Over the past few months we have had a bit of a nightmare in our office with connectivity problems. Our broadband connection was provided by a BT re-sale company who were charging us over the odds for a service that wasn’t at all up to scratch. Our connection dropped in and out intermittently and our VOIP phone cut off when we were in mid conversation with clients. After a bit of detective work, we found that our “dedicated” IP was being shared with a company who were using it to make video conferencing calls to the other side of the world. With our mystery solved and our tempers at boiling point we decided to call it a day and switch to Virgin instead (formerly Telewest/NTL)
After a short phone call we were told the date the engineer would arrive to install both the phoneline and the broadband cable. Apart from an initial hiccup with the installation date (The first engineer arrived to find that some genius had erected a steel security shutter over the cable junction box) 3 engineers turned up and everything was setup in about 30 minutes. They worked fast and efficiently and they even cleaned up after themselves, which to be honest is unprecedented.
Almost instantaneously the connection was active and our IP phone was working flawlessly. At last. Not only that but we’re paying half of what we were paying our previous provider and we had a separate dedicated phoneline.
When i got home that night I started to wonder how much we were paying for our home media services, having has such a good experience with Virgin. I dugg out some previous bills and reached for the fluorescent marker. We had been adding on features over the years and the monthly price had been creeping up and up. A quick scan on the virgin media website revealed that they had “VIP” packages which were basically bundles of every service. Since we were already Telewest customers I was slightly skeptical about my chances, presuming that when I called I would get the usual “no, thats only for new customers” line. I had nothing to lose so I picked up the phone anyway.
I got through to an actual real person after only 1 pre-recorded menu and to my amazement I was told that our package could be upgraded immediately! Not only would our monthly bill be literally cut in half but both our phone package and our broadband connection would be upgraded significantly, and as if that wasn’t enough we got a brand new V+ set top box.
Being the unrelenting geek that I am, while I was on hold I noticed that our modem had rebooted itself. A few seconds later it was back on and I went straight to speedtest.net to see if it would confirm my suspicions.
They had upgraded our broadband connection from 4meg to 10meg while i was still on the phone and soon I was informed that someone will be arriving on Wednesday next week to install the new HD set top box. I was completely bowled over. How’s that for customer service?
We’re forever hearing horror stories about telecoms providers and ISP’s so I’d be curious to know if anyone has any similar *happy* stories to share?
