Sending formal letter of complaint. Right to do so?

A question about : Sending formal letter of complaint. Right to do so?

From November I noticed a severe drop in performance with my broadband with Virgin (20Mb package, lucky to get 1Mb). I spoke to their call centre in order to acquire a technician, but my asking of someone to come after 7pm due to being unable to get time off from work and being a commuter was not done.

Four calls between then and now occurred before I received the Super-Hub and 100Mb broadband for Ј33.50 per month. All of them stating of the severe performance.

As of now, I am lucky to get near 10Mb, averaging 6-8 but can be as bad as 1-3. On the fifth call focusing specifically on this, I am told that it is because of high utilisation and that it is a severe case in my area, which has large drops of performance for extended periods of time and this will continue until June. I was also told there was nothing I could do and when I stated that the four calls I had prior to this gave me no such response I was told sales people just sell.

After a bit of investigating I rang up again to make a complaint. Apparently the customer relations team was closed and the lady offered Ј10 off each month to which I'm affected, backdated from November. The lady also let me know that poor broadband performance will happen in my area from 2pm onwards each day.

I was unhappy with this offer due to the nature of the problem. I was to receive less than 10% performance and would only get less than a third off, which I would have to actively call for each month (the lady did offer to have someone call me). It's been credited on my account nonetheless.

I called up today for the seventh time. I was initially told the team was closed at 4pm (turns out they weren't after a 35 minute wait) and I got the same offer and being told there was nothing they could do.

I decided to cancel the broadband then and change tact as the phonecalls were going nowhere. I've sent a formal letter of complaint explaining the situation and what I expect is:
- To not pay for the January payment as I was misinformed by the company, key information was held back about the service available and the quality of call centre is less than satisfactory (I work in a call centre myself, and I found it to be laughable)

- To have my call charges paid back in full from the first call in November onwards.

- If a deal is to be made with the broadband, that deal must be satisfactory taking into account the above factors.

- I've also asked for the notes that have been written on my account as I do not think they have taken this down as a complaint despite myself saying this before.

I am to send this tomorrow, but I want to ask one simple question. Am I right in claiming this or am I not?

Your help will be greatly appreciated as this is the first time I am doing this and not sure on what I should do.

Thanks.

Best answers:

• Their getout clause is UPTO
  Your speed slows for what? Streaming, downloading? Traffic shaping maybe?
• on the face of it they seem to of acted quite reasonable, a tenner off each month, sounds like a nice earner????
  In regrds to your complaint, you want january broadband charge paid back, but you did use their broadband, despite the speed, right?
  you mention charges from November, its not clear what charges, buut I am assuming you are refering to the seven telephone calls made to virgin customer call centre. Do you have a landline with virgin media? if so, i would assume the calls to virgin media would of been free, or are you wanting compensation for the time you spent on the phone??
  If your unhappy with the Broadband of VM, complain, and threaten to go else where unless you get what you want
• Is this drop in speed over WiFi by any chance ???
• Take a look at the sticky over on cableforum about checking power levels - https://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12...al-levels.html
  If your signal levels are within the range suggested then there isn't much a tech callout will achieve anyway and you are either suffering from the poor WiFi the (not so) Superhub provides or more likely your area is suffering local congestion which isn't uncommon and takes an age for them to fix. The fact they are giving you a discount make me think that is the most likely and they are aware of the problem.
  The thing with cable is it can offer very high headline speeds. The problem is that the local bandwidth is pretty limited and they cram umpteen customers on and only upgrade when there are a load of complaints. I suffered two long spells of congestion during my time on cable and it was the main reason I ditched it in favour of FTTC.
• Hey guys, thanks for the advice thus far. I know it's not the most detailed synopsis of what has happened (I am sorry for the guy who has to read my letter when I send it, I did try to make it as short as possible lol)
  UPTO is understandable, I only expect a good average. Virgin claim their average to be over 80Mbs, which I thought to be exaggerative. However, I did expect better than 10% (I have tried wireless and ethernet) and to be told after signing the contract the actual reason why I was suffering severe performance levels after I made 4 attempts to get this sorted, isn't fair to me.
  That's why I am looking at the offer given as unfair too.
  - I was told by one operator that there's nothing he could do and pretty much ended the call there (it turns out I should have been told about this and an offer could have been given.)
  - There are providers I could have gone with that have cheaper packages and lower speeds that would have given me a better broadband, so in my view it wasn't a competitive price.
  I am looking to get the calls charges from November back for when I could not call on a Virgin landline (I did go to a broadband only package and I went to see my mother once who also has Virgin Media and coincidentally also has trouble had to talk to them as well because her broadband doesn't work (we live in the same area nearby too, so I let her know about it, she wasn't told of this either, trying to find friends in the area if they use Virgin and knew)
  I'll look at the cableforum thing to see if that can help me understand more about this.
  I have contacted Virgin Media about this, so I'll guess I will let you know more once I find out. It sounds like it may be a mistake on my part given the posts on the forum thus far, might have to take this as a life lesson and remember to ask some more questions if I go to a different provider.
  Thanks for the help thus far guys, appreciate it.
• Hey guys.
  So it's been a while since I wrote what happened. Basically, I've got the internet cut off as of today and the monthly fees have been wavered.
  Calling was getting nowhere so I decided to write a letter instead. As I was unable to find an address I wrote on their Twitter page how to send a complaint and they replied back with a link to a form that would allow me to explain my situation.
  Having given my complaint to them, they wrote back an email with an offer of 50% off each month that would have the high utilisation. I gave it some thought as Ј16.25 would save a bit of money, meaning I would only pay full price technically for three months of the 12-month contract.
  Ultimately though, I decided to cancel for two reasons:
  - The performance just wasn't good enough to warrant a six-month delay of a decent product.
  - I questioned the integrity of their customer service. I work in a call centre myself (I know, pot and kettle) and I was unsure if I wanted to stick with a company that actively ignored the fact that their customer thus far had actively attempted to prevent me from complaining.
  - There was no guarantee that the problem would be fixed by June 2015 and judging from forum posts of high utilisation going as far back as 2013, it seemed best to try another provider.
  I have kept the emails of course, should Virgin forget to not take the charge, but I am happy with the result. Certainly won't mean I won't ever go back, the service might improve on both the broadband and customer line, it just means I'll keep a close eye on both before signing up to a product.
  At least now I'll know what questions to ask an internet provider.
  Thanks for the help everyone.
• The problem with VM cable is that they know that their customers have no alternatives without installing or reconnecting a BT-based line, so are less likely to leave even if the local area is oversubscribed for cable.
• Virgin will be investing Ј3bn into their own network, hopefully contention issues will get sorted.