concise wrote:
Back in March I terminated giving one months notice before the end of my contract because I didn't think it was worth paying £47.70 just for broadband, but on the 1st April customer relations phoned me and offered the full package for £13 a month which I accepted and received a confirmation email.
However, since then they have been in breach of contract, despite god knows how many recorded letters and phone calls I have received a bill for £47.70 plus an extra £7.50 every month for non payment, it has now reach a total of £210 to August.
Customer service agree that its wrong and I should only be paying £13 a month which I was happy to do but they say I must pay the full debt if I want to terminate, even though I do not owe them anything in fact they owe me £47.70
I just want Virgin out of my life because of the harassment with threatening emails and texts they keep sending, the mental stress they are causing me with their false promises and lies, but they simply will not let me terminate the agreement that they have breached. Virgin Media are a disgrace they ignore all complaints and should not be allowed to trade.
I do have to say that £13 does seem to be a ridiculously low figure so I can well see how VM would want to pretend it didn’t happen and want to wriggle out of it, luckily you have an email confirmation of the offer which is legally binding on VM.
So the first thing you need to do is to initiate a formal complaint, the link to do so is here. In the complaint you need to request that they honour the agreement made back in April, that they desist from sending you further demands for money, that they agree to make good any damage they have done to your credit rating (you need to check that) and lastly you require a sum of, say £100 extra compensation for their refusal to honour a binding agreement, for poor customer services advice (you have to pay everything up front before you can cancel? Really?), and the stress and inconvenience it has caused.
Now, possibly the forum team will get involved here and contact you to arrange a suitable outcome. Otherwise, almost certainly your complaint will be treated with VM’s usual level of customer service acumen and be ignored, closed without further contact, offered an insulting ‘we have fed back your concerns to the agent - hopes this works for you, now do one you annoying little person’ etc etc.
No worries, you respond rejecting their ‘resolution’ and request a deadlock letter - which itself may be fobbed off of just ignored. Now armed with said letter or if not eight weeks after your first formal complaint you escalate this to the industry arbitration service CISAS link here. It doesn’t cost you anything but does cost VM and their decision is legally binding on them if you accept it. In your submission, you might want to ask for immediate release from contract without penalty on the grounds that you no longer have any trust that VM are a properly run organisation that can look after your interests, or that VM be instructed to honour the agreement, refund of any extra monies you may have paid them, repair of any damage done to your credit rating and extra compensation let’s say £250 because of the extra stress, their failure to resolve this internally, unhelpful customer services and complaints department and also add an extra £50 if they fail to send the deadlock letter promptly.
Of course this is the nuclear option, oh and a summary complain to OFCOM, regarding their ‘questionable business practices and failures to rectify it’
But I’m sure that it won’t come to any of that, the forum team will get involved, like the US Cavalry riding into the rescue at the last moment as per all the old Western movies, and resolve it without further ‘bloodshed’
John
