touched for the very last time
So, ntl:Telewest, or whatever it was called - Blueyonder, to you and me, at one time - has now been bought by "Virgin Media". Is that supposed to make it better? They still bounced my direct debit and didn't write to me about it for four weeks, by which time they had bounced a second payment because when one bounces they automatically cancel the whole set-up - though the second month's bill wasn't included in the letter they finally sent, oh no, I found out about that when I rang them up. The call centre girl, Rebecca, told me the total without being able to tell me the constituent parts of it; every time I asked her a question she told me a number without being able to say what it was, and three times had to go and "speak to her supervisor".
The upshot is that, even though I only heard there was a problem two days ago, and even then I only heard about half the problem, today they cut off my TV. Hence the phone call, the increasingly bizarre inability to get a straight answer to a simple question, the two months' money paid in one go, the direct debit set up yet again - because for some reason this sort of thing seems to happen all the time with them no matter what they're called.
But that's okay, because now it's Virgin! Everybody knows they're great! And they've sent out about £10-worth of glossy little PR booklets, written in a faux-folksy style - well, more like a fake-geezer style - to prove to me what a fantastic and sexy little service I've now got.
Look at the picture: this girl clearly wants to sleep with me! She thinks I'm a 32-year-old bloke with a pointy bit of hair on top, held up with lots of gel, and with a boring little navy blue jumper on, who plays lots of Wii and buys extra sports channels. I see these guys in the tube, all looking bland and the same and probably lusting after girls who look just like this one.
In Baroque Mansions these booklets are anti-PR. And that's okay, because I am clearly not the revved-up metroboy customer my new providers really hanker after. They must want me to go back to BT. And, now that I've finally got my direct debit set up again and my £136 paid and my TV back on, that's just what I'm going to do.
9 comments:
But that's okay, because now it's Virgin! Everybody knows they're great!
But like the trains, they don't go all the way.
I'll get my coat.
Hey, hey I don't like you being derogatory about blokes in that age (_range_ I confess) with gel in their hair and lots of sport channels (not my fault that cricketing rights are owned by Murdoch). That might have been me next to you in the tube, save for the fact I'd have had a fetching polo shirt on and like to think I look reasonably original. And I haven't fallen for that ad or slept with that girl.
Oh. That explains why I'm getting all these letters that go straight into the cross cutting shredder.
Oh GOD, Telewest. Hate. They look after the cable at my work, and failed to inform me that anyone still on analogue was going to be cut off on a certain date. Then afterwards said there was no way they could then get me onto digital as I hadn't sent a form back. Buffoons.
It seems that the Virgin empire knows no bounds! I wonder if they'll advertise their latest offerings of freezing something or other from a baby's umbilical cord and sending the idle rich into orbit in the same saucy, wink-wink fashion?
Francis: very good!
P-Ump - of course I never meant you! I'm sure you look too relaxed and intelligent to be taken in by thius kind of stuff.
TSP, I might borrow your shredder. Or else put the letters straight into the Shreddies box: that would at least get them out of sight.
Miss H, I know, I know. They truly are buffoons with an antediluvian (note": NOT Antipodean) sense of "customer care."
Matt, surely not Virgin. Not ex-hippie boy wonder Richrd Branson, that clever just-like-us blokey-bloke who thinks you can appeal to overworked single mothers with laddish innuendo... the guys who managed BOTH to have the slowest trains in Christendom AND to charge fare by the minute...?!? Him???
BT, here I come.
Mmmmmmmm some of my best friends are political umpires, but ....
Not sure if I'll let you off Ms B, still stung with the thought you think blokes like me are unreconstructed sexists. If you twitter your eyelashes at me and say something in a contralto whisper, I'll forgive you, however. Not nice not to be nice to ladies, after all - a gentleman must behave.
Exactly so, P-Ump!
Beardy's a good looking chap but he does seem to prefer style to substance. Virgin have spent squillions or pounds on marketing and PR. I'm sure consumers would be a lot happier if that had been spent on back-end systems, infrastructure and customer services.
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