One Touch Switch complete failure

I signed up for Virgin in January when a rep called Robert Kos knocked at our door. He told me that Virgin would cancel our contract with BT. I told him we are still under contract for a while, but he told me not to worry, Virgin would handle everything and pay any leaving fees.

This never happened and I understand now that OTS was not triggered. We ended up then being billed by both Virgin and BT. To stop the BT bills that we couldn't afford on top of the Virgin bills we cancelled our BT direct debit. We called BT to complain that our contract should have been cancelled, but they said they'd heard nothing at all from Virgin. I called and emailed Robert several times to say BT had not heard anything, but eventually he stopped responding to me.

So I called Virgin customer services number and got someone who could barely understand what I was saying. They told me initially OTS had not been initiated and there was nothing they could do, and I should call BT to end the contract myself. So we called BT and they said we couldn't do it ourselves because we are still under contract. So I then called Virgin again, and after more than an hour on the phone, and after asking to be escalated to a manager several times, we finally spoke to someone higher up. They still insisted we have to end the contract with BT ourselves. I asked about the settlement fee for coming out of contract, and they agreed if we get the final fee from BT, they would credit it back to my Virgin account.

So back on the phone to BT, and after explaining everything they finally agreed to end our contract and send a final bill. Meanwhile we now had a bad credit record due to cancelling our direct debit and not paying the bills on time! We had to wait a month for the final bill from BT, which was £174.62, and which I emailed to Virgin as soon as it arrived.

A few days later I received an email from Virgin saying they can't credit me with the full settlement amount, but that they will credit my account with a good will gesture of £50! I would never have switched if I thought I was going to have to pay to leave BT. The original rep, Robert, assured me that Virgin would take care of everything. Customer services specifically asked me to send the settlement figure from BT.  Why do all that, and then tell me they can't pay it? It's an absolute joke! The amount of stress and worry this has caused our family is crazy. I wish I'd stayed with BT and put up with the dial-up speed broadband.

I emailed back and said this is absolutely unacceptable. And now they want me to send evidence that it was agreed the BT settlement amount would be paid. Where am I going to get that from? Strangely, I didn't think to record the conversation with the rep who originally called on my door - Robert Kos. And I also didn't record the phone conversation with customer services either. But surely Virgin did??? Or are they conveniently pretending the bit where it was agreed to credit my account with the settlement figure never happened?

If they can't afford to pay the £174.62, maybe they should take it out of Robert Kos's commission. Maybe he will then take a little more care when signing customers up! Whatever happens, I'm now so sick and tired with spending hours trying to sort out a mess that should have been someone elses job, and I'm ready to quit Virgin completely, go back to BT, and pursue any fallout through the ombudsman.

I have to say though, despite all the chaos, BT's customer services has been amazing compared to Virgin.