let him "indeed!

Anonymous said...

A friend paid for the Sky installation of an elderly neighbour, after a year he went to get the direct debit csncelled (presumably so she could just watch Free To Air) but they would not let him because it was not for his address. He tried to explain that the bank account was his but could not get this through to the muppet in the Sky call centre. I think he also just closed the direct debit.

Chris Paul said...

These people are ALL grasping bastards. Always mis-selling and re-selling and inertia-selling and all the rest. They are NOT socialists if you don't mind me pointing that out!

I have had disputes with a few of them. A friend of mine works for one of the biggest mobile companies are says their salesforce are continuously taking people off service and putting them on again. They get a disproportionate commission every time they do.

One of these days I blog my Orange Story. Or my NTL/Tiscali Story. Or my Vodaphone Story ...

Anonymous said...

I've never liked Richard Branson. He seems a bit creepy to me - but that's a matter of taste I suppose.

But what exactly is the point of the Virgin Brand? Why should taking a load of disparate businesses and putting this brand name on them somehow cause a transformation? It all seems to me to be marketing style over substance.

Given a choice between Mrs Miggin's Pies and Virgin Pies I know which one I'd go for.

Madasafish said...

I suppose I'm just lucky. Few problems with Virgin broadband and their telephone backup is now very good (and they refund charges if it is their fault).

Anonymous said...

Whilst I agree with everything derogatory said about Branson,for so long as the alternative is Murdoch he will continue to have my custom.

Anonymous said...

We've all had similar problems with call centres. They are the bane of the customer-facing world.

Of course there are a few that are really good. They're run by companies who care about their customers and treat them accordingly, but they are a very small minority.

The purpose of most call-centres seems to be to cut costs and to rack-up a revenue stream as a slice of the cost of the incoming call that's paid by the customer.

I've always found that the solution is to forget the phone and use good old fashioned pen and paper and a recorded delivery postal service.

Given the situation that Mr Utley found himself in, I would have checked my contract to ensure that I was entitled to cancel, given them the 30-days written notice or whatever Virgin Media require these days and then cancelled the direct debit.

That way, they don't have a leg to stand on - and you don't even have to talk to one of their call-centre 'bots'. Nor do you have to go through about 5 levels of recorded message menus to get to the right department.

Personally I think Mr Utley is right to highlight this in his column. There are too many large companies to whom the loss of a single customer is of no consequence. Once that attitude develops, the only way the ordinary folk in Acacia Avenue will see an improvement is if the likes of Mr Utley make the most of the situation.

Old BE said...

Can Virgin really be worse than nPower?

Anonymous said...

"Can Virgin really be worse than nPower?"

Ha ha! Agreed - that would be a close call. I'd have to give them joint first place.

Anonymous said...

I was at that point a few months ago, after they had pulled the "on demand" TV channels. However, I phoned them up and was offered a cheaper package.

If they are failing to the appropriate service, they are breaching their contract. When the Sky channels were pulled, that was a failure to deliver the service as advertised at the time of the contract. I'd encourage Mr Utley to continue the fight, if it goes on long enough the costs of an uncertain legal action on Virgin's part versus the trifling sum to be recouped will probably make them go away.

Anonymous said...

They are all it.

With One Tel I got fed up of being called at 9am each Saturday morning from a call centre in India with a guy who hadn't read my file to understand I was on autopay and that the bill he claimed was not settled, had been settled.

Finally exasperated, I found a flyer from one of the papers where a company offered aboslutely everything/better services for £18.99 a month.

This was confirmed over an intelligent telephone conversation, and so the contract was sent to me tha same day.

When I received it, it was accompanied by another flyer the same I had received from the newspaper. $18.99 a month, yes !

The contract had a lot of fine print and there were a couple of minor additional services included which were not discussed over the phone.

When I looked more closely, the monthly bill was not £18.99 but £80.99 ! Of course over the phone they sound the same.

Blatant fraud in my view, but what can you do ?

Anonymous said...

I escaped from NTL and went to Sky the moment they offered Broadband.

I'm no fan of Murdoch but - the thing I have found with Sky is they get their phones answered! Quickly, by people who speak English and seem to know what they're doing.

So far, so good, as they say.

Anonymous said...

Erm, hang on a minute. This guy's wife rang up to cancel his account. Understandably, they wouldn't let her, and he refused to phone or write to Virgin, choosing instead simply to cancel the direct debit. Now, I'm no lawyer, but it strikes me that if you have a contract with a company and cancel your direct debit, you need to find another way to pay the bill. Which is what Virgin thought and why, quite properly, they pursued him for money that, by the ssounds of it, he properly owed them.

Anonymous said...

He's absolutely right to use his column to highlight this problem. Yes, it's self-indulgent, but it's also of wider significance.

Problems with cable providers and call centres are of a lot more relevance to normal people than high politics often is. And if there's one way to sock it to arrogant multinational companies, it's money-can't-buy bad publicity...

Anonymous said...

Branson is a self satisfied, grinning little groper whose one success was Virgin Records. Everything else he has done has stank of mediocrity. I had the same experience as Tom Utkey - I signed up for a package that included Sky One and when I stopped getting it I felt entitled to cancel the package - what a palaver! And I will deal with no company that employs Indian call centres for two reasons - one, they take jobs out of the UK and two, I can't understand a word they say. I had a huge row with Amex over this and was accused of being racist to which I told them the story of my immigrant grandpa, who arrived in the US without a penny, worked two jobs and eventually built up a successful business including some primo big city real estate. But for all his financial nous, bless him, he spoke broken English and I wouldn't expect him to be employed at a call centre. That shut them up!

Adrian said...

I don't know why newspapers print such ridiculous articles. Okay, I do, it's because they like to have a go at Richard Branson et al. But what's the situation here exactly? The guy couldn't be arsed to write Virgin a cancellation letter, and then he complains that they think he ought to be paying his bill for the services he's been receiving. What a numpty.

I've had a few problems with Virgin, but I do admit that sometimes I've exacerbated them by not dealing with them properly. And when I have asked for refunds for various things, they've always paid up.

So, they're not perfect, but all the telcomms seem to be much of a muchness, so I'd take a lot of convincing to take my business elesewhere.