Staff at a Virgin Mobile call centre seem unable to expect a high volume of calls, it was revealed yesterday. For the past 120 days, lines have been jammed at the Hi-Tech facility in Birmingham, with customers being placed on hold for what feels like days.
Virgin Mobile Random Charge
“I phoned up to query a random additional charge of £70 that had appeared on my mobile bill,” explained Francesca Biddlewhoop, a Virgin Mobile customer.
“After being pushed through a variety of different menus, I was told that there was an unexpectedly high volume of call. Thinking this must be a one off thing, I hung up with a plan to call the following day.”
Hire More Staff
However, the story was the same when she phoned again, and every time after that.
“I couldn’t believe it, a month went by and every day the volume of calls was unexpectedly high. You’d think the people in charge would figure this out and hire more staff”, Mrs Biddlewhoop added.
Many Thousands
The Druid’s Loom contacted Doug Arsewipe, a spokesperson for the Virgin Mobile call centres, and he told us, “Here at Virgin we pride ourselves in answering as many calls as possible in a given time. I always expect there to be around 10 or 20 calls in about an hour – however, every day we get thousands. So it’s always unexpected.”
“We can only apologize to our customers, and we promise to get down to expected levels, when they start to phone us less,” he added.
Legal Wrath
With reference to Mrs Biddlewhoop’s mystery £70 charge on her phone bill, Mr Arsewipe explained,
“It appears Mrs Biddlewhoop’s husband phoned us the previous month. He stayed on hold for about 3 hours and used up his contracted minutes. He was then charged £3 per minute or part thereof.”
“If they don’t pay up soon, they will face the full legal wrath of Virgin,” he added, frowning.
