After umpteen weeks of pee poor service from Virgin I sent an email to the ceo 😀 (got a quick response) And basically got out of my contract because of the sub standard service I was getting. I am paid up until the end of March and was told my account would cease after this. Now I have the muppets trying to bill me for April!! And what a surprise they are quoting the usual 30days gubbins. I know this is a 2/10 rant but good God it's annoying!! I have spent too long on hold to customer services already!

Think yourself lucky you're not dealing with BT, AOL, Sky, or Dell!

Aye – they don't like it when you want to leave.

At least you managed to get out! I had that with Carphone Warehouse but they said as I was cancelling early I'd have to pay the early get outfee of something ridiculous like £150, so ended up biting bullet, can't wait for contract to be up in May and I will be running a mile to another phone company .. not decided who yet though.

Cancel the DD or SO and tell them to spin on it(politely)

dito cancel the DD then see if they bother coming after you, my gym technically owes me 2 months membership back, but cant be f**** to chase them for it

its a company, of course they'll try to keep your business if you want to leave.

As fo writing to the "ceo" do you really think that makes a blind bit of difference, it's not like he read it.

just remember the people on the other end of the phone are just doing a job to pay the bills, they don't have the ability to do stuff like customer relations – so play nice 😀

As fo writing to the "ceo" do you really think that makes a blind bit of difference, it's not like he read it

I've found that if you email CEOs, things often get done very quickly. For example, I facebooked the CEO of East Midlands Trains when we had some problems with some tickets that they'd sent to the wrong place, and couldn't get their stupid call centre staff to sort things out. I sent the message at 10pm, and it was sorted out by 9:30 the next morning.

Call centre staff don't give a damn about your business. CEOs also probably don't care that much, but they do very much care about having their time wasted by having to read emails from irate customers.

Joe

I had over a year of grief with BT, who were absolutely sh1t from start to finish. Got disconnected because of their cock-up, then when they did reconnect me, they started me off on a new 18-month contract, even though I'd not cancelled the previous one. I had enough of them a couple of months later, and contacted them to terminate the contract. My reason was for 'failure to deliver a service as advertised'. After some hassle, this was agreed. I then received a notice from a debt collector, to pay the outstanding amount on the contract ( a further 16 months worth). Told them where to go. They eventually dropped it, but it just goes to show how utterly useless some companies can be, in actually providing a satisfactory service.

Any chance of the Virgin CEO's email? This info is useful in the War on Terrible Service. 😉

BT were rubbish when I tried to join them.
Tiscali kept on billing me once I had left.
The local council have no idea where I live.
United Utilities "forgot" to set up my account.

After several months of piss poor customer service I can report that the only company that I have dealt with recently who haven't arsed things up were NPower.

The people who service my car are OK too, as are CRC, Cooksons for making me a brew and Singletrack for sending me a free T shirt.

Everyone else is a massive ####.

The people who we bought our house from cancelled their phone/broadband when they left for the US. Although we have a new phone number with a different company, the broadband still works from the previous contract. We phoned them up to sort it, and got told they had no idea why it worked, would be far too much hassle for them to try and fix, and we were welcome to use it as long as we didn't complain if it went tits up. 3 years on and I'm still getting free broadband.

I've just terminated my contract with Vodafone after they messed up & then refused to put things right.
All I was asking for was to be put back in the position I was in before they messed up, but they wouldn't.
So, I asked what upgrade/phone/tariff they could offer to persuade me it was worth staying with them & as a bit of goodwill gesture, bearing in mind I've been with them since about 2002…..

Only offers they gave me were the standard ones I could get online. So I cancelled. Only then did I start getting calls from their crack team of 'offers' people to try & get me to stay. They couldn't get it into their thick heads either that they had been given the chance to persuade me to stay & it was too late. Grovelling once I'd terminated my contract was too little too late.

Most companies that you deal with mainly over the phone/internet are the same, particularly when you are tied into a contract.
And yes, I did try to speak to someone at a Vodafone shop, but that was an absolute waste of time.

Companies tend to spend more resources on sales than managing cancellations. I'd guess working in the cancellation department is the call centre equivalent of getting posted to the Eastern Front so you're probably not dealing with the brightest or most motivated people either.

I once got free electricity for about 15 months because they had mixed up my bank account number (I wasn't checking my statements). When I found out they said that somebody was paying it so as far as they were concerned they were happy.

I guess that the other peron didn't check their statements either.

H_T_S, don't put too much faith in Npower, we (g/f and I) both used to work for them and let me tell you they are a fricken nightmare once they get going.
G/f ended up with a letter from the head of customer service apolgising for their mistake (as a customer), only for them to start the whole thing again 3 months down the line. Useless…

I'm sure that they are capable of the same level of monumental cock-up as the rest of them but so far they have been OK with me.

It is a shame that I mentioned them because they didn't cock up (well they did, but it was in my favour). Not because they were good, but becasue they weren't as shite as the others that I have dealt with.

After spending 2 hours on the phone to United Utilities this weekend talikng to half of their staff, who were very keen to ask how the service was, I was sick of saying "You've been very nice, but your company have been rubbish".

Had the same with Orange BB a couple of years ago, they couldn't privide service to me and were content to continue taking paymewnts despite no BB for over 6 weeks, when I told them to stuff it they did all the end of contract shite etc, even tried to charge me for leaving them.

I'm sure sometimes these companies just assume people will go quiet and keep paying. I just cancelled the DD and told them they'd have to see me in court, let law decide should I pay for a service they were not providing to me.