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Cancelled my contract via phone, and then got renewed without my consent.

TakejiA
Tuning in

So I contacted VM on the 2nd of November 2020 to cancel my contract as I was moving to TalkTalk.
I received a confirmation email of the disconnection to the service and started using Talktalk straight away.
I thought my service, as agreed with the team member I spoke to on the phone, had been cancelled. 
This was not the case, and my contract was renewed without my consent on the 24th of November 2020 without receiving any confirmation emails.
So all this time I'd been paying monthly for a contract I thought they cancelled.

PLEASE cancel my contract with IMMEDIATE affect.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Andrew-G
Alessandro Volta

Let's see what the forum staff can arrange, but if VM have actually been billing you for over a year and a half then you're owed significant compensation in addition to the repayment of all charges.  See what the forum staff can come up with, if you're not happy then you'll need to raise a formal complaint with VM.  That may get well handled, it may get fobbed off or an inadequate settlement offered.  If you're not happy, you reject any "resolution" offered and ask for a deadlock letter.  With the deadlock letter you can take the matter to the industry complaints adjudication scheme CISAS, and they're used to giving VM a bruising.

See where this Helpful Answer was posted

20 REPLIES 20

Andrew-G
Alessandro Volta

Let's see what the forum staff can arrange, but if VM have actually been billing you for over a year and a half then you're owed significant compensation in addition to the repayment of all charges.  See what the forum staff can come up with, if you're not happy then you'll need to raise a formal complaint with VM.  That may get well handled, it may get fobbed off or an inadequate settlement offered.  If you're not happy, you reject any "resolution" offered and ask for a deadlock letter.  With the deadlock letter you can take the matter to the industry complaints adjudication scheme CISAS, and they're used to giving VM a bruising.

Thanks Andrew, really appreciate the insight.
I actually raised a formal complaint using the VM website.
The resolutions team got back to me saying they could see I called to disconnect the services back in November 2020, however that was cancelled due to "me" apparently agreeing for a new contract even though I'd been using Talktalk for weeks by then.
Hence, the charges are apparently "valid".
I spoke to VM again today, managed to cancel my services (got the confirmation email again) and the member of staff I was speaking to has filed a report on the agent who handled my cancellation the first time using their ID.
But no way of following the report or any information about compensation as it was the "wrong department" to ask.
I heard that this forum gets things resolved much better than when you call so hopefully I'll get some answers soon!
Thanks again for your help.

Kain_W
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Apologies for the issues faced TakejiA,

Welcome back to the community.

Just to clarify is the account still active currently? 

Let us know,

Kain

Hi Kain,

The account is still active but in the progress of being ended. They said it should take affect by 17th of July.
However I managed to speak to someone at VM yesterday and managed to get the payment issue sorted out, and they agreed to work out how much I paid to issue a refund.
Hopefully that all clears out, will update as soon as it does.

Andrew-G
Alessandro Volta

@TakejiA However I managed to speak to someone at VM yesterday and managed to get the payment issue sorted out, and they agreed to work out how much I paid to issue a refund.

Believe that when it happens.  There's also the small matter of substantial compensation for implementing a new contract without authority, and then taking money by direct debit for 18 months, and failing to immediately and competently resolve it when notified.  I think that's got to be worth about £600 plus all the wrongful contract DD payments.

Tell us if you don't get a really decent offer of settlement, and we'll explain how to go about wringing it out of VM through an adjudication scheme.

spell
Knows their stuff

Exactly what Andrew-G said. Don't expect VM to happily cough up money for you no matter how much you are entitled to it - get ready for resistance/delays in the hope you will get fed up and go away

That's very true. So far I've just had an email confirming the refund from VM after speaking to one of them on the phone:

"Hello TAKEJI,

Thanks so much for the chat on 17/06/2022. We’re very happy to be able to resolve things for you.

Here's a quick recap

Your complaint was:
Cable > Billing/Charges > I don't understand or agree with charges on my bill

And here’s what we agreed:
Billing > Billing corrected

We’ve now closed your complaint. Thanks again for bearing with us."

I'll keep everything you said all in mind and keep you guys posted as soon as I have an update.
Appreciate the support.

Andrew-G
Alessandro Volta

For the benefit of the forum team - if this needs to go to adjudication, then because it concerns renewal of a credit agreement without customer authority, I'll be suggesting that the Financial Services Ombudsman is the appropriate adjudicator.  And the FSO case fees (always paid by the company) are double those of CISAS......Just sayin' y'know. 

Hopefully you can intervene and make things right.

Hi @TakejiA

 

Thank you for the update.

 

It appears the complaints team have resolved this, however if you would like me to clarify anything for you please let me know and I would be happy to do so.

 

Please pop back to us when you can. 

Vikki - Forum Team


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