Contract price rise despite agent promising it wouldn't

[minibrie]

I renewed my broadband package in November 2023, via web chat. During the chat I asked about annual price rises and the agent said if I recontracted that day they wouldn't apply to me. I thought this was a good deal, so I checked, twice, with the agent that there would be no price rises during the contract. Twice the agent promised they wouldn't apply to my deal.

Two weeks ago, guess what, a price rise is coming! That's ok, mistakes can be made, so I raise a complaint. And now I'm being given the runaround by the Resolutions team, who are refusing to honour the promise that Virgin made. Looking at the forum this seems to happen a lot - why is it so difficult to get the Resolutions team to Resolve anything correctly?

Fortunately I have all the contract price promises in writing from the web chat transcript. Is the ombudsman really the only way to get Virgin to keep their promises, or do I just need to keep escalating the complaint until eventually someone reads it properly?

[unisoft]

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@minibrie wrote:

I renewed my broadband package in November 2023, via web chat. During the chat I asked about annual price rises and the agent said if I recontracted that day they wouldn't apply to me. I thought this was a good deal, so I checked, twice, with the agent that there would be no price rises during the contract. Twice the agent promised they wouldn't apply to my deal.

Two weeks ago, guess what, a price rise is coming! That's ok, mistakes can be made, so I raise a complaint. And now I'm being given the runaround by the Resolutions team, who are refusing to honour the promise that Virgin made. Looking at the forum this seems to happen a lot - why is it so difficult to get the Resolutions team to Resolve anything correctly?

Fortunately I have all the contract price promises in writing from the web chat transcript. Is the ombudsman really the only way to get Virgin to keep their promises, or do I just need to keep escalating the complaint until eventually someone reads it properly?

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On your contract, viewable in My Virgin Media, does it say the word "discounted" in smaller print than rest of wording?

If so, you are not immune to price increases and VM will ay you should have checked the contract back then. 

[Zach_R]

Hi @minibrie, 

Thank you for your post and welcome to our community forums. We're here to help.

I'm sorry to hear that there's a dispute with the cost of your bundle. Whilst we recognise price changes are never welcome, we always balance our prices with the need to continue investing in our network, products and services for our customers.

We're seeing growing demand for data, with usage up by 13% last year. We invest more than £5m every day in our networks and services to bring you faster, more reliable services. Please see more details ▶️ virginmedia.com/help/prices 

Thanks,
 

[minibrie]

Thank you Zach, unfortunately that doesn't really respond to my question. Your agent promised, twice, that my contract price would remain the same, and I checked that twice at the time. I've got written evidence of that, in the chat transcript itself. If you're now refusing to honour that, that's clear misrepresentation of the contract by your agent. I would like my bill corrected please.

I reached out here because other forum threads with the same issue have managed to solve it with help from the forum team. I'd prefer to do that rather than have to refer this to ombudsman services. Can you (or anyone else) help me?

[Molly_T]

Hi minibrie 👋 thanks for getting back to us with the additional information!

For us to take a closer look and offer support with your complaint, we will need to confirm a few account details via PM. 

I will do this for you now - you can find the PM in the top right corner of the page in your Inbox. 📩 We can then return to this public thread with another update when possible. Thank you for your patience in the meantime!

Wishing you all the best. 🌞

[Molly_T]

Hi All 👋

Just returning to the public thread to keep things updated. 
Thanks to minibrie for PMing with me  - we were able to confirm all the details needed to investigate what happened here, raise a complaint and offer support with the resolution. 

I'm pleased to report that this is all now resolved and the complaint has also been closed on this basis. 

Thank you for your patience whilst we were able to get things sorted! Let us know if there's anything outstanding that has been missed, and we will be happy to help. Wishing you all the best! 🌞

[Molly_T]

Hi All 👋

Just returning to this public thread to keep things updated. 

Thanks to Minibrie for PMing with me. I was able to confirm the details we need to offer support and get things resolved. 

As we were able to find evidence to support their case, we have applied a rolling credit for the duration of the contract as a resolution. 

Just to be clear, this does not exclude them from any price rise in future - and they are aware of this!

Nonetheless we are sincerely sorry that this happened, and are glad to see things resolved! If there's anything else you need in future please do return to the forum, as we are happy to help. 
Wishing you all the best! 🌞