Do you think they'll listen?

We arrived home last night to discover yet another piece of junk mail through the door from Virgin Media. these arrive regularly, this is probably the second one this month, and we're only 8 days in. We managed to persuade them to stop sending stuff to us by name, but now they simply send the same thing addressed to "The Occupier". Each lot of guff that drops through the door is an A4 envelope, containing at the least two sheets of A4 paper, plus several leaflets.  I dread to think how many trees are being destroyed in order to fund this relentless bombardment of folk who have zero interest in their products.

A few years back, at the time the council began major works on the block we live in, it because apparent that we were going to need to change providers for TV from Sky, as with scaffolding having to be put up, that meant our satellite dish was going to have to be taken down. Now we'd been extremely happy with Sky - we had been with them for several years up to that point and rarely had an problems at all. We would have preferred to stay put, but we also wanted to be able to watch TV for the planned 4 month duration of the job, so switching to a cable service seemed sensible, and Virgin were even prepared to beat the price currently offered to us by Sky. (Good job we did change, as the scaffold was eventually in place for more than EIGHT months!). So off we trundled to the good old chaps lead by that friendly Branson bloke. Well, their trains are pretty good, so their TV, telephone & broadband had to be worth a punt, right?

Wrong. In fact, more wrong than we could have ever believed. Having signed up online, they initially lost any trace of us, then argued over the date to come and do the installation, then if I recall correctly failed to turn up at all. Once installed, we entered a seemingly never-ending cycle of receiving a bill, having to call to tell them it was incorrect, receiving another bill, having to ring to tell them THAT was incorrect, etc etc etc. in one month alone I noted seven separate telephone calls to their accounts department. It got to the stage where various members of their staff recognised my name when I called, and said "Oh dear, have we messed up your bill AGAIN?!". I should add that the accounts department staff all seemed lovely - and very keen to help, but the computer system and customer service department were absolutely, shockingly terrible. By this time they had gained themselves the nickname of "Virgin MediOCRE" - well deserved in the extreme. I tried repeatedly in the light of their failings to get out of the contract early, but to no avail. One would have thought that they would have realised that their determination to retain us as customers would do them no good in the long run, but no.  On the dot of the 31st day of the 12th month of our 12 month contract I called them to cancel - and practically collapsed with laughter when I was asked why I wished to terminate the service!

So, the junk-mail then. We have returned countless of these unsolicited offerings, marking them return to sender, and noting on the envelope that we would appreciate out address being removed from their database, but all to no avail - the barrage of junk through letterbox continues unabated, wasting their time, resources and money. The one last night is again being returned to them, but with a slightly longer, and more to the point, offering. If it has no effect at least it will give the post office a laugh, and writing it reduced my stress levels somewhat!

"Dear Virgin Media, We have repeatedly requested that you remove our address from your database. Requests which you have chosen to ignore, choosing instead to bombard us with literature with a regularity bordering on harassment. For the avoidance of doubt, we are NOT interested. we have previously been customers of yours - a wholly miserable 12 month period which we would rather pull out our own toenails than repeat. Your service is shocking and your customer service even worse. Now, remove our address from your database please."

Do you think they'll listen?

Robyn