Back in April Virgin Media wrote to me to tell me the exciting news, all their 2meg broadband customers would automatically be upgraded to 10meg. This sounded too good to be true so I read the small print and it said that the price plan would also be upgraded by £2 per month to just short of £20. It didn’t look like I had a choice and I was quite pleased at the prospect so I was quite looking forward to it.

I followed the instructions in the email and switched to online billing (as after May paper billing would incur an extra cost!). May came and went and a few speed tests later I was running shy of 2meg. Checks of my new ebilling showed that my price plan had been upgraded though and the extra £2 per month was being taken.

I have just finished on a 50 minute call to various Virgin Media staff in various countries. It didn’t start too well when I was asked by the automated system which type of music I would like to listen to whilst on hold! Of course I chose pop and sadly they only have one song ‘Love Story’ by Taylor Swift. After 8 loops this started to grate.

After finally getting to speak to a ‘human’ I was told that accounts are not automatically upgraded and you have to do it manually by visiting a web site. The reasoning was that they needed to check that my modem was capable of 10meg speeds! I followed the link and was asked to sign in with my Blueyonder email address. I have never used Blueyonder for email so couldn’t sign in. I even though I might be able to use my Virgin ebilling login but sadly not. I had to then be passed to technical support for them to reset address to allow me to login. Logging in was then simple and my relatively new Virgin modem passed the test, surprise surprise.

I finally managed to get a promise that the connection would be upgraded in the next 24 hours (better than the month I was initially told) and got a whopping £4 refund for the charges I have already paid for the 10meg service I haven’t got.

It is appalling that Virgin Media will quite happily automatically start charging for a ‘new improved’ package without actually delivering. Bring back Telewest

Anyone who is affected by this upgrade should make sure they go to http://www.virginmedia.com/myvirginmedia/gofaster/ and request the upgrade and then get onto customer services.

Perhaps it’s time to change my internet service providings!.

I didn’t realise the credit crunch was hitting Virgin Media that hard until I went on their new site.  I had a double take when the page loaded and I was met with what is essentially a red version of the BBC  homepage. Whilst the site does look good it certainly won’t become my news and entertainment portal of choice. It offers nothing we haven’t seen a thousand times before.
It’s fair to say that the BBC has always been a benchmark for good web practice and BBC type elements are common place across the internet but none as blatant as this! After a suggestions by @ojwestmancott I had a quick look at the source to check they there were no  references to the BBC!
Hopefully Virgin Media will pass on the money they have saved back to us the humble broadband customers!