Credit rating ruined - facing financial hardship - advice needed

[Babsraff_5]

Hi community 

Can anyone give any new/updated advice on how to get Virgin Media to remove “late” payments from your credit report? We have a common story to many others - we cancelled our account

and direct debit in January, they claimed we didn’t, we complained, they didn’t acknowledge our complaint or clarify what we owed, they marked my credit report with adverse (late payments) despite us ending up paying all of the different amounts they kept charging us. Our account is now in credit (!) despite us eventually getting them to cancel the service and close our account, they won’t respond to my escalated complaint nor my  request to remove the adverse marking from my report. 

I’m sick with worry as we are about to have to go on a SVR mortgage and will have to pay thousands extra per annum due entirely to their faulty processes and truly awful customer service. They still have long deadlines for response to complaints etc (and often don’t meet them).  
I have submitted details of our experience to the OFCOM investigation. Will escalate through the Communications Ombudsman shortly but am holding out little hope as they have such shoddy, unprofessional commercial practices. 

Any advice gratefully received, particularly from

those who have been successful in getting their adverse credit marker on their credit report removed.

Will consider legal action - if anyone has had any experience of engaging a solicitor to deal with issues such as these please let me know. 

Barbara 

[Babsraff_5]

Hi community 

Can anyone give any new/updated advice on how to get Virgin Media to remove “late” payments from your credit report? We have a common story to many others - we cancelled our account

and direct debit in January, they claimed we didn’t, we complained, they didn’t acknowledge our complaint or clarify what we owed, they marked my credit report with adverse (late payments) despite us ending up paying all of the different amounts they kept charging us. Our account is now in credit (!) despite us eventually getting them to cancel the service and close our account, they won’t respond to my escalated complaint nor my  request to remove the adverse marking from my report. 

I’m sick with worry as we are about to have to go on a SVR mortgage and will have to pay thousands extra per annum due entirely to their faulty processes and truly awful customer service. They still have long deadlines for response to complaints etc (and often don’t meet them).  
I have submitted details of our experience to the OFCOM investigation. Will escalate through the Communications Ombudsman shortly but am holding out little hope as they have such shoddy, unprofessional commercial practices. 

Any advice gratefully received!

Barbara 

[Sephiroth]

I suggest you take it to a solicitor making sure all the evidence to support your version of events is fully supplied.

[Babsraff_5]

Thank you, will consider this. The longer this goes on, the longer the financial damage. Would be grateful if anyone could

share any experience of taking them through the communications ombudsman ADR processes 

[Sephiroth]

There’s also the WHICH? Route, especially if you are a member.  They can get stuff sorted fairly quickly.

[goslow]

Speak to Citizens Advice first of all on the best way to proceed. They should be able to tell you the correct process and organisations to contact.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/contact-us/contact-us/contact-us/

The ombudsman process requires a formal complaint to VM first of all (explained below)

https://www.commsombudsman.org/our-process

Those who have used the ombudsman usually report on here that it was a easy and accessible process.

But give the ombudsman a call too and ask them if it is a suitable case for them to deal with. There might be a financial regulator that is more suitable.

Worth noting though that there is a specific (and lengthy/convoluted) procedure for terminating VM's services. VM continues to bill you as per normal right up until the day of disconnection. Plenty of people in past topics on here have fallen foul of the procedure by cancelling a direct debit too early when VM was expecting a scheduled payment.

In any event, VM has plenty of form on here for erroneous credit default referrals. In many cases it seems to be VM's flawed admin processes which are at the root of the problem rather than the customer.

[Babsraff_5]

Thank you. The complaint process has been going on since January (started due to their unclear/convoluted disconnection process) so we will meet the Ombudsman test. It’s just difficult to work out what from our side will lead to action on theirs, so unprofessionally slow even when our internal complaint has been “escalated” to their Executive team….all we have had so far is a very crude AI generated email from them. 

[newapollo]

Hi Barbara

In regards to the credit default, have you emailed the following?

creditfileamendments@virginmedia.co.uk

It generally take up to 28 days for them to look into, update and remedy anything they have done to affect your credit rating.

[Ilyas_Y]

Hey @Babsraff_5 Thanks for reaching out to us and a warm welcome to the Virgin Media Community forums. 👋🏼

I'm sorry to hear about the poor experience you've had with relation to your credit file. 😢

Please reach out to our team on: creditfileamendments@virginmedia.co.uk and they will be able to advise you on this matter.
In the email they'll need to include their full name, account number, contact number, account address, the company that they used to view their credit file, and any specific details related to the credit file enquiry. Please note that a response may take up to 21 days from the team.

Kind regards,
Ilyas.

[用心棒]

Do consider discussing your situation with the Financial Ombudsman Service as well.

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