CREDIT SCORE RUINED - ATTENTION ANYONE WITH SIMILAR EXPERIENCE

[Steparratt]

ATTENTION ANYONE WHO HAVE HAD THEIR CREDIT SCORE RUINED BY VIRGIN MEDIA

Personally I'm completely sick of faceless, greedy companies doing whatever they want without any accountability. I'm looking for anyone who has had their credit score affected by Virgin Media.

Just a quick background

I'd been a loyal customer to Virgin Media for many years, giving them thousands of pounds over that period. I needed to move house, so I cancelled my account with them, and after hours and hours of chasing them on various support channels trying to cancel my account (and yes, they make it deliberately difficult to do) I was assured by one of the support workers on WhatsApp that I no longer owed anything. This is after hours of waiting on phone calls / WhatsApp and even being hung up on 3 TIMES without them calling me back. I still remember the feeling of utter disgust now. I have full screenshots and records of all of this communication as it's all on in my WhatsApp history.

Fast forward a month, and what do I receive? A cancellation payment invoice for £20.54. I was annoyed that I'd been lied to by the support staff (and yes, don't try and spin it any other way, I was lied to by VM staff and have the proof to back it up), but my thinking was 'I will pay £20.54 to never have anything to do with Virgin Media ever again'. So I paid it on 3rd July, which was well within the payment window. I breathed a sigh of relief as I finally severed the connection between me and VM, who genuinely have one of the most inept infrastructures for a company that I've ever had the bad fortune to cross paths with. 

So, having been a loyal customer for years, paying them thousands of pounds, and even paying a bill to cancel the account that I shouldn't have had to pay - you know where that gets you? I do. Yesterday they put a missed payment on my credit file for this £20.54, that I have a payment receipt for and that I've have clarified by their support staff as being paid. I've spent 7 years building up that credit file so I can start to buy a house - that's all gone down the toilet now because VM apparently want to punish people just for wanting to leave. No apology, no compensation, just lies and passing-the-buck (and just plain hanging up on me) by support staff saying it'd be removed in 24 hours - it hasn't, it's still there, and I'm guessing it'll stay there until Virgin decide differently. Vile.

So where does that leave us? Personally I'm sick of this. I'm sick of huge companies making money hand over fist through their customers, only to turn around one say and bite the hand that feeds them. I'm currently getting some advice from the Citizens Advice Bureau and a lawyer that I have a phone call scheduled in for Friday.

Whats next

The first thing that I've done is started to gather all of the blog posts from this forum from people who have had similar situations - credit file ruined by greedy, morally-void actions. I'll be in touch with as many as I can, however there are over 280 hits when I search for similar posts, so if you can post a link or your forum post, or if you can post the issues you had underneath this one then I'll start to gather all of your information. Nobody should have to suffer this for apparently no reason other than you had the audacity to want to leave Virgin. Let's put it all in one place so they can't ignore it, and we'll see what we can do from there.

Together we are stronger against companies like VM, and lets be honest - they're only going to change their procedure to this situation is if they are confronted with something they can't ignore and / or costs them money.

And before a support staff says something along the lines of:

• 'have you followed the instructions that we gave you...'
• 'this doesnt match what we have on our records...'
• any other lame, pass-the-buck excuse that requires more hours wasted talking to support 

I want you to know that I'm not wasting anymore time chasing this through support; I've been passed from pillar to post enough, and had enough time wasted - I'd prefer to chase some compensation for time / money lost. I'm a freelancer by trade, so time = money, and you've already cost me alot of money, not to mention stress, and not to mention ruining my credit score for absolutely no reason. You added the missed payment to my credit file, and you've since confirmed that it was paid - you fix it: You broke it - you buy it.

This could all be resolved by simply investing some money in finding the issue that keeps this happening, that keeps ruining peoples lives, that makes people depressed and angry - but I suppose that's an unnecessary cost to VM, no? Pathetic.

Anyway, here's a list of other people with similar issues, and this link has some great advice (see accepted answer) to get some compensation from VM - I think we all deserve it considering we've had our credit files ruined, our stress levels skyrocketed, our time wasted and our hand bitten by this company for absolutely no reason. Anyway, here's the list:

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Credit-score-ruined/m-p/4825762

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/credit-score/m-p/4971111

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Managing-Your-Account-Cable/Credit-score-ruined/m-p/5230750

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Managing-Your-Account-Cable/credit-score-ruined/m-p/5233524

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Virgin-Mobile/Ruin-credit-score/m-p/5345259

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Managing-Your-Account-Cable/Credit-Score-Ruined-Mortgage-Declin...

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Managing-Your-Account-Cable/Credit-score-ruined-VM-fault/m-p/51...

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Managing-Your-Account-Cable/Missed-Payment-Credit-Report-Ruined...

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Managing-Your-Account-Cable/Virgin-ruined-credit-score-for-bill...

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Credit-Score-Ruined-Hard-Search/m-p/5051185

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/FALSE-INFORMATION-RUINED-MY-CREDIT-SCORE/m-p/4846...

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Credit-Score/m-p/4807080

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Credit-Score-False-Information/m-p/4988145

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Amend-my-Credit-File/m-p/4682748

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/DEFAULT-REMOVAL/m-p/5050589

This is really just the tip of the iceberg - there are hundreds of other hits, however if you can post your own nightmare experience with this company than please do below. Don't let them get away with it, hold them to account and show them that they need to change their processes. As they're too greedy to invest any money to find out the problem and fix it, they either need to be confronted with the problem, or it'll keep happening. 

[goslow]

You seem to have expertly covered all bases here and be clued up on all aspects of this regular pattern of behaviour by VM.

I would just add that you may want to included OFCOM in your list of contacts.

They launched an investigation into VM last week specifically into VM's cancellation and complaints processes.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/bulletins/enforcement-bulletin/open-cases/cw_01275

Case ref. no. and an email at the bottom of the above page or submit with same info via the contact form

https://ofcomforms.secure.force.com/formentry/SitesFormCCTMonitoring

Submitting information won't help your individual case but it will contribute to the OFCOM investigation and it sounds like your experience is directly relevant to the terms of reference of the investigation.

[Steparratt]

Thank you very much Goslow, that is some amazing information you've provided - I will certainly be following your advice here and I'll submit my experience

I'm going to get in touch with everyone on the links I provided and share this information also if that's ok? Alot of the posts / accounts are from the last two years, and I imagine they probably want nothing more to do with VM, but I think they deserve to know about the OFCOM investigation and to have their say in it!

Again, thank you hugely for the information Goslow 👍

[Steparratt]

Just a quick update - I've direct messaged the creators of all 15 of the posts that I linked to, linking them to this post and also the OFCOM investigation. I'm going to spend the rest of the evening combing through the Virgin Media Community forum finding more - there are plenty I am missing. Then there are numerous other websites to comb through. 

Again thanks for the information Goslow! It's very important to me now - an OFCOM investigation can give us a voice as a collective and hold Virgin accountable for their disgusting actions. I'm incredibly motivated about this 😄 let's see what else we can be done to get Virgin to listen up 🙌🙌

[Steparratt]

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Community-Natter/OFCOM-Investigation/td-p/5370044

[Steparratt]

This one is much better

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Community-Natter/Breaking-OFCOM-investigating-VM-over-difficult...

[Robert_P]

Hello Steparratt

We're sorry to hear of the issues experienced since cancelling your account, the impact on your credit file and obvious upset caused, we appreciate you raising this via the forums and welcome to the community.

We're eager to look into this further and ensure all of the information on your credit file is correct, I will send you a Private Message to get some more details from you to assist. Check the envelope in the top right of the forum when signed in for the message.

Rob

[SweetDonburi]

Likewise affected. The impact on my credit score has further transpired as a consequence of Virgin Media's practice involving the utilization of Hard Credit Searches in the context of service applications, or in the process of relocating service to a new residence.

Through my historical interactions with several service providers, I have conspicuously not experienced any derogatory repercussions upon my credit standing.

It is noteworthy that these entities invariably resorted to the implementation of Soft searches.

I emphasize the detrimental nature of the unexpected diminution in one's credit rating report, an outcome attributable solely to Virgin Media's unduly excessive approach in the context of a rudimentary contractual arrangement.

[CaitONeill]

Thank you for this!

[MollyisMoon]

Many many thanks for this! Nearly 10 years with Virgin. 1000's of pounds handed over through the years. Currently in dispute at the moment and will be expecting a credit mark on my file due to cancelling a direct debit for charges from a phone and landline I do not have. This was after I raised a complaint, had it rejected and had a call out from an engineer to confirm the issue. They cannot be trusted