Customer Service and made up bills passed to debt collectors

[sneduthr]

I post in this forum in the hope that Virgin Media customer services might be willing to do something to help.

I was a virgin media customer in 2018/19 and left as they were unable to provide service to my new address. I provided the requisite notice period to cancel the contract and moved house accordingly. Somehow Virgin ended up sending me huge bills for several hundreds of pounds and then kept removing and changing the bills in the online account. Customer services apologised and I raised a complaint which was dealt with and I was told I owed nothing, in approx Apr 2019.

Five years on I have just started receiving text messages from a company I have never heard of (Advantis) telling me I owe them £59 for a Virgin bill. I explained that, a) this is odd because Virgin confirmed I owed nothing (eventually) in 2019, b) why had Virgin not sent me the bill as my email address remains unchanged since Virgin used to send me bills, and c) can they tell me what the bill is for?

Advantis said they knew nothing and it was somehow on me to contact virgin to ask them for a bill that they never presented to me, despite telling me I owed nothing. Farcical isn’t it?

I rang Virgin customer services several times this afternoon, because I don’t want anything disadvantageous against my credit rating. I was hung up on twice and when eventually speaking to people they were unable to match my details (being 5 years on the account seems to have closed). One thing that was confirmed was that my email address was still correctly on their record (so all this time they could have approached me for any money they might think I owed them!).

If Virgin are unable to present a bill, pull up my details, or even discuss the matter with me (and the online system also does not recognise me - even though I have all the details from 2019) - then how can they have passed a debt to a debt collector? That cannot be legal to pass a debt to an agency without any communication with the individual/client, despite me confirming they have my email address?

I’d like to hear from someone in Virgin who can sort this disgraceful matter out.

[John_GS]

Hi @sneduthr 

Thanks for posting and welcome to the community.

Sorry to hear of the debt issue and the impact on your credit file.

I'll send you a PM now to assist further.

[PC76]

@Sneduthr. 

I have had an almost identical situation, I feel your pain.

the tag at the bottom of the reply from John_GS is the most insensitive thing I could imagine.

[PC76]

Please feel free to contact me about my experiences with an identical situation.

[Akua_A]

Hi @PC76 

Welcome to our community forums and thank you for your first posts.

Sorry to hear you are having a similar experience. We can understand the frustration caused and we want to best help. Are you able to expand on the issue you are currently facing with debt collection so we can best understand? Also please note the tags created at the bottom of posts are auto-generated and not written by the team.

Thanks,