Virgin On The Ridiculous
Feb 9th, 2008 by 'holic
You couldn’t make it up. I assure you I am not. This is the creation of an imagination far more advanced than mine. Yesterday, the good folk at Virgin finally came back to me in writing about the non-availability of Arsenal TV on the cable platform.
“Thank you for your e-mail dated 6 February 2008 regarding when will
Virgin Media will be launching the Arsenal TV channel.
We have no more information as yet other than what was released on the
14 January see below.
“We are currently in discussion with Arsenal Football Club and Seton
Sports, the distributor of Arsenal TV, about launching this channel on
our platform. We hope to launch Arsenal TV soon and will make an
announcement in due course.”
I can appreciate how disappointed you are but an announcement will be
made in due course.”
Nothing too surprising there I suppose, apart from the involvement of Seton Sports, presumably part of ‘the Grauniad’ group? It is the company line at present and that is the precise phrase that was used more than once in my telephone conversation with them. Imagine my anticipation then when ‘in due course’, i.e. 3 hours later, I got this in my inbox,
“Hello you.”
“At Virgin Media we keep our ear to the ground. We listen to our people and try to give them what they want. We want to keep you in the know too. That’s what Virgin Media People are here for. There’s not an event that passes us by or an offer that goes begging. So stay close and you’ll not miss a thing.”
Not miss a thing, huh? This is it, surely? There is a link to their Valentines page where I can find ‘aphrodisiacs’, and ‘love and sex’. Nope, already got those at home! I can win tickets to the Academy gig of my choice, but I went deaf standing next to the speaker stacks at gigs years ago, so blow that. I can have Virgin TV on demand and make sure I never miss my favourite show, unless of course my favourite show is on Arsenal TV! In their sporting section I can catch up with what Mike Catt thinks about England’s six nations rugby failures. I think I could sum up our feelings about them in four letters or so.
No, they don’t appear to have kept their ‘ear to the ground’ for too long, do they? Miserable old sod that I am I will be preparing more mails for those involved on Monday. I have some ideas swimming round in what passes for a brain this morning.
For instance, the bandwidth is available for that ‘TV on demand’ guff. Mrs ‘holic loves that because she can catch up on the soaps when I have finished watching ‘Discovery Music and Real Life Moving Cop Disasters +1’. Could we have the pick of Arsenal TV ‘on demand’ until you can see your way to giving us that which you advertised and for which we are now paying?
Arsenal Football Club, love of my life that you are, could you not see your way to honouring your moral obligation to those of us who are paying good money for a product you advertised that in fact we cannot get? How about free ATVO (Arsenal TV online) for Virgin customers until you have resolved the matter in these ‘discussions’ everybody tells us you are having?
Talk to the ‘graduates’ in your teams about ‘customer service’ and ‘complaints resolution’ and you might just see we have a couple of temporary solutions available. It just needs you to think a little more about the poor sods who are paying to keep you afloat. Thank you.
*Climbs Off Soap Box and apologises to those who are not UK and Ireland cable customers. You must be getting as sick of this as us!
Have a good weekend
My rant of the day doesn’t leave much room for a Blackburn preview, so I will be back with that tomorrow. Whatever you are doing this weekend I hope you enjoy it. Apart from a Chinese meal tonight (Happy new year from this fire monkey!) I have not a lot planned, so I suspect much lounging around in front of the football on the box is in order. Speaking of which, good luck to Alex Song in the African Cup Of Nations Final.
Come on City!
8 Responses to “Virgin On The Ridiculous”
hey~~~it’s chinese new year !!!as a chinese ,it really is an important festival for us .well;i am sorry to hear ur sadness news but whatever,the hope is still exist ,the pattern will be solved soon ….
I think it was 25th August 1973 (although we also played them at home towards the end of the 72/73 season winning 3-1)
I’ll have to check in the loft to see if I’ve got the programme although the old man was a tightwad.
Ah yes, remember it well, or rather I don’t. The first time ever I got horribly awfully drunk was that Friday and I was in bed or on the loo for three days. Had no chance of joining the old man at the game because the world was still spinning at a rate of knots. Word to the wise kids, when you have your first proper drink make sure it’s not bottles and bottles of cheap wine!
And for those of you who haven’t a clue what we’re on about, sorry!
When I got the email from Vigin I sent them back a reply saying ‘What I want is Arsenal TV’
However, I doubt if they will get the message.
And I’ve just checked that the Arsenal TV works fine for me.
Regards
To those who do not appreciate Jackster’s sense of humour I should point out that he is a Sky subscriber.
Care in the Community isn’t working.
😉
As a follow up to a comment I posted in the previous discussion of this topic, here’s the reply I got from NTL on Saturday to my email:
Thank you for your email. Clearly you are an ardent Arsenal supporter, and I appreciate your frustration. I can see how you might feel misled, when Setanta have publicised the launch of Arsenal TV across their channels. Unfortunately however, I can only re-iterate the previous comments of my colleague Ian. We have been advised that Chorus ntl have no plans to carry this channel. This is as much information as Ian or I can provide you with at this time. You do have the option to cancel your subscription to the Setanta premium package, and of course if you wish to cancel your service entirely, we can direct that request to our Cancellations department. I am sorry to have to disappoint you.
So Sky here I come 🙁
finally got around to getting my setanta subscription (on sky) this weekend. got the arsenal channel just fine. but if you so dare to have a sky multiroom supscription dont expect setanta to work on all your digi boxes. they’re charging an extra £5 a month per box which is a rip off considering its a package you get free on everybox as part of the xl virgin package. its not all roses for sky cusomters either