Hi All, I know this is an old thread, and although I am not electrically qualified I found this thread during a google session looking for something else and felt overwhelmed to give you all (and any future inquiries) an 'up to date' view of VM through a field technician's eyes as I am resigning from there this very month due to basically, being sick to the back teeth of the whole thing.
I cannot say where I work, for obvious reasons, however, suffice to say it's in the Midlands, and I have worked in all areas of the Midlands so it is safe to say my comments are not localised and degrading all areas just based on one area.
Training; it's pretty good although the 9083 and voltage training is lacking, all the trainers seem to regurgitate the 'training' and don't seem to have a true understanding of the voltage issues and HOW the meter tests; so, basically, most techs don't use the meter and rely on thorough end to end visual inpsection and replacement of connections in order to fault find/fix.
On the tv and broadband aspect, well they work on Db levels and as long as ALL F connectors are tight, the copper stinger is not corroded or scored or too long/short and levels at the devices are within lower and upper limits then that's the training pretty much covered. There is some input regarding attenuation, and basic loss over distance advice and after that, the 'training' is all on the job.
This is where you gain your hands on experience; and they DO give you around 3 months on a reduced workload to get up to pace.
But...... once you're on 100% workload, there is little contingency it you get behind schedule.
And that's where the problem starts.......... if you're behind schedule, you cut corners, so you either miss something or just don't plain bother checking.
And so the customer is getting half the quality they should because the technician has a life to lead at home and outside the company and hence the number of repeat calls to the same customer, or people on forums saying VM is crap and their products are poo etc.
Please try to believe me, if the technicians were given a lighter workload, they WOULD spend the time combing over ALL a customer's services when at their homes. They WOULD find ALL faults (even ones that haven't manifested themselves yet) and the customer WOULD get 100% quality service and have long term, hassle-free services.
Lately, the expectations on technicians has got, well, stupid to say the least.
Monthly meetings with a manager to review you performance leaves even really good, quality and conscientious techs. feeling deflated.
Say you attended 200 customers in one month, and for one reason or another, you missed a few things which resulted in a repeat call to the same customer within 7 days of your visit; it goes against you a reduces your stats.
The meetings are populated with loads of bar graphs, charts and percentages to graphically show your performance.
You don't get it right in maybe 4 of those 200 hundred houses; you're crap.
It's all wrong; there is far too much emphasis on QUANTITY!!!
You cannot acheive quality AND quantity beyond a finite point and VM are pushing harder and harder on the few techs they have in each area to constantly deliver.
They need more 'in house' techs who really do care about giving customers great service but they have contractors too, most of which don't give a ---- as their own internal problems such as constantly botched payslips, poor tooling and training etc all rob those guys of any morale they have.
So a contractor does a job, it fails, the in-house VM tech goes, he has a lot to do in around 34 minutes, he's already behind schedule, he has to pacify the angry customer, go over EVERYTHING (which can take around 30 mins itself) and then rectify poor connections, retest devices, fill out paperwork, use a device to test the Tivo and also be expected to house-clean a **** 5 year old computer the customer knows is pants but reckons if they whine enough, the wonderfull, pleasant VM tech will wave a magic wand and give it a new breath of life.
All in 34 mins.
Most of my visits, I found I was ignroing potential, future fault-causing issues and just fixing the most immediate fault to get things going again so they wouldn't 'bounce' on me in the next 7 days.
If it bounces after that, not really my problem.
Poor customer; how fair is that?
Not at all.
So.. in a nutshell, VM really do try, but too hard.
Their intentions are great; be the best most of the time and when they're not, 'fess up, put it right, and give the customer a little bit extra to say sorry.
But; they're drowning in their own self-imposed promises and in the process, they're destroying the customer faith they built up in previous years, and , more importantly for this thread, they're loosing more and more really good quality technicians.
Sorry if this seems really negative; I and a lot of others have done really great things for customers and put some massive smiles on customers who have been let down in the past; but usually this means taking the time, so you get really behind schedule and get home, really late (their '10' hour days are 12 hour days if you do your job properly).
So if you want to be a good VM tech., be prepared to learn fast from your constant mistakes, get used to your enthusiasm and morale being deflated regularly, get used to having more and more work piled onto you the harder you work, get used to going home LATE, regularly.
Or, if you couldn't care less, you'll last maybe a year or so before they get fed up and bin you legally.
Up to you really lol
There may be other VM staff that would contradict me from the field ops. side of things; I used to be like that too.
All happy and full of positive-only things; but give it time, no one could sustain such false happy morale with this organisation.
They suck you dry and when you're no use to them, they bin you.
Get in, make the money, get out; all on YOUR terms.
That's what the cable industry ethos is based on.
