Upgrade

[billyb38]

I had an offer to upgrade to a faster broadband speed for free and accepted ,not realising that my original contract of two years would restart for a further two years. I had a similar experience with Talk Talk where I accepted a free offer i.e no change in monthly cost and no fees to change and terminated my contract at the end of the original contract having refused to pay for the extended contract. Even though Talk Talk have chased me for money they say they I owe them, they have never gone through the court.

From my limited legal education my understanding is a contract is not a contract and therefore not enforceable unless there is consideration, consideration being something given in exchange for something else. In the case of a service provider their consideration would be either, or a combination of telephone,tv or broadband services aand the customers consideration would be money. If they give you something for free you are giving them no consideration, so I would think that they cant enforce a claim for monies on an extended contract ?

Anyone any views on this ? 

[goslow]

How did you receive the offer to upgrade to a faster broadband speed for free?

[Tudor]

You have 14 days to cancel.

[billyb38]

I believe I responded to an email from Virgin Media

[billyb38]

The 14 days have elapsed. I have written to OFCOM about this seemingly deceitful practice. I have seen threads referring to change of address (without any change of services) prompting the restart of the contract.

[jem101 · Accepted solution]

Well firstly OFCOM won’t be too interested other than to add your complaint to the ever growing pile they have labelled ‘Complaints about VM which one day we’ll get around to sorting out with them’

If you want to make a formal complaint about this then the industry regulator CISAS is the way to go.

In terms of a consideration, the other party, VM, have offered you a faster broadband speed, and in return you have offered to carry on paying them for a further 18 or 24 months minimum. So on that basis there would definitely be a consideration on both parties and it would certainly be enforceable.

Now did you understand this and was it explained to you that agreeing to the offer would start a new minimum term contract? Was it mentioned in the small print of this email? If it was and it was clear, then arguing that ‘well I didn’t read that bit’ won’t wash legally!

[billyb38]

I didnt realise (at the time) that by accepting the offer of increased broadband speed would initiate a further 18/24 month contract. It is possible that I may have overlooked the small print or that it wasnt clear but I dont honestly remember the transaction now. As I dont seem to have seen any other threads from others in the same position maybe it was on oversight on my part.

With robot chat , "help guides" and overseas "customer service personnel"  being put in place its very difficult to actually resolve matters with any large business nowadays and its hardly worth spending the time arguing the toss. Its only really when you dont pay or threaten to go elsewhere that you can get any attention so I may decide to folllow that line and see what happens

Ive come to the conclusion that its worth paying the extra for customer service so my fuure choices will be made accordingly

Thanks