melfneerg.com - 'cos life is like that

About the Author
Tudor Davies

author Tudor is a techie turned manager who fights like mad to keep his tech skills honed and relevant. Everything from web hosting, networking, *nix and the like. Constantly developing and co-ordinating with others to make the web a better (and easier to use) place.

10th July - ordered a change of circuit from Virgin Media Business. Site has a 2mb SDSL IPVPN circuit. This needed converting to a 2mb SDSL Managed Internet circuit. This entails:

1 - router being sent to site
2 - engineer arriving at site and configuring router
3 - remote engineer changing router config and also any VRF config on the radius server supporting the LAC to which the SDSL circuit was connected to

12th July - received email from VM acknowledging my order and advising a delivery date of 18th October (35 working days)

12th July - I advised VM that it was a conversion of an existing circuit. I also completed and returned the IP address request form that had been sent to me with the order acknowledgment email.

12th July - received email from VM advising that the installation date was now 18th August

15th July - advised that circuit would be delivered on 30th September due to civils and cabling work needed.

15th July - I advised VM that it was an existing SDSL circuit and therefore didnt need any civils or cabling work...

15th July - advised that the planner would "shortly be contacting me"

17th July - I advised VM of the existing circuit details to assist them and get it progressed as quickly as possible

23rd July - was advised that the order has been passed to their planning dept

6th August - was advised that the planner was now on leave and wouldnt be back til 23rd August.

13th August - I was advised that the order was still in planning

18th August - was advised that they were still waiting for the planning to be completed

7th September - was advised that planning was now completed! The order owner was now going to complete the delivery plan and arrange installation dates.

16th September - was advised that the order owner needed to do some off-net planning.

22nd September - was advised that the order owner needed existing circuit details and IP information.

Oh, did I mention that I was meant to get an update on all my outstanding orders once a week, every week?

I could write paragraphs about how I called my contacts in Virgin Media Business but either was never answered or never dropped to voicemail when trying to get an update.

And further paragraphs about the number of chasing emails I sent to get updates.

And then today being told that they needed information I had sent a week after the initial contact and blaming their sales team for not providing it!

I sent them an email earlier today which included the line:

"EPIC FAIL by VM yet again!"