A big NO-NO.
After spending the morning ranting and raging down the phone, I’m madder than I was before I picked up my mobile. *Quick check to make sure my hair is still attached to my head and I haven’t burnt down the house by the smoke from my ears*
The issue? SLOW broadband. No, NON-EXISTANT. And YES I’m using capitals because I’m STILL RAGING!!! Student life is poor, you can’t afford a TV licence so that luxury goes out the door, along with heating (bring on thick jumpers and ski socks)… Say ‘TTFN ta-ta for now’ to comfy sofas, plush carpets, free printing, ‘adios’ Mother’s home cooking, and to your boyfriend only being a short walk away. So the one thing you do look forward to, the one priority of student life is internet. 4OD, iplayer, youtube, google, all-important FaceBook for those antisocial days you spend holed up under your duvet but still in contact with people further up the country, Wikipedia, and Student Central. The latter being the only ‘valid’ point for the extreme necessity of internet.
So after moving in to our very basic student house and having our top package Virgin broadband fitted (because we really needed someone to come in and plug a box into the wall for a £40 fee) its rather maddening to discover that we might as well not have bothered. Back to the house of Starbucks where wifi is only a small Latte away, sat upstairs on a comfy sofa and a sticky table (a cut above student living!) for the joys of internet. Although you do get a few odd looks when it appears that you are talking to yourself (i.e. When using Skype).
I called up today steaming from the cerebral cortex over the fact that once again, I’d spent 2 hours NOT getting anything up on screen. TWO HOURS of refreshing, ‘connection timeout’, running upstairs to turn off/on the box, running downstairs to retry the internet connection on my laptop, back upstairs to reset the damn thing, downstairs to attempt to load Google… well, I definitely didn’t need a spinning class today! Another thing that got my cogs going was their premium number for their helpline. WHY should I be paying to talk to Virgin because they can’t get their arses in gear? WHY? I’m a ‘customer’ - shouldn’t I get customer service included in my broadband contract? *more madness, stamping around and raging* IT’S BARBARIC. After another 20 minutes listening to the worst ‘dance’ music in years I’m about ready to run outside and hit a small child. But no. Because it’s not their fault. THIS IS VIRGIN MEDIA’S FAULT. My house mate mentioned the other day that she saw a Virgin technical man opening a wire box in town. My immediate response was ‘did you hit him?’.
I FINALLY get onto a ‘customer helper’ at the end of the phone line, and after calmly expressing my problem (ok so there may have been a few mini-rants, ‘it’s insane’s’ and ‘I don’t see why I should pay anymore’) he repeated Virgin’s on-going excuse that there’s ‘building work’ in the area, and they’re trying to fix the problem. This ‘building work’ is affecting LONDON. And I am in BRIGHTON. Sounds like rather more than just a ‘problem’. I don’t CARE if there’s building work, I DON’T SEE WHY I SHOULD BE PAYING FOR IT. I called early October and was told the same thing, and that it would be all sorted by October 26th. Come November 9th and I’m STILL waiting for my homepage to load! He then said that the building work would be sorted by November 23rd. At that I literally burst into tears. ‘Literally’ I said, not actually. I did go mad at that bit though. Scratch that, quite a lot mad, actually. I may have started exclaiming profanities, stuttering before screaming another ‘THAT’S INSANE!!!!’ at him, before ‘I’m not putting up with this! What is the procedure for ending the contract now?’ and then very quickly being put through to ‘Customer relations’ after a stuttering ‘goodbye’ from the poor man.
Onto Virgin call centre employee number two. Because they really give a rat’s arse. After having to repeat my account number AGAIN, and my area reference AGAIN, and the account holder’s name AGAIN and the account password YET AGAIN, I was speaking to someone better spoken at English, and by his voice just seemed a lot more powerful within the call centre. (That does not mean he was any use.) ‘Dazzling Deals’? You’ve GOT to be having a laugh. ‘The UKs fastest broadband’??? Yes, ultra fast at driving customers INSANE.
By the end of my FORTY-FIVE-MINUTE CALL on an 0844 number, I’d got us an oh-so-generous £33.50 credit note. *note sarcasm* They were unwilling to pay us back entirely for the last two months of NO internet usage, the stress, the struggles (two of my housemates had to run over to Starbucks last week to send their online assessments), and battles with their so-called customer ‘service’. VIRGIN is half the reason students finish university with high debt! This battle is NOT OVER.
And now, as I can no longer feel my fingers and my nose has turned blue (yes, I am in my house) and with no internet to speak of (except whine, moan and rant at the lack of) I’m just going to bang my head repeatedly on my bedroom wall (complete with no insulation) and write a snotty letter to Virgin Media. A stamp’s cheaper than a phone call.
