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100s of Virgin Media customers hit by handset repair glitch, telco admits

Clusterf*ck? Pissed-off punters left without phones for weeks

Virgin Media has admitted to The Register that hundreds of its mobile customers were left without their handsets for weeks due to a "glitch" with its repair service.

The company has also confessed to us that it was yet to process roughly 100 outstanding repairs for its frustrated subscribers, some of whom have been complaining about the gaffe since late March.

One of our readers who flagged up the blunder to El Reg labelled Virgin Media's processing system failure "a major clusterfuck".

We've also heard that the mobile wing of Virgin Media, which is owned by US cable giant Liberty Global, had told some of its customers that a flaw in its new system had prevented the firm from being able to exchange any returned handsets.

The cockup appeared to have begun in late March, according to gripes from readers and a number of customer forum posts, such as this one here and this one here:

I sent my phone back for repair (in the return pack virgin send out) on the 27 March (booked the repair online on 26 March), it had not been charging properly. It is still in warranty.

Phoned customer services on 7 April, they said it had been caught up in a backlog due to the system update and should be with me within a week. A week passed, I called again on 15 April to be told its still not even been looked at, they confirmed that it was with the repair team, but that they could give me no indication of when I would get it back.

I was told by the manager that I spoke to (Damien) that he would look into it and call me back later that day, he didn't call me back that day, or since. It has been 3 weeks and 3 days now, I still don't have my phone back and am none the wiser as to when I will get it back.

Initially, Virgin Media – when quizzed by the Reg – brushed off the complaints with this statement late last Friday:

There were some temporary delays for customers returning handsets to us, which has since been resolved this week. With the vast majority of the backlog of cases now processed with services back to usual.

However, when we pushed for more details, a VM spokesman revealed: "It looks like the customer numbers would’ve been in the hundreds." He added: "There was a glitch between us and our handset provider."

The VM mouthpiece told us: "I reckon there should be around 100 cases which haven’t been processed".

El Reg pressed Virgin Media to explain what had gone wrong with the service. But at time of publication, it hadn't got back to us with further comment. ®

Update

Virgin Media sent the Register this statement after publication of this story:

After a system upgrade an error occurred with our partners’ order tracking systems resulting in the delays. We are contacting affected customers and aim to have all outstanding returns processed by the end of this week.

The telco added that 680 customers had been affected by the glitch.

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