Over the last few months I had a protracted outbreak of rubbish service from Virgin Media. There are umpteen forums of people kvetching about the abysmal service
standards of Virgin as well as some relatively high-profile bloggers
including one of the Guardian Online's technical editors. My personal case has finally been resolved, but only after I decided to start calling the CEO office on a daily basis. On reflection I think the endless calls to India and something called
the Level 2 Engineering Escalation department had sent me slightly
psychotic. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if they were concerned for both my personal welfare and the
safety of the people around me. To give them their dues they did actually respond to this tactic and I was helped by one of the CEO's staff and a very helpful engineer who really knew what he was talking about. Turns out they's been charging me for a service that they couldn't have technically provided for about 6 months. Blah, blah, refund, blah. However, this post isn't about transparency, or how consumers have a more powerful voice in the digital age. It's about how a lack of access and bandwidth is close to torture once you're used to having it. I can do without most modern conveniences for a short period but being offline is a disaster.
Marcus Brigstocke caught this agony wonderfully in this short rant on Radio 4 in May 2006.
