Agreed a deal price and then charged more

[Chris198537]

We moved house a few months ago and rang virging to agree a new deal as they wanted to charge us nearly £30 a month more than a new customer so they agreed to put a discount on the amount so it would only be £2 more than a new customer to which we agreed. Shower when I have now looked at bills they are infact charging us the initial amount rather than what was agreed. I have spent over 2 hours on the phone to virgin and been passed between 4 departments and received no help at all. I now have to wait for a manager to call me back in 3 days as apparently they are not available to speak now as they are in a meeting. Customer service has been terrible and feeling really frustrated they will not even listen to the original phone call record as this would clarify what I am telling them. Is this poor service common practice for virgin media from other peoples experience?

[Kain_W]

Hi there Chris198537,

Thanks for your post and welcome to the community.

Sincere apologies regarding the package price differential, just to clarify on the call you had did they advise of any notes to reflect the original call at all?

Let us know,

[Chris198537]

Hi Kain,

Not surprisingly they have said there were no notes added to the account from the original conversation however I have asked them to listen back to the recorded telephone call as thankfully I have my notes from the conversation as we were moving house at the time I said if they could not match the new customer price we could simply cancel the current contract as it was out of a deal anyway and I would then sign up as a new customer as the previous deal was in my other halfs name. This is why she then said she could do it for just 1 or 2 pound more than the new customer deal. I'm more annoyed now about the appalling customer service I received last night being past from department to department for over 2 hours.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @Chris198537,

Thanks for coming back to us. Sorry to hear that this has been your experience with us so far. 

I can see that you've been in touch with our team today. Can you confirm if this issue is still ongoing, or has the team been able to have this issue looked into further for you and rectified?

Did you recently move to a new property, or is this an ongoing issue?

Let us know and we'll do all we can to help.

Thank you.

[Chris198537]

Hi Paulina 

Unfortunately I had to ring up again today as a manager was supposed to call me back but has not bothered. We moved house a few months back and as I had no account in my name we were going to start a new customer account as they wanted to charge £52 as an existing customer or £35 as an new customer. The only reason we did not do this is the sales rep offered to match the new customer price however she told us the first bill may be higher. When I have checked she has infact just signed us up for £52 so completely miss sold us the contract and apparently there are no notes on the account. If they cannot honour the offer we were given or listen to the recording of the sales call then I will be cancelling the package and filing a formal complaint due to us being miss leads or lied to by the sales rep.

Thanks

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @Chris198537,

Sorry to hear that this has been your experience and that the issue is ongoing!

I'll be more than happy to look into this further for you and see what I can do to help to correct this issue.

I'll send you a Private Message to confirm a few details. Please keep an eye out for a purple envelope at the top right corner of your Forum page. I'll be in touch soon.

Thank you! 

[jem101]

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@Chris198537 wrote:

Hi Paulina 

Unfortunately I had to ring up again today as a manager was supposed to call me back but has not bothered. We moved house a few months back and as I had no account in my name we were going to start a new customer account as they wanted to charge £52 as an existing customer or £35 as an new customer. The only reason we did not do this is the sales rep offered to match the new customer price however she told us the first bill may be higher. When I have checked she has infact just signed us up for £52 so completely miss sold us the contract and apparently there are no notes on the account. If they cannot honour the offer we were given or listen to the recording of the sales call then I will be cancelling the package and filing a formal complaint due to us being miss leads or lied to by the sales rep.

Thanks

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Chris; a couple of things here, the ‘manager will call you back’ excuse has a very long and ignominious history on here. It hardly ever actually happens and is just a standard way of getting you off the phone so they can clock up another ‘successfully closed call’ and move on the next poor mug valued customer!

Now although a member of the forum team has offered to help, they may well find that their hands are a bit tied and as much as they may try, it is possible that they will run up against the brick wall of VM’s broken systems.

So what I would suggest is that you make a formal complaint in writing to VM’s Sunderland address (on the website somewhere) but back it up with a Data Subject Access Request  which is your right under the UK GDPR Laws and VM have to respond and provide you with the call recording. Well OK they don’t actually have to, per se, they could treat it with their usual level of customer care, in which case they could be looking at escalation to the ICO and a fine for non-compliance.

Now one of two things will happen, either the call recording backs up your claim, in which case VM are legally obliged to honour it under Section 50 of the 2015 Consumer Protection Act, or oddly there is no recording of you calling them on that day! As VM are obliged to record all such calls, if one can’t be produced then a Court will conclude that no such call ever happened, but in that case, where did this ‘new contract’ come from? You didn’t call them apparently, so couldn’t have agreed anything - trying to enforce a contract under those circumstances is called ‘fraud’!

Although I suspect that the forum team will manage to get this all sorted out amicably with the minimum of fuss!