I have been a Virgin Media customer for ohhh 3 years now for broadband, TV, and landline phone. Quality of service is very good, and the internet I think has died once in all of the 3 years I have been connected.

But the TV service (UK cable TV with some on-demand services) is really turning into a bucket of shit lately, it’s like paying an extra £10 a month ontop of the already compulsory TV licence for the privilidge of watching fucking adverts for car insurance all day long.

If its not compare the fucking market dot com, or tesco compare (and sell your fucking details without telling you afterwards), or money super fucking market dot com. Or shielas fucking antipodean wheels with that piece of shit theme tune, or elephant dot stupid overpriced bullshit dot co dot uk… UGHHHHH SERIOUSLY THE PEOPLE WHO HUNT FOR ADVERTISERS AT VIRGIN MEDIA NEED TO LOOK AT A VARIETY OF SPONSORS.

Well we were due to go to Gran Canaria for a week next Saturday with XL, who went into administration this morning causing all flights etc to be canceled, so 85,000 people are in the very fucked position of being stranded overseas, and even those who were in mid-air at the time of the announcement had their flight redirected to the nearest airport (in one case a flight bound for Glasgow was redirected to Paris).

The ridiculous thing about it from my point of view is that we were charged a fee for ATOL protection in the case of something just like this happening. So Imagine my my surprise to find that if you booked your XL holiday directly with them through their website or call centre you have no protection via ATOL whatsoever, only if you booked you XL flight/holiday through some other agent like Thompsons. What a load of bullshit.

I had a feeling some bad shit was going to happen though thanks to the credit crunch, so had paid for this with my credit card so fortunately I have not been fucked for £900 this morning and can claim it all from my credit card company under the consumer credit act.

I found out today that there is one big brand travel insurance company that covers airline insolvency, administration, bankruptcy that I will be taking out travel insurance with next time (seems like a pretty fundamental thing for a travel insurance policy to have!). And that is the Post Office travel insurance, if I had not have used a credit card to pay for our holiday and insured with the Post Office travel insurance then I would be entitled to claim my money back for the failure of XL.

So now we are looking for a new holiday.

Watch this and let me know what you think.