Telco G
2008-04-09 13:25:45 UTC
I am an installation engineer for Virgin Media, employed by the contractor . As installation engineers, we are obviously the face of Virgin Media to our customers, but too many times we arrive at their houses late, and rushed, we don’t always install everything the customer has ordered, we don’t install cables or equipment in the places the customer would like them, and the quality of our work is often substandard. Some things we install we know won’t ever work, some services that were originally in the house will stop working, but are forced to leave customers anyway. We do the bare minimum of tasks we are set, we can’t afford to do any more, we can’t afford to smooth over or fix (the many) mistakes of sales and operations teams or computer systems, and we ignore serious billing/service (even fraud) problems that are large (but not in our immediate scope of work). As a result, Virgin Media suffers great losses due to logistical error, wastage, and as a result of liquidated damages where customers are severely jilted (eg. after waiting 3 weeks for essential services they are often told they have to wait 3 more weeks or they can’t have what they were promised at all). It is not because we don’t care (although people who care are chewed up and spat out by managers), it’s not because we aren’t penalized (because we are penalized with fines on QC failures), It is not because we are lazy (we do this every day for up to 13 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week without lunch breaks), It’s not because we are cowboys (we are trained telecommunications and data engineers): It is because I and thousands of my colleagues are forced tounrealistic schedules and contradictory, crippling operating procedures.
Burned out engineers Burn Virgin
Virgin Media obviously is in fierce competition with the likes of Sky and BT. On the front line and feeling the most pressure of this competition is undoubtedly the engineer. The engineer in Virgin Media is surely the lowest common denominator, filling the gap between the company’s resources and the customer expectations with none other than his personal time. The pressure an engineer will face (as I will explain) does not stop until well after he is burned out, and when he is burned out and fails, the consequences are released onto the customer. Customers who are used to being right, being treated well, getting what they deserve and more than that getting what they want are becoming increasingly unnerved with the low quality of our installation service. This affects Virgin the company as a whole. I am writing to you to alert or remind you to the real state of the company on the ground level and to give you practical examples of our every day installations so that somehow you may take or authorise action to protect our engineers, and as a result the company as a whole. This letter will expose the actions and practices of some people as unprofessional, illegal, and immoral, but although most have no choice but to behave in a manner dictated by their conditions, some do and should be held to account. I realise this may have negative implications on my career, but as you will discover, I have nothing to lose, and I see no alternative. Something must be said, heard, and done to preserve those affected, and the name of Virgin.
Conditions are getting worse
Since August 06, working out of at least 4 franchises I have covered most of Surry, Hampshire, and south London installing the NTL/Telewest/Virgin Media brand product to thousands of customers. Not many have complained about my work or had course to - yet; but still keeping a somewhat professional nature has come at a great personal cost, and it is waning. I am losing the will to go on as the mediator between a ruthless profiteering company and their consumer (a mostly desperate and angry person forcing me to bargain between my liberty and my conscience for their service). I don’t get home some nights until 11pm, most nights it’s 8 as to please my customers, finish my allotted (unchosen) jobs and to pick up an extra job as a scrap extra than my 12,600 gross sterling. That’s six days a week, 12 hours a day for about 4 quid per hour (less than the minimum wage) on the naïve assumption I will not suffer consequential losses, that I am not fined and that am payed correctly.
Another squeeze on an already tight industry.
The beginning of the worst for engineers came around November 2006 when Avonline, NTL:T’s No 1 contractor acquired 4 new NTL:T Franchised areas and traded one out, therefore gaining hundreds more employees and ending up with 7 different pay structures for them (which were protected from systematic change under TUPE Laws). Around December, an Avonline manager displayed a short, simple power-point presentation speculating on a new employee contract which would start in the next year; this contract blatantly ignored TUPE laws, any employee input, and was designed to take money straight from employee’s pockets, and back into Avonline’s. This contract was never bartered for or formally agreed by the staff, most defiantly never signed for - everyone wondered how they could do it legally. On the 14th of January 2007 the mostly Virgin portion of Avonline’s c600 employees started to receive letters confirming that Avonline had (in fact 2 weeks prior) stubbornly and controversially changed all 7 contracts for their acquired and new employees to their own newly contrived version. Avonline have not looked back, reviewed, or releasing any hint of regard to throwing the lives of its employees into this resulting turmoil.
The muffled, gagged reaction; has it met Virgin’s ears?
Because the Avonline employee contract (as I will explain in depth) was so different than any previous model, it has taken some time for most engineers to realise they are a lot worse off than before, but it is apparent that almost every engineer is working longer hours than ever - for less pay, and effectively dramatically less rights. As a result I have never in my life seen an unhappier group of employees, and I personally have never been unhappier in my job for such a long time. People can only take so much; there is a time in each individual when they will crack. Sometimes they will quit, sometimes they will make a big mistake, sometimes they will just give up, sometimes they will take it out on the company and cause damage in a big way, either slowly and covertly through their practices or explosively and simply. It would take a dull person to see no evidence of this spectrum of reaction; since January I estimate that 2/3rd of Avonline’s workforce has changed, and in some franchises up to a half. There have been protests, strikes, and constructive resignation like never before. Most of my line managers positions have been replaced twice, and some are still unfilled after months. The cable-tel industry is liquid, and bottomless; the industry is in such a state that an honest person is too stretched to stay honest and make a decent living. The worst I see is to come…
Things don’t even look like they are getting better for the industry as a whole: recently Cobra Installations, Virgin’s second rated contractor decided to take on a more ‘Avonline’ approach and change its wage structure to a similar one, and it is only a matter of time before the industry will effectively be a new one. One would assume this industry overhaul is a by-product of the European floodgates opening up cable-tels to cheap labour like the other industries such as construction. It may be right for a stone cold, results driven construction industry but it is not right for such a consumer facing industry as Virgin Media. This will not go down well as an excuse to the British public when the service they receive is downgraded dramatically. The gap is going to widen and things are only going to get harder.
Avonline PLC, who are trying to manage their fledgling national operations from their head office in Bristol, are on paper Virgin’s 1st rated contractor but (as I will explain) these ratings mean nothing in real terms; the rising tide of consequence is against their loose, unprofessional practice; it seems like it is only a matter of time before it all falls through. Union revolt, if not the Law may soon bring them to their knees, toppling them over and bringing Virgin Media down with them. Failing that, any resulting scandal will tarnish Virgin’s perceived brand ethos.
The perceived responsibility for all of the above through the legacy of the NTL:Telewest is still Virgin Media. Although though it is not Virgin directly employing us, the Virgin logo is written all over us? Is the resulting dissatisfaction meeting Virgins ears from employees and customers alike? Are Virgin’s hands tied because of the signed contract? If so, or in any case I believe that Taking on NTL:T will be Virgin’s hardest battle because of its reliance upon contractors like Avonline.
Avonline’s new contract and its conditions: The crux of the issue
At a glance the Avonline contract is essentially:To use the guise of performance remuneration as a loophole to consistently pay less than the national minimum wage to workers working more than the hours normally legally allowed by putting the worker into a position of negating his own rights and securities to make a sustainable income, AND to keep his services by blocking his escape route through imposed lifestyle conditions such as, lack of training and recognition (leading to career backsliding), lack of time (to look for other opportunities) and lack of disposable income (to support resignation, study, or and full time job seeking). The standard Avonline engineers base wage is 10,000 gross sterling per year (minus expenses, tools and fines) plus a 50 pound per week attendance bonus, which is lost if all rostered days are not attended. After working for Avonline for over 1 year there is a bonus 2k.
A day sick will cause that loss of 50 pounds on top of lost wages
An engineer earns 10 pounds for every address (not task) he completes above 30 in a week (this equates to over 6 per day in a 5 day week).
The (forced) Avonline employee contract states that employees are to be rostered into a 5 day week but in reality most franchises have no such roster. Realistically it is very rare to get the option of 5 day week, because the black practises of managers effectively forcing attendance (eg. last time I took a 5 day week I was forced to spend 2 hours of my ‘rostered’ day off returning my van and 2 hours on the next day to collect my van which was not needed or used in my absence. This is a normal spite induced penalty for having the 6th week day off) Avonline are trying to operate on too little staff. To add insult to injury the extra forced days or hours a
48 Hour working week forced opt out
The 48 hour working week law exists to protect employees from being overworked and for flexibility they can choose to opt out of the 48 hour working week. Most that opt out do so to earn more money through overtime, time + ½ and double time pay. Not so with Avonline! Avonline have written into the new forced contract that in no way will the hours that we work to complete normal duties constitute overtime. To actually be accepted to work for Avonline, employees are forced to opt out of the 48 hour working week law. In average I and most other employees work 72 hours per week. Personally I would work overtime in normal circumstances, to make extra money, but then since there is theovertime clause, employees seeking to make a decent wage from “normal duties” are forced to working much longer hours than before.
08/2007 : Celebrating a year of lost lunch times.
Under law, it is up to the employee to take time off for lunch in his normal work day, however the pressure to complete routed jobs, and the low remuneration forces engineers to skip lunch on most days in order to complete the 6-12 routed (unchosen) jobs. In my whole time I have been working for Avonline I have never seen any employee take more than 15min for an already rare lunch break.
Tools and equipment at own expense
All personal tools are obtained at the engineer’s expense, any personal or company equipment (maps, keys, tools etc.) Lost or stolen (the job is extremely fast paced and covers great distances so it happens a lot) are recoverable at the engineers expense, all wear and tear on personal tools is at the engineers expense. The typical engineer’s personal kit at any time is worth about 500 pounds and is taken from wages on a payment plan from the time of issue.
A consequence of the systematic address based remuneration.
After waking up at 5 leaving a modest 30min for breakfast/preparation and driving from home for up to an hour, arriving at the yard at 6:30, waiting in line to receive a route for 10min, calculating required stores for 10min, waiting in line to receive stores for 10min, at 7 driving perhaps an hour to the first job the engineer is expected to arrive at 8am (or faces a fine). To make 10 pounds above the base (below minimum) wage that day the engineer is expected to complete 7 addresses per day, that is not jobs, that is addresses. Engineers are paid a set fee for each address completed, there is no accounting for:
The amount of tasks in the address (eg telephone, broadband, V or V+ or VIPackage etc.)
The size of the job (eg. the amount or length of cabling, height of cables)
The time it takes to complete each task.
The time it takes to travel (eg. route considerations traffic)
The weather conditions.
Time lost to failure of equipment issued.
Time lost due to accounting, sales or operation errors.
Some argue that some address tasks are small but this is ignorant because the average address will realistically take 45min to 2 hours to complete. One particular trend with VIP now is to bundle 4 jobs into one work order, so the tasks at one address (1/10th of a day’s workload) could be:
Typical address
Travel to area (up to 1 hr).
Find correct telephone exchange (up to 1 hr if bad directions and mux label).
Open exchange, testing for flammable gases (5min or 30min without keys).
Find correct pairs in telephone exchange and connect (up to 30min because the wires may not be labelled and test trips to cabinet are necessary).
Travel to address (up to 10min).
Find correct cabinet on foot (up to 30 mins if bad directions or cab label).
Open cabinet, testing for flammable gases (5min or 30min without keys).
Find correct cables in cabinet (up to 15min if cables aren’t labelled).
Connect, and label telco and cat-v (5min).
Discuss job and cable routing with customer (up to 15min if customer refuses or needs to discuss with / wait for customers partner to come home)
Swap V Box for V+ box, therefore disabling the broadband from the V box (10min).
Because broadband is no longer in v box the broadband will need to be completely reinstalled discuss job and cable routing with customer (up to 15min if customer refuses or needs to discuss with / wait for partner to come home).
Install fresh cable and points for broadband in the location of the customers PC (up to 1hr if a 3 story flat).
Install (Fresh cable and points) the original V box in a different area in the house, usually upstairs (up to 1 hr).
Wait for V+ and V Box to be hit successfully, doing diagnostics tests (up to 40 mins if box hit is delayed)
Educate the customer about on how to use their broadband, and V+ (up to 30 mins if customer is slow or stubborn.)
IF all goes perfectly well this address (worth 1/6th of the day’s base pay) will take 1 hour, usually 2½ hours, but as explained, things will rarely be that straightforward, and can take over 8 hours to complete one job. We are expected to continue with our typical day and return home between 6:30pm and 11pm.
Favour & forced failure.
Avonline as a company are in charge of routing engineers so that the workload and distance travelled is shared equally amongst all engineers, routes are assembled with the engineers name at the top. However, by the time a route gets from the logistics offices down to the engineer, his particular route can look a lot different than it started. Managers put their hands in and change routes around before printing them out to give favoured engineers a better run, and can force unfavoured ones to a harder, less productive day and consequently failure. Most times when I receive a route it is cut and pasted like a scrap book with another’s name printed on them and scribbled out – in fact I have only ever had a route with my name on it once. Because of the way the pay is structured; managers playing with routes can consequently make or break an engineer’s day, week or in the long-term: career. An engineer with a favourable route can end up with twice the pay of an engineer with an unfavourable route while working half as hard. This opens up managers on one hand to bribes for easy routes and on the other hand gives them the ability to force the failure of an engineer through giving him an unrealistic workload, thereby opening up the opportunity to terminate, or blackmail the engineer to his own ends.
Big area - too bad!
The general rule is that managers should route engineers close to their home so that travelling familiarly and getting back home is easier. More often than not I find that I have been routed with jobs that are nowhere near my area, that I am not familiar with and are almost an hour apart on the road, while other engineers are routed with jobs around the corner from other jobs and their (and my) homes, there is no justification for this, and makes one look bad compared to another engineer.
Big jobs – too bad!
If on a Monday an engineer is only routed with 1 all-day job (a realistic scenario) then he then only has 4 days to complete 34 jobs before he can make extra money above his 10k (minus expenses, tools and fines). Any idea that an engineer can make a fair wage and produce quality simultaneously is blatantly ignorant, unfounded.
Not enough work – too bad!
There are times when there is not even theoption to make money after writing off the day, donning the uniform, and making the effort to turn up. Most franchises call crews every morning to confirm verbally that the crew is able to make it in; however, most days there are some crews who are called in but are not routed with work. In this case they may be simply sent home again without pay, be sent to help another crew, or be sent on unmeasured work, thereby working on the base, less than minimum wage with no chance for performance “bonuses”.
Unmeasured set tasks
The whole Avonline contract revolves around a very systematic reward scheme for measured productivity per address, however Avonline, per franchise employ only 2 supervisors, 1 stores person, and sometimes (but not in all cases) a manager (who if is present, is rarely seen in the field). When things go wrong on jobs, when the site gets messy, and indeed for any extra need that may arise, as they do often; it is extremely rare for a supervisor or a stores person to have the time or inclination to take on these jobs themselves. Usually crews are sent out on these jobs which are not measured, not part of the contract, and most definitely wholly illegal because minimum wage is not met. In some franchises a whole crew is dedicated full time (for whatever that means) to special needs. These crews are known as “the special needs crew”, and usually the freshest recruits get this label. I was in special needs crew for at least 6 months. If questions are raised about wages, the standard answer is that the “crew is on day rate”, but there is no day rate as such, just a retainer of 30-50 pounds for around 13 hours work in a day with by default no chance to earn more in the day. Managers do not usually put their hand in and tweak wages for unmeasured tasks but sometimes as an incentive to the engineer to travel or do favours he will promise to pay the engineer an arbitrary amount. Sometimes those promises form the basis of whole days of work or even multiple days, promises that are often forgotten, against company policy, and not backed up in writing.
No accounting for housekeeping
If an engineer returns home between 6:30 and 11pm, it does not leave much time for rest and sometimes the situation breaks the law, but there is more: at night is the only time an engineer can do his paperwork, which can take another 20mins otherwise he won’t get paid, there is also drill batteries to recharge and other ‘housekeeping’, which if the engineer is too tired to do before retiring will seriously hamper the next day’s work. Once a week the engineer must wash, clean, and audit his van which takes around half an hour - half an hour he does not have given the circumstances. There are also crew meetings in the mornings which take an hour sometimes. They are also factored into timeslots or wages, therefore are not rewarded for.
Damage claw backs.
Due to lack of equipment, time constraints, and sometimes bad luck accidents and damage can happen inside a customer’s property. By contract; any damage to customer’s property through negligence is recovered from the engineer’s wages, however the word negligence to Avonline encompasses all accidents. I have personally known Avonline to take damages relating to unavoidable accidents from my wages without disciplinary procedures or recourse.
Alleged road traffic offences
If Avonline receives an alleged road traffic offence, their policy is that it is not worth the time or the money to fight it. Avonline will pay the fine (sometimes late incurring a higher fee) and assume responsibility without even notifying the driver of the existence of the fine until after it is paid. Then the employee is notified that the cost of the fine and a 20 pound administration charge will be taken directly from their wages. The employee has no authority to contest to the issuing body. These and other wage deductions are illegal.
RTA’s
Avonline re-charge Employees for ANY damage caused to vans where fault is of the driver or unknown persons.
Compromises to safety due to time restraints.
Speeding is a staple for most engineers because of time restraints, the most productive in the league tables equate to the most aggressive on the road.
Talking on mobile phones whilst driving is essential to saving precious time through multitasking.
Hands free kits are generally not supplied to engineers, if they are they are a hard to use cable type rather than a blue tooth connection, hence are seldom used by the engineers.
Virgin media operations, dispatch, and T,P&R all now require use of touch tone buttons, rendering hands free kits useless for engineers whilst driving anyway.
There are some days where there is either no chance to use a toilet or access to a customer’s toilet is not an option. Because of time restraints and pressures the travel of sometimes up to an hour to the depot is not an option, urinating into bottles is a common practice amongst engineers. If caught the engineer faces embarrassment and possible disciplinary action.
Health and safety legislation states that an untrained person may not go above 2m height when working, yet all engineers are issued with triple ladders reaching at least 6m, not all engineers are trained yet not all engineers know of the law, and even the ones that do realize that sometimes it can save a lot of time rather than to re-route a cable at a low height. If the engineer chooses not to go above 2m to tidy cables, he runs the risk of failing the job and incurring fines. If a person is injured working at heights without training Avonline’s stance is to fight as hard as possible to deny compensation to the injured employee because the have been ‘told’ not to.
Testing for flammable gases is taught in training but is rarely used by engineers because of time.
Although Employees are issued with a van for company use, Avonline’s policy that the Van is never to be involved in personal use, any use of van for personal reasons is subject to disciplinary action and may cost him his job. Avonline’s policy is also to deny any claim of injury arising from unauthorised passengers in the event of an accident. This may sound easy to comply to on paper, but in practise this rule is almost impossible to keep, and the pressure puts employees at great risks eg. even if an employee has worked all of his spare time, and this makes it grossly uneconomical, un-strategic, even un-logical, to return home to collect his own car, he would have to do so before collecting a dependant on the way home.
INTERACTING WITH Avonline
Unavailability of tools.
Because the ordering and stores in Avonline are so grossly disorganized: If an item of an engineers kit gets lost or stolen, an engineer can expect to go without that equipment for up to 3 months, despite how fervently it is requested from management and stores. To work without proper tools is dangerous, damaging to Virgin’s network, time consuming and most frustratingly: avoidable by having a spare in stores. To get an idea of how time consuming, dangerous and costly missing equipment is, here are some examples:
The humble toning amp: without this tool it can take up 1½ hours of guesswork to locate which up to 500 available telephone cables belongs to an installation customer. With around 4 telco installations per day this has serious effects on an engineer’s pay packet, reputation and finishing time. I experienced this situation first hand and was powerless to change it for 3 months because the orders I frequently placed were never passed on.
Without cab keys, access to the roadside cabinets (therefore most jobs) could not be completed. Many times crews have been told by supervisors to break into cabinets because they are not issued with or have lost keys and there is no replacement. Breaking into a cabinet represents at least 20min of dangerous toil physically jamming objects into the metal cabinet, and prizing it open and inserting a hand to open the lock from the inside, if a cabinet ejects the wedged object the hand will be trapped inside, possible finger amputation. Sometimes 6 cabs in a day are broken into by a crew without a key. It represents a waste of time and lost income for the crew and a huge cost to Virgin through replacement and subsequent vandalism through security breaches.
Krone/ SID/ pouyet tools are used to connect telco into IDC strips, While waiting for an ordered ‘Kroner’ that never came, the only alternative was to use a screw driver, which seriously disfigures the strip, rendering it inoperable, or worse partly operable causing untold faults in the network.
Disposable hand wipes and gloves are vital in the fight against Leptospirosis disease which is caused by rat urine found in the underground ducting network. This disease can kill a healthy engineer in less than a week, yet from November 06 to Jan 07 at least one franchise had no access to these sanitary wipes. Customers also experienced smudged dirty walls where engineers working outside came inside to work on sockets. Material gloves are hard to come by and I have yet to be given the option of latex type dry gloves.
Our vans are the most important equipment we have but we are often given vans that don’t work in the way that they are supposed to, at the moment I have had a van for around a month where the rear compartment does not open. I am forced to use the passenger seat as a space for tools and consumables, this is not only unhygienic, messy and dangerous, it poses a security risk where valuable items may tempt a break-in
Out of 3 van’s I have had, the radios in 2 never worked, sometimes it would be a simple thing such as the fleet department giving security codes, no matter how much a fix is requested, it never happens.
After 2 attempts at ordering, I have still not received my full virgin uniform due to pilfering among the ranks. The first uniform delivery I had received contained about half of what was ticked on the paperwork, so I have ordered a second lot which has been received, this time only missing the safety boots, (also ticked as sent).
Avonline’s Accountability is a sham
With the attendance part of wages being 2 weeks in arrears, and the productivity part being 6 weeks in arrears, keeping payroll and managers “promise payments” to account would be hard but to make it almost impossible there is no accounting for individual jobs or even full days on the performance (or any) section of engineers pay slips, six weeks after the jobs are complete there is simply a lump sum shown to account for the sum of jobs completed 6 weeks ago. As I will explain, getting details over the phone almost always fails leading to great frustration.
Grievances
Grievances and complaints about anything are almost always (wages, fines, bullying) quashed by a combination of red tape, ignorance and lost opportunities through the time restrictions of the default lifestyle imposed on technicians. To add to this is the lack of help the HR department is.
HR Department
Despite having around 600 employees HR department of Avonline have one phone line open only between 1-3pm Monday to Friday, that’s 10 hours of shared availability, leaving each employee only 1 minute per week to voice their concerns, 5mins per month, and about 48min per year. Realistically it can take that years ‘quota’ 48ish min to sort just one problem out. To make matters even worse is HR does not reply to voicemails received outside of the 1-3 time-slot. With their resources It is sadly no wonder that HR are so rushed, vacant, and never like to admit they have the authority to talk about fines, wages, deductions, and other general employment related matters. The favoured method of HR to deflect action is to refer employees to other rushed managers and consequently more voice mails with no reply. With the demands on engineers being greatest in the day time, the small window to talk to HR is usually is spanned by a single installation and is almost always missed. As a consequence engineers simply give up trying to fight for their wages that have been owed, fines they don’t agree with, and other concerns – there is simply just no-one to talk to.
General communication
As a general theme, there is no one to turn to and no easy way to notify of days off (including notifying of intention to work a 5 day only week). Text messages are deemed unacceptable, verbal is not acceptable, and written messages are not acceptable without a signature of a manager, a manager will rarely authorise a day off; therefore any day off which an employee takes on his own incurs disciplinary action. Holidays can’t be taken without a franchise manager’s approval. I don’t presently have a franchise manager, I am sent from site to site so that no-one claims to be my manager, and the site that I am at mostly has had no manager for months as he has resigned and not been replaced. Avonline has lengthened the holiday notice period from 2 weeks to 4 weeks but I still have no option of taking them because there is no procedure to notify.
Virgin Media SPECIFIC ISSUES
Although most of this letter is aimed at showing Avonline’s practices as making life hard for engineers, it is not only Avonline. Sometimes Virgin Media’s policies and practices can be almost as frustrating. The biggest is that the Virgin Ethos does not shine through at all. Coverage of the happy staff who employed by Virgin is all over the media. If Virgin Media are such a great company, how can they contract another company with such low human rights? Other shortfalls in Virgin Operations make it hard.
When run sheets/ routing paperwork fails to come down, this can delay the start of a whole franchise by 2 hours, and it still happens.
The antiquated work orders system(s).There are so many systems for managing work that they rarely work alone, let alone together. When an engineer gets to an address, in approximately 50% of cases the work order will be wrong. SMS sheets never have V+ as a native option so it needs to be written in the notes section, in some cases it’s written in ink by a supervisor and a lot of cases it’s missed as it’s a big room for error. The work will either have to be re-scheduled, or the engineer will be even more pressed for time because he wasn’t aware of the task. In a lot of cases stores will not issue equipment unless it is actually on the work order. This means an engineer has to go back across the franchise to the depot to get more equipment possibly wasting an hour of his time. If the job fails the onus is on the engineer.
Contact detailsMost phone numbers on SMS work orders are completely wrong or fabricated, and in some cases the engineers do not have any way to contact customers to pre call or warn of schedule changes or to check if the customer is home at all.
No pre calling leads to time wasted on NBI’s (No body In)Most days are okay but on some days it seems that no customers were aware of the appointment and were definitely not pre called. This can waste the engineers time driving to a failed job and infuriate the customer.
Analogue and digital hit delays waste hours of time because engineers are not allowed to leave boxes unhit.
Sales people often promise things that engineers can’t realistically do. Sometimes promises are written in the notes section of the work orders; sometimes in the worst cases nothing is written leaving the angry customer to explain the promise.
Timeslots: Sales people seem to think that engineers can do anything, and often tell customers that an engineer can com at an exact time instead of the 2 timeslots. With the amount of jobs engineers do, it is impossible to do the jobs out of order, attempting will just make the day run longer and make other appointments late.
Tall stories: Sales people telling customers or inferring that we install wiring in wall cavities or that our broadband is wireless, leads to customers calling virgin to complain before work can even start, infuriating customers, wasting engineers time.
Virgin’s physical network
As a whole the virgin network is an absolute sham, it is hard to work on, faulty, un-maintained and inconsistent.
Grossly insufficient information about multiplexer and cabinet locations.If an engineer does not know his area he can drive around for 45min just to find a cabinet or a mux that either has no location information for it or the information is totally wrong, and it is so simple to fix.
No ID Label on equipment.In some franchises the cabinets and mux’ have NO ID label Identifying them causing the engineer to have to park dangerously in multiple locations in the area, to open up and test the wiring for a phone number, and then call T,P&R Nottingham just to find out which mux he is at. This should be never a standard practice and the people at the call centre are seldom understanding of it. If the mux’ were labelled it would save this trouble.
Grossly Insufficient labelling systems inside cabinets/Mux’In almost ALL mux’ and cabinets there are absolutely no labels to identify which of the thousands of pairs of wires is the right one. An engineer has to guess a pattern and test the wires, if he is wrong he has to call TP&R to find how far out he is, and adjust his pattern. There is too many different franchises with too many different patterns to learn. Some don’t even comply with a pattern. All this and so much time could be saved by labelling the pairs.
TP&R have no Idea of network schematics.Many cabs feed from the one mux, but schematics of which wire physically connects to which cab is unavailable. If the wire provisioned to the engineer is dead, the engineer has no way of knowing the range of wires available for alternate routing.
Un-necessary jumpering due to programming and database shortfalls.
Here’s one that definitely wastes thousands of man hours per day nationally.Sometimes inactive houses are not connected to the exchange so an engineer is needed to physically connect the house to the exchange. Other times a customer moves into a house from a previous subscriber (i.e. the house is connected to the exchange by wires already). The simple thing to do would be for TP&R to just disconnect the old number remotely and reconnect the new number using the same details, call the customer to confirm it all works then call an engineer if there are problems. But no, every single time, an engineer is physically called out to change wires to different jumpers. It’s the equivalent of putting a lamp into a different power socket every time it needs to be used.
EXAMPLES OF CUSTOMER’S EXPERIENCES
Engineers arriving lateThe most common thing a customer will experience is an engineer turning up on the doorstep behind the scheduled timeslot, this is due to the culmination of many of errors of judgement by many parties but the easiest fix for this will not be implemented, and that is to employ more engineers. This won’t happen because Avonline is so tight, and if they did, the current engineers would make even less money because they are completing less addresses, and they would have to pay more per address. This does not help customers who have taken the day off work to wait for an engineer.
Tasks not completed.Because engineers are so stretched, anything that is not expressly written on the job sheet will not be done, regardless of what it is or how crucial it is, and how much a customer begs. An engineer will not be payed to complete any extra task, and with this happening 2 or 3 times per day, and some tasks taking an hour, it would be unreasonable to expect that he should. This will never sit well with customers, because a customer sees red, and a virgin logo, not a tired overworked engineer. The problem exists between the formatting of the worksheets. This could easily be fixed by pre-calling a customer from rendered work sheets instead of the back office systems, and a pre-visit to confirm locations of services.
Not informed of date and time.After booking a fault or service, sometimes a customer is told to wait for a confirmation of date, which never comes - but the engineer certainly does, often when the customer isn’t home, thereby rendering the appointment a big waste of time and leaving the customer to book (and wait for) another appointment. This could be fixed by pre-calling all customers.
Told liesSometimes a sales person will tell all kinds of half truths to get a sale, often about the way in which the installation will take place, sometimes that the wires will be hidden, sometimes that the broadband is wireless, in most case, they are left to argue with the engineer. Calls should be recorded and reports should be routinely investigated and pre-visits to confirm installation locations.
Engineers are unco-operative.A seasoned engineer can talk his way out of just about any task that a customer would like to set for him, often to make the installation as easy as possible, there are so many excuses to not to do an installation as planned if it is harder than the norm. If all installations were pre-visited and measured jobs could be weighed and payed accordingly, engineers would have no excuses and they would do tasks because they are rewarded.
Work messyAn engineer who has 12 jobs to complete, is not going to complete them without sacrificing a large amount on quality. Customers always complain about this, and often even if an engineer is normally careful, he won’t have a choice in a big day. The fix for this is more staff, less jobs, so simple, will it happen?
Service can’t go in (wrong crew called)This happens more often than most think: a 1 man crew is called when there are absolutely no cables in the property, or sometimes even the street. Whether this is an administration or systems problem, it is annoying for the customer involved, who then has to wait for construction, and then a 2 man crew, which could take a month. Sometimes an installation can never go in there. A pre-visit would fix this problem for sure.
Services not workingSometimes no matter what an engineer does, there is just no way he can get a service to work in the time that he has. Analogue boxes with hit delays will never work because they need to be re-tuned when they do get hit, automatically needing another visit, this problem could be fixed by classifying network problems and paying engineers accordingly.
No one turning up
One of the most frustrating things for customers is no-one turning up. This can happen when a customer is last on an engineer’s route and delays happen. Often the customer’s phone number is wrong, so any attempt to warn them fails. More engineers and phone checks would solve this problem.
WHY ENGINEERS CAN NEVER WIN
Blind managed expectations
Both Virgin and Avonline have ways of measuring engineer’s success; Virgin is interested in the individual’s quality, and Avonline are more interested in one’s productivity. It is in the interest of no-one, or indeed have I heard of one dedicated person in Avonline or Virgin Media to measure working conditions or to ensure an engineer’s wellbeing, this has led to the widespread discordance, bullying, and suffering. To check objective quality Virgin measures customer complaints, as well as that Virgin parties are sent out with crews on some days to conduct sight checks but this ensures chaos with productivity because realistically only about 50% of jobs even get completed when a crew is 100% on quality being watched by an auditor. On the other hand, goals for productivity are measured by Avonline supervisors on benchmarks of the most ‘productive’ engineers but the quality of the productive engineers are really taken into account on the same measurement, so unrealistic expectations are prolific and the source of constant failure. Virgin Media rewards those who “lash it in”.
This industry penalizes good work (because it takes far too long).
No reward for good work
Neither Avonline nor Virgin Media has one statutory measurable bonus or award of quality success or achievement. As a result, anything that goes wrong in the field in the above list, or any other hold up will cause failure. If an engineer has already cash incentives to work as fast as he can, working any faster will cause lost tools, accidents, and dangerous, often illegal corner cutting. There really is nothing else that he can do to complete his given (not chosen) route than to lower the quality of his work. This too will cause failure, failure on a QC (and a fine), failure in his morals, failure to please a customer who he is face to face with (not somewhere down the telephone line). So if an engineer fails his manager on completion rate, fails his customers on quality, fails his family on time and providing for them, this becomes an increasing burden on his sense of self worth leading him into a tailspin of working harder to try and please these unrealistic demands, and becoming a source of conflict to anyone (customers, managers, colleagues, family) who try to ask more of him than he can provide. In effect this good willed engineer has become someone completely different than he set out to be. He can no longer call himself a professional, has no chance of getting a good employment reference, has no confidence to apply for other jobs, and is stuck in a cycle of failure. Failure that (for what it’s worth) still makes Avonline PLC a lot of profit.
No Voice
What essentially happens is the voices of thousands of technicians are never heard because such fiercely enforced time constraints and beaurocracy deprive techs of vital communication opportunities to the people that can even make a difference. Deprived of communication techs are abused, mistreated, and suffer in silence, we have no recourse to unfair wage deductions, no proper formal discipline or chance to rebut disciplinary proceedings. Deprived of communication customers are left with equipment that will never work and will cost the company more fixing their mistakes.
My future now
I came from Australia to England under a 1 year working holiday visa (2 year stay) to enhance my already broad technological background, gain respect in the industry, and be sponsored to continue working in the UK. I saw that NTL would combine most parts of my existing experience in customer service, computer programming, installations and logistics. Things at work were hard from the start, but I thought that it was because I was a new face and would have to prove myself. I knew it was a productivity based job, and I was determined to and got faster but I didn’t know that I would face conditions that would make progress in my work situation impossible. The worst thing is that I have no prospect of achieving my plans now because I was trapped working for a company that took all from its employees and gave nothing back. I have almost run out of time to prove myself to any other prospective employer. I got out of bed every morning and went to work: longer and harder, because I believed week on week that it would get better. Sadly after 9 months I can see that all my given time and energy has gone to Avonline’s bottom line and I have achieved effectively nothing for myself apart from gaining a strong lesson to tell others. I haven’t even seen Europe. In my zeal I haven’t even had a day’s booked holiday - my working Holiday was all work, and no holiday – It didn’t pay off.
I still believe that Virgin is a good company, and I would like to continue to work for Virgin if I had the choice, but in the current position that I am in, under the current management that I am under, seeing that I am wasting my time, burning myself out for a wage that is barely legal, and receiving no recognition for my efforts or skill. I can no longer continue as is, and face the failure and setback of starting again. Definitely the most negative force in this situation is simply Avonline PLC, and would never want to have anything to do with them again, but this is not just my experience; I have been working for Avonline for 9 months in 4 franchises in South London, Surrey and Hampshire, and Reading and write this on behalf of all my fellow employees who are in the same situation as me - as I believe most are. I hope you are able to do something to improve their conditions but unless you intervene for me and help me put myself on the right track that I deserve to be on, I will never have a chance of a future or lasting ties with Virgin - or England. I believe I will still go on to great things, but I will have to find another way.
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