The impact of big business indifference

Those of you that have been following us from the Saltmarket premises, will remember that we had a huge struggle getting a telephone line and broadband connection after a lot of empty promises from Virgin Media Business. The trouble started when in December we were told its about a two week turnaround from Order to installation. We submitted the order only for it to go missing. Being human we are reasonably understanding particularly when the bad weather affected everyone. The post Christmas week led us to try and redo the order, only to discover that Virgin Media Business was closed from the 24th of December to the 2nd of January.

Now an organisation that employs 12500 employees and enjoys over a million customers, you would expect that at the very least there would be a skeleton staff to answer the phones over the holiday season. I should have stopped to think, there and then. I was however  blinded by the promise of superfast broadband.

The order was finally placed and accepted in January and we had an install date allocated for the 7th of February. The seventh of February came and went and there was no sign of Virgin. A phone call later and we were told there was a delay and the new install date was the 7th of March.

Bear in mind that this is a business utility  - not residential. BT could have done the install albeit with an ADSL line in under 3 weeks. We started to complain. The impact this had on walk in and online business was entering a high end four figure sum. We could not process credit card transactions automatically and had to make 0845 calls on mobile phones every time we needed to process a transaction. Working on the artists social media project had become nigh impossible impacting negatively on that side of our business.

We started to Tweet, Facebook and Forum notify. Suddenly we had the attention of the Bosses. An installation was organised and finally in March we had our installation.

What has come out of this is that we have realised that we are not alone. Virgin media are hurting businesses all over the country by its indifferent approach to customer service. They are also hurting themselves.

We agreed a compensation package, which was pound for pound extremely short of our losses, but in good faith and in the interests of spending our time constructively we decided to move on. We were asked informally not to reveal the details of this package. VIRGIN MEDIA Remember we signed NOTHING - it was all in good faith.

We moved premises with a promise of a maximum four week wait for our new install. I was told this would be much easier because it was an off network move and that it was an ADSL line installed by BT. A simple plug in, switch on operation.

I have the confirmation email that installation was to be on the 25th of August. I was initially impressed because the technician turned up on the 24th. Opened up the sockets, pressed a few buttons, played with some equipment and left. On the 25th two different technicians turned up  and did the same, announcing it would take a couple of hours and we were ready to go. Neither of the two technicians knew anything about the bloke that turned up on the 24th.

When we realised we had a phone line but no ADSL/broadband on the 26th I called to log the problem, and the previous number still had not been ported.

Since then Virgin have blamed BT,  BT have blamed Virgin. We had a new technician turn up and confirm the ADSL line was live and that it was a Virgin problem.

I have been given a static ip address, which any even slightly savvy person can test and realise it remains unallocated. VIRGIN MEDIA FAIL. This has nothing to do with BT, but everything to do with Virgin media's indifferent and possibly underpaid tech and customer service staff.

We have been given every excuse under the sun, from its a line fault and BT's fault, exchange problem - still BT's fault. Software fault, a reset at Virgin would fix it (Still waiting) - Ummmm unsure what it is and cant give a fix date. Hang on a fix date? It is even properly installed yet. How can you fix something that isn't even installed properly?

I decided to play devils advocate. I called BT business yesterday, gave them the address and postcode and asked for an installation date as well as a time frame. They made no promises. They asked me if they could come back to me. They had to find out about exchange status, line viability and some technical stuff. They came back to me (Something Virgin promises but fail to do) Guess what -Two weeks. The lines are live and active, no problems at the exchange and we can get a better deal. ADSL and lines.

Our telephone number was finally redirected yesterday.

We've just had a call to say they are sending the BT technician over. I am tempted to YouTube the shop CCTV which will capture it, when the technician finds nothing wrong. I really hope he does find something, because if Virgin are being wholly incompetent, we'll be passing business to one of the regular stream of lawyers that pass through our neighbourhood and thus our shop on their way to the courts across the road. And this time it wont be a paltry compensation package. Because consistent bad service hurts business, which hurts the economy and we need EVERYONE small and big business alike to approach economic stimulation seriously.


Virgin you are in breach of contract. Start quoting the small print again and we'll quote the law. The small print does NOT exempt you from the law.

Are you going to pay my advertising costs? Are you going to pay my rent proportionate to loss of revenue? What about my other overheads? If you took the hit proportionately to your revenue that we have taken to ours, it would make business news headlines!

And we are now being contacted by others that have suffered under their bad service, administration and big company bullying. It is a well known fact that when the small guys get together, their shouting is loud and it gets heard. One small voice turns louder with each person/business that emails us and sends us details of their experience. It is the customer that pays your salaries, your rent, your overheads. If we successfully called on every dissatisfied Virgin customer to withhold payment for ninety days, it would be interesting to see what happens to your cash flow!

Creative industries, find creative ways to resolve problems.Virgin should try employing some creative people. By the way that Churchill salute on their website actually looks like the people are standing behind a rude hand gesture! Says so much for what they think of their customers.

Pearsons - End of an era in Scotland

With Pearsons closing down, leaving Scotland one supplier less and no source of Art Glass on the west coast of Scotland, we are going to stock and supply small amounts of bullseye and spectrum glass. We shall also have some moulds and tools available. We wont however seek to be competing with the lovely folk at Retro-Glass on the scale on which they operate.

We'll also be stocking very small sizes and amounts of glass for those of you that want to finish off that essential project without having to buy a full. half or quarter sheet. sizes will be marked by area and/or weight. Either or both. This will incude frit etc.

While our business is primarily aimed at the walk in market, a mail/phone order service will be available.
 We have an excellent book resourcing service and will seek to provide books at cut rate prices.
Books are available to buy, or if youre just looking to resource a project come into our reference library.

While we are strict about copyright issues, photocopying is available for research and students, for a nominal fee.