Forum Discussion

DreamingBanana's avatar
DreamingBanana
Joining in
11 months ago

Moved house and given unexpected high bill & new contract

Hi all, I'm really not sure where I can get help from so any advice is appreciated.

I bought the virgin media broadband: M125 contract for £26.50 per month back in June 2023 for 18 months and recently moved house in January 2024. I talked to Virgin media via the online live chat and agreed to be moved with the same contract. As in, I would keep the remaining months left on the contract and the bills at my new address will be adjusted to be the same price.

I understood that there will be a fee for fiber installation at the new address and that two month's bill will be charged at the same time. Which I was fine with.

However, after installation I was quite surprised to see the bill stating that I have been charged £42 per month for two months and my virgin account states that my contract has been restarted from January 2024 for 18. I thought that this is just a mistake on the machine's side when changing my address but my next bill still state that I will be charged for £42.

On Virgin media's official website, I can see that the M125 deal is currently being advertised for £24 per month.

I've never had this problem when moving houses with TalkTalk so I am quite disappointed that this has happened with Virgin media.

I don't want to ask for much and just for my bills to be returned to the amount that it was originally when I first signed the contract with Virgin media and for the extra payments to be returned. But the help page on Virgin's help page just sends me in circles and I don't have access to a phone that can ring Virgin directly.

Thank you for reading.

Any help would be very appreciated.

 

  • Technically and legally, the way this works is like this; when you sign up to VM then this is to provide a certain service to a particular address, and you agree to pay this for a minimum of 18 months. So, in theory, if you move after, say a year, you still owe VM six months worth of payments and they demand it as an ‘early termination fee’.

    However, if you move to an area which VM service and you opt to continue with them at your new address, critically, with no changes, then what is supposed to happen is that, yes a new contract is made (remember that the contact is to provide a service to an address, not to a person), it starts a new 18 month minimum term - but - VM are now supposed to adjust this new contact so that the end date reflects your old contract, ie the minimum term will end in six months not eighteen!

    Now this really should be a simple automated process, but for some reason (incompetence, deliberate attempt to get extra money out of customers - make your choice), this seems to require a degree of manual input which appears doesn’t always happen.

    Basically VM’s customer service provision is a hot mess, riddled with incompetence and broken systems from end to end - oh no, I think I may have said that out loud!

    Wait a day or so for a member of the forum team to get to this thread, they will apologise for the inconvenience - fine -  you might get the mandated ‘this is not the level of service we aim to provide...’ response, but as situations similar to yours have been reported on here for literally years, it does call that claim into some dispute. They will offer to take details from you and contact you via direct message, there is a reasonable chance that indeed, they will be able to sort it all out.

    It’s a shame that you have to jump through all these hoops get it to work though.

    • DreamingBanana's avatar
      DreamingBanana
      Joining in

      Thank you so much for the reply. I'm quite surprised to hear that's what the law is, but good to know for the future.

      A member of Virgin did get back to me and I'm still waiting for the correction to update on my account but sounds like this is a problem that should be addressed at the roots of it's been happening for years!

      Thanks again and hope you have a good day!

  • Hello DreamingBanana

     

    Sorry to hear of the contract and billing issues since moving house, we appreciate you taking the time to make us aware via the forums and welcome to the community.

     

    As you have stated, when moving property, if no changes to the actual package and services are made the contract should continue from the same point at the same price at the new address. I'm happy to look into this further for you and I will send you a Private Message to get some more details from you to assist. Check the envelope in the top right of the forum when signed in for the message.

     

    Rob