April 30th, 2010 by J

For the last 10 years I have had an account with Virgin Media (from before it was VM and was Telewest) and from the most part I have had little or no problems with the service.

It is quite another thing when it comes to their customer service dept. I have had issues with the CS dept at Virgin Media before but for the most part have managed to sort it but this time it has gone beyond a joke.

Background:

I have always had the same username with VM and have accessed my email using pop3 and via webmail using the username and password. In February this simple arrangement changed when VM upgraded their email and changed to a Google backend.

At this point I lost all access to my webmail so I called and the guy at the end of the phone reset my password and said he would look into the issue and get back to me.

Due to work and the fact I still had pop3 access I didn’t chase it up until now……..

Below is a list of events to serve as a warning of what can happen when you call Virgin Media for help.

17th Apr -

• Call VM to try and sort webmail issue. Speak to CS1 who tells me that the problem is being caused by my emails accounts not being moved from dial up when I moved house (5 Years ago) and there being a broadband email account on there as well.
• Raises issue to 2nd line for a transfer and move.
• Advised that email would still be accessible and would take approx 5 days to move.

Total call time: 1.5hr

19th Apr -

• Call from CS1, While 2nd line transferring they have managed to delete my whole account and I need to reset modem etc.
• Lost access to pop3 and webmail.
• Called 151 to report total loss of email told by adviser that he could sort it by re setting password, When I told him there was a bigger issue he assured me that it was just a password issue and would be sorted in 24hrs

Total call time: 30mins

20th Apr (AM)-

• Call to speak to CS1, Cannot be transferred
• Ask CS2 to speak to a manager, Non free, Offered call back. Agreed to call back and advised that it would be in the next 4-6 hours
• No Manager Call-back

Total call time: 30mins

22nd Apr -

• Call 151 and speak to CS3, Advised work order closed on 19th, no one looking at problem.
• CS3 speaks to CS4 in IT and raises issue, Going to take 5 days.
• Speak to manager1 who raises complaint for me.

Total Call time: 1.5hr

26th Apr -

• AM Call from Complaints Dept, Email being sorted will be fixed by Thursday.

5.30pm -

• Call from complaints dept Issue all sorted, many apologise, £15 credit for all the problems. Advised to reset my password as may need it.

6.00pm -

• Call 151 and reset password

6.30pm -

• Still no access, Call 151 and ask for a manager, Call-back arranged for within 1 hour.

8.30pm -

• No Manager call-back, call 151 and speak to CS4, CS4 speaks to CS3 in IT and tells me they are working on it and someone from IT will call me in the morning.

Total call time: 1.5hr

27th Apr -

• No AM call back

12.00 -

• Call 151 ask to speak to a manager, Hung up on.

12.20 -

• Call 151 ask to speak to a manager, explain the situation and manager says he is going to speak to the IT dept, put on hold for 20mins.
• Taken off hold by a different manager asking if he can help.
• Previous manager has gone of to another part of the office without bothering to tell me.
• New manager tells me they are waiting for a call from IT and will call me back by 5pm

Total call time: 1hr

10.00pm -

• No Call back
• Call 151 speak to a manager, Manager speaks to IT still being dealt with
• Complaint 2 raised
• Asked for AM call back from Complaints dept and IT/manager to tell me what is happening.

Total call time: 1hr

28th Apr -
11.30am -

• No call-backs
• Called 151 to speak to Customer relations. Speak to someone who calls IT and Tech support, £15 credit to account for all the problems. Passed to CS5 in Tech Support. 1/2hr on hold while he speaks to CS3 in IT, The issue is still open and will be sorted by Thursday.

1pm -

• Call from manager to say the same.

Total call time: 1hr

30th Apr -

• 14.40pm – Text message from Virgin Media saying Email issue has been resolved.
• 15.30pm – Try to log in, No access
• 19.00pm – Reset password online
• 20.00pm – Call 151 and speak to Jenny, Talks to her manager and 2nd line team.
• 2nd line team are unable to login still and are raising it to IT dept AGAIN and could take another 5 days.

Total call time: .5hr

TOTAL TIME WITHOUT EMAIL SO FAR       = 13 days
Total time spent on phone to VM so far         = 9 hours

Keep your eyes peeled for part 2 of this saga.

April 2nd, 2010 by J

This is very helpful post provided by the Awareness engine and it saved me hours of stress when it comes to the Joomla Menu system.

Thanks.

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<div class="moduletable"> _menu suffix applied to default menu that includes homepage
  <ul class="menu">
    <li class="parent active item299"><a href="#"><span>Design</span></a>
      <ul>
        <li class="active item313" id="current"><a href="#"><span>3D</span></a></li>
        <li class="item304"><a href="#"><span>File/Media Types</span></a></li>
      </ul>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div>

The Design menu example is formatted via administration, as below. Normally, all items are listed straight down without being sub-items, however, this is List formatting and because the default .moduletable <h3> heading CAN’T be styled as ‘active’, this is why you would use this structure. See this article for creating custom module styles.

Fig. 1.

The CSS definitions applied to the <li> items depending on their state are as follows:

#menu CSS ID is applied to the first main <ul> only
#current CSS ID applied to <li> for the current item
.active CSS Class applied to <li> for the current item
.parent CSS Class applied to <li> if child links exist
.item[ItemID] class applied to the <li>

Where ID is termed below, this refers to CSS ID and not Joomla menu item ID’s.
From the above rules, different definitions are applied to li items below the main #menu ID, which makes for exact state styling (and potentially very mind-numbing), as opposed to the older mainlevel style used in Legacy formats, which was limited to two-levels main and sub level, and sub level couldn’t be styled as singularly active. With Lists, you can achieve this.

As CSS is cascading one thing to be considered is the structure of your menu’s and how many levels you’re going to use. With unordered lists you can have as many levels as required, though you wouldn’t sensibly style more than three to four levels below the #menu ID. Additionally, the rules you define for ul and li items at the top of the structure from the second level on, will affect lower ul and li items unless you override those definitions with new ones.

For each li item that has a child element, a new ul is created with child li element(s). For example, if we had a menu structure that was three levels deep, the HTML structure would be similar to:

<div>
<ul> LEVEL ONE
<li><a href=”#”><span>Design</span></a>
<ul> LEVEL TWO
<li id=”current”><a href=”#”><span>3D</span></a></li>
<li><a href=”#”><span>File/Media Types</span</a></li>
<ul> LEVEL THREE
<li><a href=”#”><span>Online Proofing</span></a></li>
<li><a href=”#”><span>Portfolio</span></a></li>
</ul>
<li><a href=”#”><span>Printing</span></a></li>
<li><a href=”#”><span>Creative Articles</span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>

For CSS styling purposes, it’s better to forget about the possible states at the beginning and concentrate on the hierarchy, as follows:

1. Define any CSS ID areas in your template for your navigational menus, in this example this will be #navleft.
2. Define, if any, the styling of the module wrapper .moduletable.
   
3. Define, the first #menu ul ID. In the Design menu above, this is the styling of the Design text and background image #navleft .moduletable ul.menu. You can leave out .moduletable if desired here, or if using a CSS suffix applied in the module parameters, leave off #navleft and style something like .moduletablemysuffix ul.menu.

Okay, firstly we’re going to think about the Unordered Lists and remove all default bullets and padding. This will affect all <ul> tags within #navleft:

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#navleft ul {
    list-style-type: none;
    padding-left: 0;
}

Next, you want to define any spacing, text styling values for subsequent <ul> tags, drilling down the hierarchy as many times as you need to:

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#navleft ul ul {
    padding-left: 18px;
}
#navleft ul ul ul {
    padding-left: 10px;
}

You can also do the <li> tags in the same way: #navleft li, #navleft li li. YOU DON’T HAVE TO INCLUDE ALL THE UL AND OTHER CSS PREFIXES BEFORE THEM! This is only useful for spacing and the like where states such as active and parent don’t count.

The Levels

Fig. 2.

Level One

Now to think about styling the top menu item, see Fig. 2. In our List navigation menus, there’s actually three possible states and they should be defined with active and inactive before hovered:

1. Active.
   #navleft ul li.active a:link, #navleft ul li.active a:visited { }
2. Inactive.
   #navleft ul li a:link, #navleft ul li a:visited { }
3. Hovered.
   #navleft ul li a:hover, #navleft ul li a:focus { }

Level Two

Next are the second level items or sub-level items, again 3 states with essentially just ul li and ul li.active added to the above:

1. Active.
   #navleft ul li.active ul li.active a:link, #navleft ul li.active ul li.active a:visited { }
2. Inactive.
   #navleft ul li.active ul li a:link, #navleft ul li ul li a:link, #navleft ul li.active ul li a:visited, #navleft ul li ul li a:visited
3. Hovered.
   #navleft ul li.active ul li a:hover, #navleft ul li ul li a:hover, #navleft ul li.active ul li a:focus, #navleft ul li.active ul li a:focus

Level Three

Next are the third level items or sub-level items, again 3 states with essentially just ul li and ul li.active added to the above:

1. Active.
   #navleft ul li.active ul li.active ul li.active a:link,#navleft ul li.active ul li.active ul li.active a:visited { }
2. Inactive.
   #navleft ul li.active ul li.active li a:link,#navleft ul li ul li li a:link,#navleft ul li.active ul li.active li a:visited,#navleft ul li ul li li a:visited
3. Hovered.
   #navleft ul li.active ul li.active li a:hover,#navleft ul li ul li li a:hover,#navleft ul li.active ul li.active li a:focus,#navleft ul li ul li li a:focus

Rather than show the CSS definitions for each level, I’ve included the CSS file for this design, which reminds me to mention to create a unique CSS file for menu styling.

Active / Parent States

You’ll see from Fig. 2 above that I’ve styled a little down and up arrow depending on whether the parent item is active. You can achieve this with the following CSS:

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#navleft ul li.active ul li.parent span {
    background-image: url(../images/downarrow.gif);
    background-position: right center;
    padding-right: 12px;
    background-attachment: scroll;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
}
#navleft ul li.active ul li.parent.active span {
    background-image: url(../images/uparrow.gif);
    background-position: right center;
    padding-right: 12px;
    background-attachment: scroll;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;