Since taking over from Telewest Virgin Media has seen many of its customers up and leave, despite trying to tempt them back with freebies and special offers on services. Many assumed that this was due to the loss of TV channels after a financially linked row erupted between Virgin and Sky. However, it seems that many of Virgin’s customers that take out broadband, television, and phone, may be leaving because of the falling levels of customer service, as well as due to rising costs.

Virgin now charges customers that do not pay by direct debit a five pounds a month fee. A ten pound fee is also added for late payment on accounts. And as of July any customers experiencing broadband problems will have to dial a different number that will charge twenty five pence a minute, which means that essentially customers could be paying huge amounts for calls in order to rectify a problem that could be at the provider’s end rather than being anything to do with the service user.

One Virgin Media broadband customer has recently filed a complaint, after her broadband service was disconnected three times in the space of a couple of months, leaving her unable to work or receive important emails. She stated: “The first time the service was disconnected I was told I hadn’t paid my bill, which I had. When the mistake was realized Virgin apologized and reinstated my broadband. A month later the same thing happened again, and once again the payment was traced and the service reinstated. However, two weeks later the broadband service was disconnected yet again, and this time a manager spoke with me on the phone.

“He spent about ten minutes telling me that I had to pay my bill, which was not even due yet, in advance because I was a bad credit customer, and because he refused to reinstate my broadband I had to agree to paying the bill early. However, a few days later I received a call from Virgin stating that I had accidentally been put under the bad credit grouping – I can’t believe that the manager, who frankly claimed to know everything about everything, never picked up on this.”