Virgin Media, what are they thinking about?

I saw an advert that seemed too good to be true (turns out it was but please read on) The advert was for broadband through cable and telephone for about £15 a month, as I am currently with BT and the fastest connection I have is 460kbps as I live so far from the exchange I thought a change to cable would be just what the doctor ordered. So I called up and spoke to a very polite lady who also convinced me that for an extra £5 a month I could get freeview stations too, I decided to take this deal as well because in bad weather I do lose freeview signal sometimes. The advert says order by 12th Dec and we GUARANTEE to beat santa -- cool I'd be able to watch xmas tv on a nice shiny cable system. True to their GUARANTEE a 2 man installation crew comes round and installs all the hardware inside and drills holes in the wall of my house and puts wires in. Then they say sorry the carrier signal is too weak someone else will have to come and install a new drop line (whatever that is), I am assured that someone will call to arrange a suitable date by the end of the day. Hours later I decided to take the initiative and call customer services myself, I explain the situation and am told someone will call me with a date. The next day I call again as noone has called me to arrange a date and I am told someone will install it on 3rd January!!! Hang on the GUARANTEE was to be in for xmas, does Virgin Media celebrate on a different day from everyone else? I raise this fact and they do agree that I shouldn't pay the installation fee as the install hasn't actually taken place yet. Reasoning that if they couldn't get this right that they might be stupid enough to send the same installation crew round that would once again tell me I need a new drop line, I called customer services and explained that "I want to make sure that on the 3rd of January the engineers know they are fitting a new drop cable not just doing an installation". The customer services guy assures me that this has all been added to my profile so there will be no confusion. So the 3rd January comes round and I get a call from an engineer "hello, I believe I am due to do an installation at your property this afternoon". I reply "Well, your due to put a new drop cable in, the wiring inside the house is already done". I then get the response that I dreaded I would get "Oh, well I am a one man crew I don't do that sorry". May I just point out at this point I have already had to take 2 days off work which (a) is difficult at a busy time of year and (b) cuts the number of days I could go to a sunny beach. What is even more infuriating is that my neighbour has a friend who used to work for Virgin Media and he has fitted her out with new cables, has done a much neater job she didn't have to pay this guy and shes probably getting cable for free as well. So if I wasn't a law abiding citizen I could probably have had everything installed myself before xmas yet here I am with nothing installed. If it doesn't get installed today then forget it, I am not going to bother with them, I might use sky if they offer cable broadband!!! It is nice to be able to get through to nice customer support that speak good english and are very polite, but if your issues are NEVER resolved whats the point!!