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Not the most auspicious start to life as a VM customer

Brumski

ULTIMATE Member
After many years of waiting for Openreach to finish their FTTP rollout to our estate, they've been beaten to it by Nexfibre (VMO2) and I placed an order yesterday.

An influx of emails followed, some of which prompted me to create an online VM account which I duly did. I'm culpable of letting my browser generate, and store, credentials but for some bizarre reason it hasn't stored the password for the VM website. As a result, I can't log in to the account I created.

No big deal right? Wrong. Despite having a "forgotten password" option it prompts me to call VM for assistance. However, two separate phone calls and a Twitter/X direct message exchange have resulted in VM telling me that they cannot reset the password until after the installation has taken place in two weeks.

In the meantime I continue to get emails from VM prompting me to log in to my account for multiple reasons, including but not limited to, tracking my order, checking my first bill and payment details are correct, changing my "Web safe" settings and more.

Could this have been avoided if I'd paid attention and ensured the password was stored? Yes. Should it be rocket science to reset a password to an online account? No.

I'm out of ideas at this point. VM's 'solution' is for me to call them each day to see if there are any updates on the order and/or to track the external work ahead of the actual installation which seems rather superfluous.

@Mark.J - I appreciate VM doesn't have the best track record for customer service but this is baffling to me. How can they not reset an account password? Do you have any means or methods of helping me achieve this trivial task?
 
VM customer services are very frustrating sometimes they can turn even the simplest of issues into a drama.

VM have a decent product backed up by terrible customer services.

I'm learning that quickly. The irony of them sending me emails prompting me to access aspects of my account, and them telling me they can't reset my account password is lost on them.

It was a precursor of what was to come when I ended my message with my full name, confirmation I'm the account holder, my address, and my account number (because I knew they'd need them) only for their very first message to be "For security reasons can you confirm your name, confirm you are the account holder and confirm your address" - Sigh...
 
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Remember, this is the same company where, when a major network outage occurs, their service status page also goes offline. Customer support is not their strong point, and account management peculiarities appear to be part and parcel of that.
 
I'm learning that quickly. The irony of them sending me emails prompting me to access aspects of my account, and them telling me they can't reset my account password is lost on them.

It was a precursor of what was to come when I ended my message with my full name, confirmation I'm the account holder, my address, and my account number (because I knew they'd need them) only for their very first message to be "For security reasons can you confirm your name, confirm you are the account holder and confirm your address" - Sigh...
VM customer services are the reason I went somewhere else, I could never decide if VM customer services were being obtuse or purposely obstructive.
 
Remember, this is the same company where, when a major network outage occurs, their service status page also goes offline. Customer support is not their strong point, and account management peculiarities appear to be part and parcel of that.
Thanks Mark. I just asked in case you've come across this issue before and had an avenue to resolve it.

If not no worries. I'm hoping the underlying service, XGSPON in my case, is better than their support.
 
I used VM cable a few houses ago, got tired of the endless price rises and decided to cancel. Turned out you couldn't cancel the same way you signed up (online) and the call centre never answered. I ended up having to write a recorded delivery letter to VM telling them I wanted to cancel the contract.
 
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I used VM cable a few houses ago, got tired of the endless price rises and decided to cancel. Turned out you couldn't cancel the same way you signed up (online) and the call centre never answered. I ended up having to write a recorded delivery letter to VM telling them I wanted to cancel the contract.
I also sent them a recorded delivery letter to cancel the contract.

My personal view is that, like many Call Centres, the VM Customer Service operators are judged on the number of calls they take so the quicker they can get you off the line and onto the next call the better their numbers look. The problem with this approach is VM lose sight of quality issues, a few minutes spent investigating a problem might highlight an issue that affects many other customers and could lead to this issue being permanently resolved leading to less calls and better customer satisfaction

Perhaps it would be better to rename Call Centres\Customer Services
"Problem Solving Centers"
 
Remember, this is the same company where, when a major network outage occurs, their service status page also goes offline. Customer support is not their strong point, and account management peculiarities appear to be part and parcel of that.
I was a Virgin Media customer a few years ago and the only thing worse than having regular unplanned service outages was that their customer service team used to act nonchalantly like outages were just completely expected, as if I was inconveniencing them by daring to ask why my connection was down for the third time that month.

It's rare for me to be strongly biased against a company but Virgin Media's shocking reputation is entirely deserved.
 
Thanks Mark. I just asked in case you've come across this issue before and had an avenue to resolve it.

If not no worries. I'm hoping the underlying service, XGSPON in my case, is better than their support.

I'm unlikely to get them to solve this one, as it'll be one of those "computer says no" type situations. But if you send me your details in a private convo then I can always try a nudge, although it's likely to be Monday before there's a response (assuming they respond).
 
After many years of waiting for Openreach to finish their FTTP rollout to our estate, they've been beaten to it by Nexfibre (VMO2) and I placed an order yesterday.

An influx of emails followed, some of which prompted me to create an online VM account which I duly did. I'm culpable of letting my browser generate, and store, credentials but for some bizarre reason it hasn't stored the password for the VM website. As a result, I can't log in to the account I created.

No big deal right? Wrong. Despite having a "forgotten password" option it prompts me to call VM for assistance. However, two separate phone calls and a Twitter/X direct message exchange have resulted in VM telling me that they cannot reset the password until after the installation has taken place in two weeks.

In the meantime I continue to get emails from VM prompting me to log in to my account for multiple reasons, including but not limited to, tracking my order, checking my first bill and payment details are correct, changing my "Web safe" settings and more.

Could this have been avoided if I'd paid attention and ensured the password was stored? Yes. Should it be rocket science to reset a password to an online account? No.

I'm out of ideas at this point. VM's 'solution' is for me to call them each day to see if there are any updates on the order and/or to track the external work ahead of the actual installation which seems rather superfluous.

@Mark.J - I appreciate VM doesn't have the best track record for customer service but this is baffling to me. How can they not reset an account password? Do you have any means or methods of helping me achieve this trivial task?
Long shot from an IT guy check your email SPAM folder. It might be that you can't reset your password because you have missed the confirmation email so your account is still "unconfirmed" so password resets are not allowed.
 
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Long shot from an IT guy check your email SPAM folder. It might be that you can't reset your password because you have missed the confirmation email so your account is still "unconfirmed" so password resets are not allowed.
Good shout but I received, and actioned, the email verification email/check.

From what they are telling me their system won't allow them to perform a password reset until the service is "installed and activated". As Mark says it literally seems to be a case of "computer says no".


What I see -

1706891650126.webp


What Virgin Media tell me (verbally on the telephone) and via Twitter/X which contradicts the message above.
1706891384602.png
 
Good shout but I received, and actioned, the email verification email/check.

From what they are telling me their system won't allow them to perform a password reset until the service is "installed and activated". As Mark says it literally seems to be a case of "computer says no".
OK another thing to check. Sometimes vendors integrate their web portals with Single Sign On (SSO) products. This means that when you login the URL may change to a different URL for authentication which then redirects you to the web portal. This can sometimes confuse the browser as it ends saving the credentials against the SSO URL not the web portal URL. I will suggest you visit your browser's password saving feature and review all the accounts to see if you can find it against a different URL. Also review your browser history to see if can see what URLs you visited on the day you registered. You could also try to register a new account under a different email as a test to see if you can see why the browser is not saving the credentials.

Final point is to suggest you move away from using your browser to store credentials and move to a proper password manager. I can highly recommend BitWarden which is free and open source. Obviously it's too late to give this advice but for new accounts I always copy the password BitWarden generates into my clipboard and then logout to the new site to "test" the login works with the BitWarden stored password. More often than not I find problems although I never got the case where BitWarden fails to save the account but I see a lot of cases when my predifined 24 characters long random choice is truncated by the website so my password wouldn't work and I need to shorten it.
 
OK another thing to check. Sometimes vendors integrate their web portals with Single Sign On (SSO) products. This means that when you login the URL may change to a different URL for authentication which then redirects you to the web portal. This can sometimes confuse the browser as it ends saving the credentials against the SSO URL not the web portal URL. I will suggest you visit your browser's password saving feature and review all the accounts to see if you can find it against a different URL. Also review your browser history to see if can see what URLs you visited on the day you registered. You could also try to register a new account under a different email as a test to see if you can see why the browser is not saving the credentials.

Final point is to suggest you move away from using your browser to store credentials and move to a proper password manager. I can highly recommend BitWarden which is free and open source. Obviously it's too late to give this advice but for new accounts I always copy the password BitWarden generates into my clipboard and then logout to the new site to "test" the login works with the BitWarden stored password. More often than not I find problems although I never got the case where BitWarden fails to save the account but I see a lot of cases when my predifined 24 characters long random choice is truncated by the website so my password wouldn't work and I need to shorten it.
A couple of good points, thanks (y) . When I said I allowed the browser to generate and store the password I meant my password manager plugin but for the sake of speed I simplified that in my post to "browser".

I've checked my history and searched my password manager for any reference to Virgin Media and/or related domains visited yesterday but nothing. I may have inadvertently declined to save the credentials as I was multitasking at the time so I'm fully culpable for that aspect.
 
A couple of good points, thanks (y) . When I said I allowed the browser to generate and store the password I meant my password manager plugin but for the sake of speed I simplified that in my post to "browser".

I've checked my history and searched my password manager for any reference to Virgin Media and/or related domains visited yesterday but nothing. I may have inadvertently declined to save the credentials as I was multitasking at the time so I'm fully culpable for that aspect.
Are you using BitWarden? Because if you are it's going to be your lucky day as it has a Password Generation History. So even if you didn't save it it will be available there.
 
Are you using BitWarden? Because if you are it's going to be your lucky day as it has a Password Generation History. So even if you didn't save it it will be available there.
No. Don't judge me - Lastpass 🫣

EDIT - MASSIVE thanks to @GreenLantern22. I checked the LastPass password generator feature and sure enough it showed me the password I asked it to generate at 4.04 PM yesterday which is indeed the missing password. I am now logged into my VM account.

THANK YOU!!
 
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I only learnt about that feature in LastPass this week after not saving my password correctly on a site before and having a nightmare.

On anothe note I've just ditched VM for an AltNet as soon as they became available, after 10 years VM were not interested, took far longer cancelling VM that it did to install my new service!!
 
I hope you don't need modem mode (The HUB 5x doesn't have that 'feature' yet, and has been that way for some time).
 
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