Hitting another hitch in moving to London. I went to the Virgin Media shop last weekend to set up my broadband connection. They said: “No problem, here is your modem, just plug it in and activate it. After that everything will work.”

Guess what, it actually worked just the way it was supposed to. At least until today. Today I get an email, that they want to do an installation appointment on the 26th sometime between 8am and 1pm. I called to cancel that, since there is simply no way I can take of a whole day from work just to get an installation done that is completely unnecessary. It’s unnecessary because everything already works.

The person on the phone was obviously employed by Virgin Media. But they obviously did not work for them, since they were being more than counter productive. They did cancel the installation, but they also canceled my account, so when I hung up my internet stopped working.

Way to go Virgin Media. That’s great customer service!

So I called again. After spending ages on the phone, I actually got another representative, this one actually worked for Virgin Media, to agree that an installation appointment is not actually necessary.

Except to reactivate my account, I would need to speak to the “Quick Start Team”. And they had already gone home for the day, so that now I have to call back tomorrow.

I do have high hopes that I’ll get everything sorted tomorrow, but the entire episode makes me very wary of their service philosophy. I know for a fact, that if I pulled such a stunt at my job (and I did do customer service all of last week as part of my training) I’d not have to worry about remaining employed at my firm.

How is it that a large organisation does not more effectively weed out such “chaff” from their midst?