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Has Virgin cast a hex on my Telewest service?
Richard Branston seems to have had an effect on services at NTL-Telewest, now rebranded Virgin Media under a deal with the be-jumpered entrepreneur.
I had few problems with my service in Islington, North London, until about three weeks ago in the run-up to the launch of the new-look company. The service has since gone down three times, on each occasion for more than a day, and on two occasions I lost both the TV service and my Blueyonder broadband.
Even when the service is on, some of the TV channels are on bit-rates so low as to be barely viewable and a couple of the Discovery channels seem to be unavailable more often than not.
Postcodes that have suffered most of the recent problems are favoured habitats of London's mediacrats, so what this is doing for the new Virgin Media's image is anyone's guess.
The flashy new Virgin Media site is full of offers but lacks the service status page of the old Blueyonder site on which you could check out problems in your area – or if the page is there, the search engine can't find it.
I can, however, report that Branston's promise to improve customer relations has had some effect. My broadband went down for the third time today, for the first time after the rebranding, and the old-style automated voice has been replaced by a cheerful, young (dare I say Virginal?) woman's voice running through the numbered options.
Telewest's Liverpool-based support staff are still on the job, and they have always been helpful and friendly in my experience. They tell me my latest problem is not district-wide, which means I have to wait three days for someone to come round.
Meanwhile I await Virgin Media's explanation of why its services have deteriorated and I am checking out the alternatives.
The status page for ex Telewest is at http://status2.virginmedia.com/vmstatus/summary.do?category=portal&app=status
Posted by Marc | February 15, 2007 12:22 AM
You are lucky Clive as you do not have the NTL version where you are told that it is your equipment that is at fault. I no longer complain because it costs too much waiting at 10p per minute to get a useless response. Eventually they cure the fault at their end. Now I am waiting for a BT line so that I can get a proper broadband service. Surely none could be worse than what I suffer now.
Posted by misceng | February 16, 2007 8:21 PM
I have the same issues (although I didn't bother wasting my money on the phoneline fro NTL.
I was suprised previously that the service was better than I expected from NTL. Now it is poor to unusable. The price is too high for this service and I am contacting BT too.
Posted by karen | February 27, 2007 9:18 PM
i am fed up with Virgin Media.. My internet has now been down for almost two days.. I have goods for sale on E-bay but cannot access it to find the buyers.. this is costing me not only money but my reputation.. not good enough! never had any bother with NTL. I may have to switch...
Posted by fran | March 10, 2007 12:52 PM
This is beyond a joke! I live in the Glasgow area and can't access any secure sites and can't upload anything (two things I need to do for my final year in uni...) THEN on top of that, the damn landline isn't working either! So it seems if I even want to complain to this incompetent company I'll have to be charged at mobile rates. ARGH! If anyone wants to test their connection goto http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html Mine comes up with an error. Ha.
Posted by Jeni | March 11, 2007 6:57 PM
As you say there no purpose in complaing online as it costs at least 10p per minute & you get nowhere.I would however like to be able to speak to someone & at least have some sort of explanation or an apology for my emails bouncing
Posted by Keith | September 6, 2007 2:18 PM
As you say there no purpose in complaing online as it costs at least 10p per minute & you get nowhere.I would however like to be able to speak to someone & at least have some sort of explanation or an apology for my emails bouncing
Posted by Keith | September 6, 2007 2:20 PM