Metropol

As a current Virgin Media customer, I advise you to stay well away. I have had nothing but problems since my services got installed back in September. For 6 months all my bills were double what I should have been paying and I had to call in for them to rectify it.

It got that bad that even the CEO Office wouldn't get it resolved, and in the end I had to pass it over to Virgin's ADR Provider who happens to be CISAS. After CISAS did their investigation into it and got some sort of defence from Virgin, CISAS ultimately ruled in my favour much to the displeasure of Virgin by way of a somewhat abrupt letter of apology. Also got a few quid out of them as well which is a bit of a bonus as they fought not to give me any compo whatsoever.

After my 18 months is up, I'll be leaving Virgin as quickly as is humanly possible and reverting back to Freeview and getting a dish up and firing it to 19.2E.

If you want chaos and grief then head to Virgin, but my advice is to not even entertain them.

GaryMcEwan wrote:getting a dish up and firing it to 19.2E.

19.2 or 28.2?

Nick Harvey wrote:

GaryMcEwan wrote:getting a dish up and firing it to 19.2E.

19.2 or 28.2?

Pointing it towards 19.2...

GaryMcEwan wrote:

Nick Harvey wrote:

GaryMcEwan wrote:getting a dish up and firing it to 19.2E.

19.2 or 28.2?

Pointing it towards 19.2...

Enjoy all those German channels then.

GaryMcEwan wrote:As a current Virgin Media customer, I advise you to stay well away. I have had nothing but problems since my services got installed back in September. For 6 months all my bills were double what I should have been paying and I had to call in for them to rectify it.

It got that bad that even the CEO Office wouldn't get it resolved, and in the end I had to pass it over to Virgin's ADR Provider who happens to be CISAS. After CISAS did their investigation into it and got some sort of defence from Virgin, CISAS ultimately ruled in my favour much to the displeasure of Virgin by way of a somewhat abrupt letter of apology. Also got a few quid out of them as well which is a bit of a bonus as they fought not to give me any compo whatsoever.

After my 18 months is up, I'll be leaving Virgin as quickly as is humanly possible and reverting back to Freeview and getting a dish up and firing it to 19.2E.

If you want chaos and grief then head to Virgin, but my advice is to not even entertain them.

That does sound pretty awful, but I'm 14 years in, and aside for the toughening up of their retention department staff, I'm a pretty happy customer. Sorry to read about your poor experience though.

If you're still deciding, Virgin have launched their new 'big bundle' packages which will presumably replace the previous 'collections' like Premiere and VIP: http://store.virginmedia.com/discover/big-bundles.html

Interestingly existing customers can also create their own bundle on the site as well. I already received a letter suggesting to call up and quote a particular package.

By way of an update I opted for Virgin Media in the end.

When I stopped and thought about it, I realised I could have simply got Virgin in for the broadband and then brought Sky TV across to the new property but I wasn't overly hung up on Sky Atlantic or ITV Encore so decided I might as well give Tivo a go.

I should mention that I was a Telewest customer nearly a decade ago when I lived in Rotherham and was with them when the Virgin Media rebrand took place. So it's not an entirely alien experience but then my view may be tinted by the fact you could get On Demand programmes through the box when it was a relatively new thing (long before recording telly on a hard drive had become the norm) and being in awe at the fact I could do this. Also they had some wonderful breakdown/channel closed music which certainly made Sky 1 more watchable when the carriage agreement between Virgin and Sky fell down.

I also got in before the launch of the new big bundles and got 6 months free Netflix (which I already subscribe to) plus a credit on my first bill that I cannot remember how much it actually was along with free money from topcashback so I think I can deal with the loss of MoviesforMen for a while yet.

Plus I also treated myself to a new Samsung TV too which I have had to muster all my energy to not pull out of the box and setup - especially considering it only arrived this afternoon and I'm moving on Friday morning.

iSon wrote:Also they had some wonderful breakdown/channel closed music which certainly made Sky 1 more watchable when the carriage agreement between Virgin and Sky fell down.

That was the 'sad' channel closed music, usually only reserved for when a channel had permanently ceased broadcasting. The earliest I can remember it being used for is Play UK in 2002.

Warning: Geeky stuff about Telewest holding slide music in the 2000s ahead.

I think, I *think*, the normal slides, such as the (actually very useful) information channels in the 800s before they closed them all and replaced them with just one, used a modified version of Movin' On Up by Primal Scream with just the gospel choir singing and the guitar riff. I'm not sure if I'm just misremembering that because they used in their adverts as well, but it's certainly linked in my mind to Telewest.

By the time the brand was retired they were using this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHR-Fuq6oCY I think they changed to it around the same time the slides became white text on a blue background rather than blue on white to coincide with the EPG revamp and the launch of Teleport that introduced the grid home screen: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tech/news/a ... 81dmHN1QRh

Philip wrote:

iSon wrote:Also they had some wonderful breakdown/channel closed music which certainly made Sky 1 more watchable when the carriage agreement between Virgin and Sky fell down.

That was the 'sad' channel closed music, usually only reserved for when a channel had permanently ceased broadcasting. The earliest I can remember it being used for is Play UK in 2002.

Warning: Geeky stuff about Telewest holding slide music in the 2000s ahead.

I think, I *think*, the normal slides, such as the (actually very useful) information channels in the 800s before they closed them all and replaced them with just one, used a modified version of Movin' On Up by Primal Scream with just the gospel choir singing and the guitar riff. I'm not sure if I'm just misremembering that because they used in their adverts as well, but it's certainly linked in my mind to Telewest.

By the time the brand was retired they were using this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHR-Fuq6oCY I think they changed to it around the same time the slides became white text on a blue background rather than blue on white to coincide with the EPG revamp and the launch of Teleport that introduced the grid home screen: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tech/news/a ... 81dmHN1QRh

The 'off air' music reminds me of the old 890 'I'm here to tell you how to get the most out of your TV and Blueyonder internet service from Telewest' video loop... 'I don't even know where slot A is?!'

If your box was tuned to 890 you knew that something had happened overnight!

Oh and also it used to annoy me how the set top box reboots in about two seconds in that video whereas in real life it actually took a few minutes. Still does actually!