If you can, Don't!

Once upon a time I used to get my cable Internet from a company called Telewest. As a company they were rubbish. When you rang it took ages to get through to anybody and when our phone went down it took three days to repair it. But I put up with it because their Internet was absolutely amazing. It didn't stop, it didn't slow down, it just worked, twenty four hours a day seven days a week.

Then Telewest were bought out by Virgin and I thought great, fantastic broadband with better customer service. How wrong can you be?

Firstly I am supposed to have 10meg, however that is only on a good day with the wind behind it. Somehow Virgin Media manage to achieve what is supposed to be impossible with cable and that they advertise doesn't happen, it slows down when the net is busy. That is of course if it is actually working at all which just lately is not that often. And even if you actually get Internet access the chances of their e-mail servers working as well are very slim.

They have also achieved something else that I thought was impossible, even worse customer service than Telewest! Their website is so complicated and has so many offers that their own staff don't understand it and their pricing policies are designed to penalise long standing customers and to suck new customers in despite the fact that they can't actually provide the service they advertise to exsisting customers.

When you ring to report a fault you wait for anything up to an hour just to speak to anybody and they even offer five different choices of music to listen to while you wait. A sixth option to actually talk to somebody however seems beyond their capabilities. Yet ring to try and pay your bill and you are through to somebody in seconds!

Their advertisements on TV say that if you can you should. I would say if you can don't, because if you do you will regret it.