Final bill significantly more

[pete105]

Hi,

I want to terminate my contract when it ends on 22nd May. I currently pay £68.54 after the annual price increase. I contacted Virgin via web chat to inform them of this disconnection request today, and agreed a disconnection date of 22nd May.

At this point, I was told that the final 30 days of the contract would be billed at the "standard pack price", which is £118. In my contact it states that the price will go up to £97 from 23rd May.

I haven't continued with the process of disconnecting yet as the agent wasn't able to give me an answer on why this could be, other than they "bill in advance".

Has anyone else experienced this? I can't see how they can charge more when I'm still in contract and I don't want to receive any services after this date?

Thanks for any help.

Pete.

[japitts]

Until your services are cancelled, billing continues as normal. Your contract and recent bills will specify the full package price, together with the amount and expiry date of any time-limited discounts.

Billing in advance is commonplace across the telecoms industry, as is standard billing until disconnection. Once your services are cancelled, you will then receive a final bill which usually includes a credit refund for unused service.

[pete105]

Thanks - I understand the billing in advance process. I want to cancel my services before the rolling contract period commences after the contracted period at the price I'm paying now ends. I've provided over 30 days notice of my wish to terminate the contract on 22nd May.

The date I have specified to leave is the last day of the contract, to avoid the price increase.

I may be missing something, but I can't work out why they've advised me that the process of cancelling the contract at this point will trigger a payment increase for the last 30 days of service, when this will still be in the contract period.

Of course, it's quite possible that the webchat agent was incorrect in stating this, and if so I'll phone back.

[neil100]

My contract will also go up to £97 a month , being made redundant in 7 weeks time I rang customer services also web chat after 45 mins of the best they could come up with was £79 a month for a slower internet speed . So I to will leave virgin soon. So reading between the lines and I could be wrong the Call centre is not in the UK and It seams to me that they are told to give no discounts to loyal customers and to hike the prices up high as possible. My friends daughter got him a deal  of £32 a month for 18 months and he's an existing  customer. I have been told that deals change daily and it depends on who you speak to on the day . So i will sign up with a different provider . 

[John_GS]

Hi @pete105 

Thanks for posting and welcome back to the community.

It's purely due to the advance billing why it'd be higher. I'll send you a PM now to discuss the specifics.

[pete105]

To help anyone else in the same situation, a very helpful John (and subsequently a call on the same day from the  retention/disconnection team) has confirmed that:

The penultimate and final bill may be higher due to billing in advance, but after disconnection a credit will follow. I'm fine with this - the credit bit wasn't explained when I originally raised the web chat query, they just told me the final bill would be a lot more.

I also learned the following during this process, which may be of use:

The notice period for providing 30 days' notice if you want to leave on the day your contract ends is up to 60 days, at the point you reach the retentions team.

However, during this process, I spoke to 3 different people at Virgin who flatly refused to process this prior to 30 days. I literally argued with an agent for 30 minutes who refused to progress the request - they stated that I must phone back when there's exactly 30 days from the end of the contract.

If you want to give more than 30 days' notice at the end of your contract, Virgin's service desk makes this very difficult, but if you finally get to retentions they will do it for you. I'm not sure why - maybe some sort of retention/stalling tactic.

They really should sort this out, it's been a hassle and it may actually put me off coming back if the deal was right in future.

Thanks John for your efforts.