Virgin Media whines about Sky's customer service claims, ad watchdog agrees

Rofl

better customer service than TalkTalk??

Thats hardly an achievement...

In fact, note to Sky, Virgin, Plusnet et al. Drop TalkTalk from your advertising dross altogether...

It's like comparing craps.

Never had the displeasure of talk-talk, but had both sky and virgin, and saying one's customer service is better than the other is like saying one crap is less stinky that the another. Could be true, but it's still crap at the end of the day.

Have to be honest...

I was with Virgin for about 10 years and in the last 18 months, they were beyond shit. The final straw for me was when there was a fault at our local exchange that essentially turned my 20Mbps line into 56Kbps line and it only affected 5 houses, mine included, and we were told on several occasions by Virgin that it was too much hassle to fix.

Sky on the other hand have been brilliant.

wonderful job at ASA

I mean, whatever they say, it's a win-win situation - for them. They ask the business to take down the ads (why, it was meant to be shown a couple of times anyway, until the competition starts whining, so job done, let's create a new one), and the ASA is happy to declare to the beeb how many times it has "intervened" this or that year on behalf of consumers, blah blah blah. And if some try to whinge about this being a merry-go-round, with businesses taking turns and getting slapped, and their competitors stepping into their shoes, etc, while REAL fines would make them all suddenly very, very careful so, sort it out, ASA! - ASA smugly points out it's got no powers to fine, sorry, fuck off, we're doing our job marvellously. Like I said, wonderfully cushy position and the whole dance has been going on and on and on for years. Business happy, ASA happy, legislators happy, all out for dinner. Customers... fuck them.

Why only private companies

Ofcom have the power to demand a company stop talking when what they're saying is bull, but for some reason they don't act when it's a government department. Take GoSafe who run the speed cameras in North Wales and areas of England, all material they produce states "we don't hide cameras", "speed kills"; both claims have been proven to be untrue or cannot be proven and therefor, under Ofcom rules shouldn't be used. A number of UK prisons promote their rehabilitation scores, but the methods used to come to this conclusion are very, very dodgy. Then there's the government itself who are able to base whole campaigns to get votes then change their mind, surely making a claim in order to obtain a vote should be binding in some way?

Sky v Virgin Customer Service

Gotta say, having been a Sky customer for over 10 years who recently switched to Virgin - Sky customer service IS far superior to Virgin's abysmal offering.

Any time I ever had a problem with Sky I could call them and within 24 hours it was sorted, with a credit on my account for the inconvenience. Both times I had to do that it was a fault in the BT exchange.

Only reason I switched to Virgin is because I moved home and Sky/BT et al could only get me a max of 1.5mbps connection and had no plans to put fibre in my new area. With Virgin I get 161mbps, most of the time.

But for Virgin to complain about Sky's claims, well it's beyond belief as they have the worst customer service I've ever experienced.

Having had both Sky and Virgin Media in the past (and also having worked for Virgin Media on Broadband support) I never found either was better than the other but to be fair I was very lucky in that I rarely had to call for tech support. Am I the only though who wants to grab VM by the throat and tell them to stop moaning about it and if there is a grain of truth just focus on themselves? Maybe VM have a point. Maybe they are correct but I can't help but feel if these companies just kept the mouths shut it would serve them better and make them look more mature then whinging.

Wow, I've been a customer of Sky 3 or 4 times - most recently when O2 threw their broadband customers to the wolves and I was too lazy to get out before I was transferred.

I can safely say that the customer service experience in every case was the most downright miserable incompetent load of shit in absolutely every respect that I have ever experienced. And I've been a British Gas customer so there's the benchmark.

I had my customer service expectations lowered more than I ever could have possibly imagined by this lot, so I really really struggle to think that any other company could be worse.