Virgin has launched Virgin Digital Help, one of the latest services to be launched by Virgin here in the UK. Its a service like the TechGuys, you’ll be able to chat online or ring to speak to someone about your tech or gadget problems. If you own quite a few gadgets at home, you’ll know that sometimes you just can’t figure out what’s wrong with it, sometimes it may just be too technical to describe, this is where Virgin Digital Help may come in handy for you.

You might be thinking this is going to first require you to be already a customer of their Virgin Media broadband/tv/phone service, in fact, Virgin Digital Help doesn’t require any of that for you to ping them.

There are various ‘tariffs’ available depending on the service you will require, these can be monthly subscriptions or one off services and they may be in the form of Digital Helper, Phone Support, Remote Support or Home Visit.

The basic level of the Digital Helper is completely free, this involves downloading their free tool, the tool will help diagnose what might be going on with your PC (giving it a speed check / health check), it also offers 100 articles on common problems and lets you use the online free chat service or call its free hotline. For £2.99 a month, you can subscribe to the premium version of the software, which comes with an additional 70,000 help guides, and for £4.99 you’ll receive AVG anti virus 9.0. Their is no contract that you need to commit yourself to if you find that you don’t need their service afterwards, the tariffs are all rolling monthly packages.

However, if you have more than just a PC at home the above packages may not be so helpful, that’s why Virgin Digital Help is also offering Phone Support. Phone Support can cover your entire ‘digital kit’ 24/7, ring them for technical support at anytime of the day or night. Pricing ranges from £6.99 to £24.99 depending on what devices you want to cover and what you want to include in your package. There is a three month minimum subscription contract though. By the term digital kit, here is what Virgin means:

PCs, laptops, netbooks, printers, wireless networks, smart phones (such as Nokia, BlackBerry® and iPhone), connecting and configuring games consoles (such as Wii, PS3, Nintendo and Xbox®), music players (such as iPod touch and iPod), digital cameras, digital camcorders. Set up and troubleshooting for loads of kit, removal of serious virus infections, firewall and system security set-up services, Windows® 7 operating system upgrade advice, wireless connections set up, transfer of data to a new computer to name but a few!

If Phone Support isn’t enough, you can even step up to Remote Support or Home Visits. Presumably Remote Support utilises their software to remotely check out and fix your PC’s issues. The pricing for this service is from £6.99 to £14.99. Virgin claims that this also covers your digital kit, though it would seem difficult as to how this can be done with a music player for example, nevertheless, this service is again available for users at anytime of the day once they are subscribed. Lastly, Home Visit, is one of those last reserved strategies for panicky moments where the computer breakdowns while you’re working on your assignment the night before it is due! It would not be ideal to use this service simply for a PC clean out as it is pricy at £90 for the first hour then £30 for every 30 minutes to follow.

The geeks at Virgin Digital Help have been especially trained to understand the non-technical language that we all use from time to time, as its simply not possible anyone to know everything! Most importantly, they don’t patronise you when you don’t know what something means.

The main limitations at this point is that the Virgin Digital Help team won’t be able to advise you on TV, AV or Mac related issues (though their appears to be some self-help answers regarding Mac applications in the answers section). But as we have highlighted, they’ll be happy to sort out PCs, laptops, digital cameras, peripherals, MP3 players, games consoles and wireless networking issues, without the need for you to be an existing Virgin Media subscriber.

This was a sponsored message from Virgin Digital Help.