Any VirginMedia Customers out there

[milla03]

VirginMedia are doing a Mobile Broadband offering for existing Cable and ADSL customers from £5/month (1Gb usage): http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html...nd/mobile.html

I've just signed up for this, having spent my lunch hour trapsing around the local shopping centre playing the operators off against each other. The dongle is free (although there's a £4.88 shipping charge), the contract is for 12 months and costs £5/month (for my usage level) and my dongle would have been delivered tomorrow, but I asked for a Friday delivery.

To get the £5 offer you need to either be a Cable L or XL subscriber, or be on Virgin Nationwide Unlimited. The offer expires at the end of June. Other T&Cs apply. The only painful bit was being passed from VirginMedia Customer Services in Newcastle to Virgin Mobile Customer Services in Liverpool to Virgin Mobile Sales in India!!!!!

[tonybro]

I used to work for them and know what the service people are like......

That's all I'm saying on the subject!

[milla03]

Given my new 500Mb data package for my Kaiser, I've cancelled this now and arranged for it to be shipped back. This time, I got through to an English call centre and made the arrangements inside a couple of minutes. Makes me wonder, why send calls for new business to overseas call centres and have the language problems at all if you've obviously got staff UK based who could do it?

[tonybro]

Don't know, Stuart! Does my head in just having the call sent outside the UK.

I know economics come into play but surely the cost of fixing the f**k ups that ensue is greater than the savings created and the fact you have a very unhappy customer.

I hold a few yardsticks by which I measure whether I will consider giving them my business: -

Do they use premium rate numbers for calling them (especially support)?

Do they regularly ship calls outside the UK to be dealt with?

If the answer to either is YES then I don't do business with them - they'll learn as more people adopt this attitude.

[fowljr]

You'll probably find that the cost of failure is hidden in another budget line, so on paper, overseas call centres look cheap!!