Why is it that the performance and customer service of everything touched by Richard Branson is so execrable? There is no quicker way to vapourise customer goodwill. I never fail to be astounded when the grinning geriatric is named by so many young people as a role model.
For reasons I prefer not to think about I am a customer of Virgin Media. I used to be with NTL, and pure inertia prevented me from defecting to Sky when it was rebranded. The bill I receive is essentially a random number. I am theoretically getting a 20Mbit/s broadband package that never delivers more than one fifth of that download speed and a miserable 80 kb/s upload speed. Even when I test at a very quiet time (12:30pm) I get no better than that, and because the service is well used locally the contention is terrible: it is painful to browse a text-only website in the evening.
I rang to complain and after hanging around for about 20 mins I was offered a discount on my current package ('VIP' - I've never felt less like one!) from £85 to £67. I simply said 'my measured performance is terrible compared to what was promised, yet your technical department says there is nothing wrong with my connection' to the billing department. They probably hear this all the time, so if you are a customer want a to take advantage of the realism of the billing department I suggest you ring now. Please don't give them my name!
