How can I stop Virgin incorrectly closing my complaint?
I signed up with virgin on 05/03, moving over from BT. I signed up for £36.99/month broadband only, setting up my direct debit and the one touch switch of providers at that point.
Yodel, Virgin's chosen delivery partner. Didn't deliver my router in the required timeframe and their tracking had no record of where the router got to. So when I called to chase Virgin resent a new router. This was eventually set up after a bunch of other hassle, including the original router eventually being delivered by Yodel and am engineer needing to visit to get things set up. But everything seemed fine.
Then in mid May I got enough email from Virgin saying I haven't been paying my bills, late fees are applied and they might throttle my service.
This is news to me as I set everything up on 05/03 and obviously I am not about to pay late fees, but more importantly I'm worried that this might affect my credit rating if they say I am not paying my bills.
I look into this and it turns out that money coming out of my account in this time is actually BT still billing me (£108.75 over that time period) and virgin have not been billing me at all.
I try calling Virgins customer helpline and it only offer me the option to get a text with a link to pay or pay over the phone then hangs up on me. No other options. No way for me to find out what has happened or get the late fees removed or talk to anyone at all.
I eventually get an agent via the WhatsApp messaging service and they say they will remove the late fees for me. But they also say the one touch transfer service can't happen now that virgin is set up so I need to cancel with BT myself and then give virgin the bills so they can look into getting me a refund.
I am obviously incredibly unhappy with this situation, it seems like when virgin had to order a new router (because Yodel lost the first) they didnt just send a second router, they acted like I had ordered a whole new service, but without providing my payment details or wanting the one touch transfer move away from BT. I obviously did want that all set up, that's why I did that myself on the 05/03. If they told me I needed to, I would have provided all that info again, or of they just cancelled my order completely I would have gone back on the website and reorder it all again myself. Instead this entire mess is happening because someone in the Virgin calls centre has messed it all up for me.
So I get the WhatsApp guy to do a complaint for me. But he won't tell me any details of what's in the complaint. So I am unable to confirm that what I am actually complaining about is included accurately. I actually end up having conversations cancelled with agent on the WhatsApp about three times because they give you a half response then a couple minutes to respond before closing their chat and you need to restart with another person.
When I go to BT to cancel they actually confirm I did have a one touch transfer from them, to virgin but it was cancelled. They can't confirm the date it was cancelled because of gdpr apparently, but they do give me the reference of that transfer request so at least I can prove I did set that up on 05/03. BT tell me that on top of the £108.75 I have paid them in the last few months there will be a final wind up bill given to me at the end of the month. So total amount this has cost me tbc, but it's over £100 already because virgin cancelled the on touch transfer WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.
I now have emails saying they have 'resolved' my complaint. And they have closed my complaint because they couldn't get through to me on the phone on a Saturday when I was at the football. Their 'resolution' is to refund the £7.50 late payment of bill fee, something the WhatsApp agent told me they had already done. No word on whether their failure to take payment details when ordering a new router has impacted my credit score, no word on the money I have lost when they didn't cancel my BT contract as requested. No summary of what was actually in my complaint so I can see what was actually put in there by the WhatsApp agent.
The email about closing my complaint tells me to call the customer services line if I disagree with their 'resolution' and gives me a deadline to do so.
But none of the options on the customer services line cover complaints.
How do I call Virgin to talk to someone and ensure they do not get to walk away pretending they have resolved anything?
Ie what combination of options do I need to do to actually talk to a human being about it?
And how can I complain about the virgin media customer services process? It is pretty clearly set up to be as difficult as possible to prevent people from being able to navigate it. If I was disabled or elderly etc there is no way I would be able to get through all these different layers of complexity.