Broadband Disconnection

[Cavallino]

Hello VM team,

I have just signed up to a 18 month contract (renewal) on 6th August on M500.

The last cooling off day is tomorrow.

However I am in two minds about this connection since I have been experiencing a lot of connection issues recently (which VM have reported as their fault on their status checker).

Last weekend there was no broadband for 2 days.

And tonight some outages which according to the Customer Services can take anywhere up to 23rd August (4 days from this post).

The problem I have is... I am thinking of cancelling during the cooling off period, which means the last day of broadband will be 19th September.

On the other hand, I was thinking to wait a bit longer to see how things go with the ongoing issues...

So my question is as follows:

1. If I decide to use the cooling off period and cancel as I mentioned above. Is that the point of no return? I.e. once things are set in motion I cant cancel the disconnection and 19th September is it?

2. Lets say if number 1. is true, would I not be able to sign up for a new contract?

3. Would I be entitled to keep the contract running for some weeks longer and if I am still not satisfied is there anyway to get out of the contract with no penalties or paying the rest of the contract, due to these outages?

Sorry for the convulted questions, not very straight forward situation I know.

Thank you for your help.

[Ernie_C]

The 14 day cooling off period allows you to revert to your previous contract and its status.

Independent of whether you then are within a minimum contract period or into the 30 day rolling extension to the contract, you have the right to renegotiate a new contract or give your 30 days notice either immediately or any time in the future.

[Cavallino]

Thanks for your response Ernie_C appreciate it.

So did I understand you correctly.... if I go back to VM and say I want to revert back to my previous contract (i.e. paying full), and effectively being "pay as you go" this is possibke?

You mentioned I have the right to renegotiate a new contract or give 30 days notice immediately or any time in the future.

But surely if I give 30 days notice I would need to pay a penalty and pay the rest of the contract off?

E.g. if I am 3 months into an 18 months contract and give notice I have to pay off the 15 months?

(Unless could I raise a complaint/grievance about the outages I have been experiencing) ?

[Adri_G · Accepted solution]

Hello Cavallino, thanks for posting with your issue here on our help forum.

We're sorry to hear of the issues that came us after you've renewed your deal with us. We would advise that your cooling off period starts on the date the service has changed to the new deal (500MB speed etc) and if you cancel while in it you can revert to the previous package and your bills will be in line with this instead.

If you wish to cancel your services with us within this cooling-off period, we can do this and we will only need a 30 days notice to do this for you. 
This means your disconnection will take place a month after the request has been placed and you will receive a bill to the last day of your services with us once the disconnection has completed. 
You can also call us should you decide to change the disconnection date or cancel the disconnection altogether if you've changed your mind in the meantime.
We would not charge you any early termination fees in this case though, no worries.
 

Please, refer to our policy here for more info on this. Also, for how to cancel a service with us you can read this here.

In regard to a mobile deal, we can confirm there is no option to revert to pay as you go as we only do contract deals now, sorry for this.

About the service issue you're experiencing, this is an area fault and it has nothing to do with this change. We are always aiming to sort these out at our earliest convenience and when you have a loss of service due to these we can also compensate you, please read here for advice on how this works.

Of course, you may raise a complaint should you wish and we can help out with this process. However, when it comes to outages we cannot fix things remotely so it will be down to our engineers to restore the service for you anyway. We believe once the area fault is out of the way your service should work as normal, if not we can always support you with any faults related to your equipment or home network and we do this for free 🙂
 
We hope this information is of help, let us know of any more questions or concerns you may have, glad to assist further.

[Cavallino]

Thank you Adri as well. Appreciate the long explanation.

I just called up Retentions who switched me back to my old contract. Spoke with a very lovely lady who did this in a matter of minutes. Literally.
Its amazing how the customer experience can vary from person to person and call to call.

I have had discussion with some VM staff members who I am sorry to say, how were they recruited.
On the other side there are some staff who are just absolutely outstanding and will go out of their way to support you.

I have been with VM for 17 years I believe.... and regrettably, the service overall has been getting worse of late (connection).

In the earlier years it was great to have such fast connection and more importantly, a reliable fast connection.

Now it seems Openreach has arrived into the area and Sky are coming in with some pretty aggressive deals, so the competition is intensifying.

I have been experiencing these outages in the area (last weekend 2 days offline, this weekend is reported to be 4 days... although I am connected at the moment).

Its a shame VM did not communicate this officially to people in the area to manage expectations... especially for people like me who are at the end of contract and need to renew, it has opened the door to the competition.

Had I known about these outages in advance, I would have probably not given a second thought to switching...

In any case, Sky/Open reach coming round at the end of the month... lets see how they compare....

I am genuinely sad about having to potentially switch after nearly 2 decades... but the world is changing as well know...

Thank you again Ernie and Adri for your contributions.

[Adri_G]

Hey Cavallino, thanks for your warm response to this. We appreciate all you've said about our customer support and the issues faced with our service recently.

We do train all our staff to be able to offer support on a high standard, however if you previously spoke to one of our newly-recruited agents it might be they did not have the experience many of us have when it comes to complicated issues like yours. Apologies for this experience, we are indeed aiming to offer a better overall support always.

Glad to hear you've managed to speak with our retentions and sort this out now, although we're sorry to see you leave us due to the service problems.

You may also get in touch and cancel your disconnection should you change your mind moving forward, as long as the disconnection date has not passed.

In any case, we wish you all the best, feel free to go with the option that's best for you.

Let us know if you have more queries or concerns, we're still happy to help 🙂