A sorry saga of lack of communication from two specialists in communication.
A series of letters. The first one was sent to both BT and to Virgin.net. and hopefully sets the scene -
Dear Sir,
I would appreciate if you would read this letter and then supply me with what you consider to be the accurate explanation of "where things went wrong" and exactly where -and why - the responsibility lies.
We have had broadband enabled at this address for several years. Our provider for the first few years was Nildram; last summer we switched to Virgin. All was fine. Until this morning.
When we tried to access the Internet we could not. We spent hours testing settings, talking to Virgin technical support and struggling to understand why we were not able to get on-line - all having been working Friday evening.
Eventually I decided the final measure would be to call B.T. and ask for the line to be tested - although the telephone was working properly we had had a minor "drop-out" problem a few months ago when there was a fault on a nearby pole.
Our line was tested while I waited on the phone. I was very surprised - and deeply dismayed - to be told that our line was no longer broadband-enabled. I could get no explanation of why this was the case - except for one possible "coincidence".
On or about December 15th, we decided to transfer the B.T. account name from J. D. to S. W. We both live here and this was a "personal house-keeping" decision. We had told the BT Customer Service Representative that we had broadband with Virgin. We were told this was fine but to ensure there was no problem we should contact Virgin to tell them, too. This we did. Immediately. So around December 15th. both Virgin and BT were made aware of the change of name on the account and the new account number. The Customer Service Representative at Virgin took the information but seemed surprised at being told this. ("Why are you telling me?", was the response) Nevertheless, both B.T. and Virgin assured us that all would be well. And it was - until today.
Now having ascertained that B.T. had disabled our broadband I got back to Technical Support at Virgin. We spoke to Daniel. In total for about an hour.
Daniel at Virgin assured us that it "is BT's fault". He embarked on a lengthy and detailed explanation - including some "techno-speak" but also outlining the way Virgin in effect rents the line through BT Wholesale.
I then spoke to Linda at B.T., who put me through to Bonnie at BT Customer Options, and who professed to know about broadband. She assured me that it was Virgin who had cut us off. It was not BT's fault.
So - now we are without broadband access, which is critical to our livelihoods, and BT and Virgin are each blaming the other.
To be fair to Virgin, Daniel did say he would try to fast-track us being put back on, even though this was down to BT to do. The response from BT staff was less than helpful.
Nevertheless, somebody, somewhere had to "pull the switch or press the button" that disabled our broadband access. Who did this and why?
My whole Saturday has been spent being passed around in circles from Virgin to BT and back - and within BT from department to department. You can imagine how frustrating this has been.
I would like to know who is responsible; I would like to be assured that nothing like this would happen again - to us or anybody else; I would like to be assured that staff training programmes at both BT and Virgin learn from this.
Yours sincerely,
No replies or acknowledgements even - however, Virgin "messed up":
Virgin.net
NP10 8UG
Dear Sir,
We wrote to you a week ago (7th January); a copy is enclosed.
Today we phoned Virgin to check the progress of reconnection of our broadband account. It has been disabled for a week now.
Lee, one of your Technical Support Advisers, this evening told us that Daniel (see previous letter) had put in the order for reconnection as if it was a new order - and consequently there was no payment facility attached to the order. Consequently not only are we still without the broadband account for which we are still paying - we now have to wait even longer until it is enabled again because nothing has happened to the order. Apparently the order has just "sat there" - which we would not have known unless we had had the wit to phone you this evening.
Now Imran tells us that we have to wait yet another week while you reactivate the previous account/order.
This really is not good enough. In fact, it is appalling.
What are you going to do about it?
Yours sincerely,
A few days later we had a phone call from C. F. at Virgin.net. She apologised, set the ball in motion for the account to be activated and gave us a few months credit on the account. I was happy with her explanations and actions.
However, BT are another matter:
BT plc
Correspondence Centre
DH98 1BT
Dear Sir,
I have not even received acknowledgement of the enclosed, let alone a complete reply. Perhaps the original failed to arrive - after all, it is now many weeks since I wrote it.
I would appreciate an immediate reply.
Yours sincerely,
On March 2nd I had a letter from BT saying they thought we had written to them but did not know what they had done about it! They had "no confirmation of responding to my earlier contact". In other words, I presume - they had logged the letter but lost it. So we sent this:
BT Broadband Complaints
FREEPOST
NWW7492A
NE82 6YZ
Your ref:
Your letter dated:
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter, which arrived today.
You probably have "no confirmation of responding to my earlier contact" as I have received none. I enclose the letters I wrote, one dated January 7th and the other dated 12th February. While I appreciate receiving your letter today, obviously it in no way addresses the points I made all those weeks ago. Consequently I enclose them again. I trust I shall receive a sensible reply very soon.
You should know that I sent the same letter at the same time (January 7th) to Virgin.net and received a reply from them on 20th January.
I am sorry this letter is not addressed to a person - there is no indication as to who signed the letter you sent, and the signature is indecipherable.
Yours sincerely,
During my phone conversation with C. F. from Virgin she had suggested that our experience was not unique. She intimated that she might use us as a "case study" at an ISP conference she would be attending. I have no idea if this was true or if she did. However, eventually I felt moved to write to her again. This is the final letter in this sorry saga:
C. F.
Virgin.net Correspondence Team
Virgin.net Ltd
NP10 8UG
Your ref:
Dear Ms. F.,
Many months ago we exchanged letters and talked on the phone. I was (naively perhaps!) hoping that 6 months on BT would have been able to respond to us in a sensible and reasonable way.
I enclose their letter to me and my reply - from March, since when I have heard nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada.
I am not asking you to do anything - but if you should ever need to quote a case of BT's total inadequacy then feel free to use the enclosed!
Yours sincerely,
A further experience of BT (nothing to do with the above) was when we moved house. Before we left our old house we phoned BT to ask for a new number at the place to where we were moving. They gave us the number. Excellent! We told all our friends and family our new number. We were impressed by the efficiency of BT. This made life easier for when we moved. Or so we thought -
When we got to our new home we discovered the number they had given us had been allocated to somebody else. We had to have yet another new number. Not clever, BT!!!
For those of you who come to this page with a search term such as "Which is best, BT or Virgin?" (and there are quite a few who do this) I cannot tell you. I have never had a BT Broadband account. As for Virgin- when it works it's fine. Unfortunately the mail server goes down too often- and that is a right pain.
Sept 2009 Which? magazine survey of Broadband ISPs gives top marks (87%) to Zen Internet. Virgin are 18th with 51% and BT are 22nd with 48%.
Nov 2009- Which? put the top 3 ISPs as Zen, O2 & Utility Warehouse; the bottom 3 are AOL, Orange & Pipex. BT & Virgin are still mid-table with not much between them.
June/July 2010 We are without any Virgin Broadband for more than 24 hours because:
(i) there is a huge outage in Scotland where we live...according to the support staff, though the "Virgin Broadband Service Status Information phoneline" says there are no problems.
(ii) the support guy(s) who talked us through the resetting of routers etc got it wrong- thus we thought it was the outage keeping us offline when it was, in fact, because the Virgin Tech Support Agent was inadequate in his advice.