Sir Richard Branson Giveth And Sir Richard Branson Taketh Away

I had an email from Virgin Media on Friday. One of those “hey we’re your best mates, we are, and to illustrate this we’re going to give you an amazing deal to show how much we love you, bud, pal, matey, mucker, fellamelad”. I read the email with the kind of indifference that only a longstanding Virgin Media customer can muster and it transpired that dear Old Uncle Rich – Sir Richard Branson to you – was about to “more than double” my broadband speed but for less than the price I was currently paying. And he was going to do it because I was such a loyal longstanding customer. Because, let’s face it, me and Rich have been going steady ever since he took over NTL half a decade or so ago and renamed it Virgin Media.

Well, it was a nice start to the weekend if nothing else.

Cue Saturday morning. Another email from Sir Rich arrives. This one less chummy and rather more apologetic in tone. Turns out Friday’s email was a mistake. Mr B apologized profusely, nay cheesily. It was sent out by mistake. They were sorry. He was sorry. But there would be some good news for all loyal Virgin Media customers in the next 2 weeks. Honest. About something else. Something else equally as good. Probably.

Yeah right. Another Virgin mobile phone offer or extra sports channels on Virgin Media TV, I should think. I’m not a big fan of shot-put, Sir Richard, you can stick it.

But this whole debacle got me thinking. The poor sap who pressed Send on all those emails (because surely I wasn’t the only one who received such a missive) must be up to his neck in hot water right now. That’s assuming he still has a job, of course, and that Sir Rich didn’t drop-kick him out of a hot air balloon somewhere over the Atlantic. And someone – some graphics design geek – obviously created the email in the first place. Which says Virgin Media were planning this broadband upgrade thing for some time but then just decided to change their minds.

Was it something I said? Or didn’t say? Was I supposed to have replied to Sir Rich’s original email profusely oozing my thanks and attaching a tasty Polaroid of my freshly oiled up genitalia? Did he consider my lack of response to be a singular act of monstrous ingratitude and consequently cancel the broadband upgrade?

That’s rather petty, Richard.

Or was the whole email a scam? An act of in-house sabotage from a disgruntled employee? Sir Rich has banned his marketing team from downloading stuff from the SKY BSB web site and they’ve hit back with an email to drop Sir Richard in the shite?

Hmm. To be honest, that scenario doesn’t work for me. If you were a disgruntled employee you’d send out a far worse email than “we’re going to double our customer’s broadband speed for half the price”. It would be along the lines of “hey, did you know that Sir Richard Branson molests disabled baboons in his personalized spaceship paid for with your hard earned money?”

Now that’s the kind of email that would have made my weekend a good one.

But no.

So, a double-dip disappointment on the Virgin Media front, then.

*sigh*

Situation normal. Thanks Rich.

Sacrificial Virgin

There’s nothing like a tight sexy box, I always say, and after much umming and ahing the wife and I have finally acquired one for the use of the entire family.

Having been a cable TV subscriber for the best part of 10 years I was, I admit, reticent about the benefits of a set-top box but finally the law of economics won out. We need to make some savings and paying out for a huge cable TV package that features hundreds of TV channels we don’t actually watch seemed idiotic. My quality of life is not going to suffer for being without Bid-Up TV, Price War TV, Television X and Hot Grannies From Grimsby. That last one is made up by the way. Though I do, I admit, wince at losing all the history channels – my wife knows I am rather partial to an odd evening of “Hitler P0rn” as she calls it.

The set-top box we’ve gone for accesses all the channels we watch regularly and features a hard drive that can record 2 programmes simultaneously or record one programme while you are watching another. For someone who was still operating a front loading VCR last week that is technological progress indeed. Of course it now means the wife and I are experiencing recording lust and have already recorded a whole heap of programmes that normally we’d have been happy to let pass us by in the vain belief that we will one day find the time to watch them. There’s already 2 episodes of The Rob Brydon Show on the hard drive that we still haven’t decided to watch. Not sure whether this is good taste or bad taste.

Anyway, now that we’ve got a new, smooth, glamorously tactile box (alas, no Brazilian) we no longer need to retain the scabby, saggy box that Virgin Media supplied us with many moons ago (and that now smells of wee). So I rang Richard Branson to inform him of this and one of his customer facing minions at first accepted my decision to ditch their TV package but then inevitably went into hard sell mode pointing out that the TV package I currently subscribe to means I get an £18 reduction on my Virgin Media phone bill (eh? First I’d heard of it!) and that if I wanted to just reduce my TV package to the “small size” I could retain a £5 reduction on my phone bill.

But I don’t need the cable TV service at all, I pointed out. I’ve disconnected it. I very patiently explained this to him twice before – sounding personally insulted and aggrieved – he finally agreed to acquiesce to my wishes though he truculently pointed out that when I made telephone calls from my Virgin Media phone line in future they will now increase the amount of my monthly bill by the cost of the call.

Really? Is that how it works? I never knew.

So now I have to ring a different number to book in the disposal engineer (my name for him) because, or course, the guy I spoke to can do everything but that for me apparently though hopefully the call won’t cost me money which will go onto my monthly phone bill. Heaven forbid.

So our old box’s days are numbered. I do, I admit, feel slightly dishonorable. Like I am betraying an old friend. Casting her out into the cold or if not into the cold then at least into the caverns of a vast Virgin warehouse full of old chapped boxes that nobody wants to finger anymore or indeed ever. I am plainly a heartless cad.

But all is not lost. Perusing the instruction manual that came with our new non-virgin box, it seems our new purring playmate can get the Yesterday channel. I can access Hitler p0rn after all!

Cool.

Well in that case: Virgin smirgin. Auf wiedersehen pet and guten tag Adolf!

TV In A Coma (I Know, I Know It’s Serious)

As any cable subscriber will tell you television reception can be, at times, akin to a half shaken Etch A Sketch – a frozen mosaic of tiny squares with accompanying aural effects that sound remarkably close to Colonel Bogey being played under water by an asthmatic tuba lover.

Not so much oompah oompah as plain old bah.

This doesn’t happen often (t’otherwise nobody would pay for a cable service, would they?) but round where I live one sudden shock of cold weather is enough to make Virgin Media’s cable technology huddle up in a foetal position and refuse to play technological ball.

I’m sure Mr Branson would blame other adverse catalysts such as high tech mismatches of information packets and misdirected routings of fibre optic data but between you and me: it’s the cold. A bit of frost and News 24 resembles a kid’s finger painting. I’m so glad I invested in a widescreen TV.

Such a denial of service occurred on Sunday. No kid’s telly. No Dave. No UKLiving. No Catchup TV. Nothing.

Things looked glum for all of ten minutes.

And then we rediscovered the various and multifarious delights of (a) silence (b) music and (c) books.

It was amazing. Without the TV cracking its whip the day opened up into vast pastures of possibility. Suddenly time itself seemed to expand and cast off the shackles of enforced half hour slots of no-brainer entertainment. The day was pregnant with opportunity.

It made me realize how television – for all it can be a marvellous educational aid – also prevents you from thinking ‘outside the box’ (if you’ll pardon the pun). As soon as it is switched on the day seems to be mapped out and segmented according to what the various TV channels are broadcasting. You totally forget the many other home comforts that are available to enhance your living experience.

For most of Sunday we enjoyed a little quiet island of TV-less bliss.

Thanks to the efforts of the Virgin Media engineers the TV returned to life at the end of the day all mended and functioning normally... but, I have to say, looking a little bit nervous. A little bit insecure around the edges.

You see, we hadn’t missed it. We’d coped. We’d realized we could survive without it.

There was a New World Order.

The seeds of a comfortable rebellion have been sown...

Bad Debtors

It’s rare that I gripe about monetary matters on this blog but today I’m feeling particularly nettled.

As well as working full time the local government authority in Leamo (and writing a novel in my spare time), I also have my own part time web design business. It’s been going about a year and although it’s not destined to expand to the point of ever getting into legal wrangles with huge eff-off companies like SKY or Virgin it does make the mortgage easier to pay and allows me to occasionally treat myself to a luxury item or two to make all this hard work seem worthwhile. It also allows me to pay off the various bills and sundries that the modern age seems to offload onto most of us.

Or at least it does when I get paid.

I know that all freelancers have great difficulty getting their customer to cough up the cash but it’s bloody annoying when I can’t pay my debts cos someone won’t pay the debt they owe me.

Karen feels I should get tough. Down tools until I get paid. I must admit I’m probably less business minded than she is – and possibly more of a wuss – so I have tried to avoid taking this nastier stance. I mean, such games of one-upmanship could lead to the clients getting arsy and heading elsewhere and STILL not paying me.

But given that I’m now owed over £600 and payment is virtually 3 month’s late I’m beginning to think that I have very little to lose.

I hate getting all hardnosed about it but they’re now COSTING me money rather than just denying me my due.

You know who you are. Pay up or I’ll stick the boot in!

Ok. Gripe over.

Sky’s The Limit

And who needs limitations?

I’ve been with NTL for about 7 years. I chose them mainly because friends of mine were with NTL and because as bad as their customer service always was they were no worse than any other UK ISP. They’ve now been taken over by Virgin Media... and although their customer service is yet to show ANY signs of improvement they’re still no worse than other ISPs. Same meat, different gravy. Better the devil you know. Etc.

Like most TV service providers, NTL (as it formerly was) featured a number of SKY channels on its TV packages. With the takeover of Virgin Media these channels have now been denied to Virgin customers because SKY and Virgin are apparently locked in some kind of age old bitch-fight.

So as usual the man on the street loses out.

Now, I don’t really give a rat’s doo-dah what their enmity is based upon; who drew first blood; what caused the row; who stole whose boyfriend / girlfriend / nanny goat – I just think it’s pretty pisspoor of SKY not to honour a longstanding agreement with NTL just because they’ve been taken over by a company that they have hissy fits about. It’s childish, pathetic and you know what else? Dishonourable.

How very big of you SKY, I don’t think.

Of course SKY is now pushing a major advertising campaign onto the UK to try and encourage Virgin Media users to defect so that they can once again enjoy the dubious delights of SKY One, SKY Sport and SKY Crapola.

Sorry?! You’re trying to kid me that you care about the customer first and foremost? That you’ll put our needs first?!

Yeah right.

To tell you the truth, not being a sports fan and preferring to buy my own selection of movies on DVD rather than sift through the crumbs of SKY Box Office I never really watched SKY anyway. With the exception of not being able to watch Malcolm In The Middle re-runs the loss of SKY has impinged on my life not one bit.

SKY you can stick your TV channels right up your stratosphere. And while you’re doing it, why don’t you try and grow up?

P.S. By the way folks - this is my 100th blog. Hurrah!

Virgin Uma Downloads My Bits

To my everlasting shame and chagrin (given their totally pisspoor service) I have to admit to being an NTL customer. It is a cross I’ve borne with many a complaint over the last 7 years. I’ve stuck with them through thick and thin (or rather thin and thin) simply because I’ve heard loads of equally horrific customer-service related stories about every other ISP in the country so what was the point of changing? Better the devil, etc.

I’ve grinned and borne it. Even grunned and beared it. For 7 long years.

But help is now at hand. Virgin has bought out / merged with NTL to create a brand spanking new service called Virgin Media. They’re promising great things. They’re eradicating the name NTL in a vain attempt to eradicate the shame. They’re promising better customer service. They’re promising first class delivery of life’s essentials - better telephones, better TV, better broadband.

But most of all they’re promising Uma Thurman.

Their advertising campaign is currently hitting TV screens nationwide. It’s classy. It’s sexy. It’s Uma with a capital Ummmmmm!

Yes, Richard Branson has got Uma Thurman – coolest woman in Hollywood – to endorse his new media-tastic venture. The man’s undoubtedly a tosser but at times like these it’s just about possible to bathe in his massive toss fall-out and consider it worth while just to get your share of the glory that is Uma. Hell, you can have a bath later, can’t you? Or a cold shower if needs be?

Anyway, forget all the improved service crap and the money for old rope; the adverts plainly state that I can download Uma Thurman as many times as I want.

In fact Uma says so herself with that smoulderingly lethal look that finished off David Carradine in Kill Bill.

Now this is a service I will gladly pay for.

As I type I am eagerly awaiting the delivery of my brand new modem. It’s gonna have to be a big ‘un cos Uma’s a big girl. I’m not sure yet where I’m going to put her but my God am I going to have fun squeezing her in…

I’m polishing my sword as I speak. No word of a lie.

Richard Branson… occasionally, you’re a gent.