Virgin Media call centre woes

Recently we've consolidated our media services, saving around £20 a month, but not without some pain. We had TV and calls from Sky, phone landline from BT and broadband from Virgin Media. Now all comes via Virgin Media. The problem was the phone line, for which we had a new number: BT did not disconnect the old line and I found out today we were still being charged line rental and will do so for another 30 days cancellation period. Virgin Media should have informed them to disconnect, but did not.

I contacted BT first to find out what was going on: helpful UK call centre and all explained clearly. Then I contacted Virgin Media's call centre - big problems! Although I have had very helpful call centre operators in India before so have nothing against these as such, the Virgin Media experience was NOT a good one. In all, I was on the call for around an HOUR and passed between a good number of Indian operators getting not very far. Then the line went dead and a Scottish voice said, "hello, do you have a problem with your phone line?". At this point I muttered "God give me strength" when I thought I would have to explain everything all over again. Luckily Jamie, the VERY helpful Scotsman, had my notes and was able to resolve the issue: Virgin would refund the line rental if I sent a copy of the final BT bill to their head office.

Finally I contact Sky to confirm I was no longer being charged for calls. Again a very helpful Scottish lady, Donna, answered. She checked details and confirmed there were no more bills to pay and their contract had been terminated.

Scores:

   BT UK call centre:  8 out of 10 
   Virgin Media Indian call centre:  3 out of 10
   Virgin media UK call centre: 8 out of 10
   Sky UK call centre: 8 out of 10

When the Virgin contract expires in 12 months I shall think long and hard about what to do. So far I have been less than impressed with their service.

Those Indian calls trying to fix my viruses

Even though I have telephone preference registration to minimise unwanted phone calls, I regularly get calls around  lunchtime from an Indian call centre perporting to be from a company wanting to fix a virus on my PC which they've detected. Do they really think I am that stupid? What worries me are all the people who may believe this rubbish and disclose all sorts of data by allowing these rats to steal PC data.

Not sure what is the best tactic to use when taking the call - ignore it, play along for 5 minutes to waste their time, be very rude, threaten them by saying I am from the internet fraud police, or what.

What is sad is the person in the call centre is probably just trying to earn a living, whereas the people behind it have nothing but malicious intent. Is there anything one can do to reduce this menace?