Deal or No Deal

Well, I see that people have been wondering how the Virgin Media V+ box installation went.

 

In short, it didn't.

 

It all started well enough, with the engineer rolling up just after nine (on time, good) and beginning to move the phone line away from the BT socket to the Virgin one.  However, when quizzed about the HD connectivity between the V+ box and the telly a blank look came over the engineer's face.  It turns out that the work order given to him was completely and utterly wrong, he'd only brought a standard set top box, and he even had us down for the wrong television package.  He had no V+ boxes on the van (there were none available, so he said), and certainly had no HD cabling.  We were told that the only way to resolve this was that he'd have to cancel the installation and I'd have to re-order the V+ installation for another date.

 

So on the phone I go to Virgin Media.. except Virgin Media used to be NTL and getting through to their customer support is infamously bad, of course.  So I was on the stuck on the phone for the best part of three quarters of an hour being bounced between departments.  Eventually I spoke to someone who could help me.  He told me that, and I believe this is a quote, "your account is in a right mess".  Why?  Well it appears that, rather than cancelling the installation, the engineer had in fact marked it as complete.  Now, on the NTL/Virgin/Whatever system once an install is complete, a month's notice is needed to cancel that contract.  We couldn't order a new install until the old one disappeared from the system.  And apparently, the system didn't want to cancel the install because of the lack of 30 days notice.  I'd been on the phone so long at this point I wanted to kill, so the guy offered to phone me back.

 

Virgin/NTL/Whoever did phone me back later that day to tell me that the account had been "somewhat restored", and the bodged install (that never happened) had been removed.  However, because he'd had to hack the system so much to get it to do this (hacking systems?  We should offer him a job!), he couldn't immediately re-order V+ for me.  Instead he offered to phone me back on Monday (or, possibly Saturday) to get that re-ordered.  I was less than impressed to say the least.

 

Now, over the weekend, (and as seen in the comments in my last post) I learn that Sky One, Sky News, and Sky Sports News could disappear from Virgin/NTL/Whenever at the end of the month.  So no Lost.  No Battlestar Galactica.  No 24. 

 

In short, no way. 

Three of the shows that me and the wife actively look forward to each week gone?  (Yeah I got her into Battlestar - how god is that?).  You're kidding, right!?  Actually that's only a minor consideration, it's the principal of not getting the same service I'm currently getting from Sky that is ticking me off.

 

If he phone's me today, I want a guarantee (preferably in writing) that this will not happen.  Otherwise I think I may have to admit that I was wrong to try and leave the evil Murdoch empire.  However, if I have to go back to Sky I shall be getting my broadband from them too I think (despite the problems I have experience before), and binning off Virgin/NTL/Wherever completely (see?  It doesn't pay to piss me off!!).

 

It's deal-breaker time.. The banker is calling.. Who goes?  They decide..

 

More later, no doubt..