My Contract Was Increased Without My Knowledge & Consent. Customer Services / Billing Won’t Help.

[zhen7]

Hi,

I opened my account in June 2021, with a discounted price for 18 months on M500 Broadband. 

I moved home in September 2021 & when I rang to get the move sorted,

I was advised & told nothing would change except that my internet would now work in my new home. 

i was told my price & contract would be the same. 

I’ve had nothing but connection issues & billing issues since. 

im still having those issues. 

upon receiving a bill £25 over my contracted price,

I called to find out when my contract is due up because I’ve spent countless hours on the phone to Customer services & im fed up of going round in circles. 

I’ve now been told that my contract was renewed for ANOTHER 18 months during the move,

and,

EVERY SINGLE MONTH,

im left with billing issues that I have to spend HOURS with customer services to fix.

my internet also isn’t working & im being charged for engineer call outs WHEN THEY CONFIRM FAULTS.

please can someone just help me?

[jem101]

I can see where this has come from, although that doesn’t really excuse the inability of VM’s customer services to sort it out. Technically the contract is to supply a service to a particular address for a certain minimum time period (18 months). So if you were to move within that period, then what should happen is that you pay off the early disconnection fee and start again at the new property. But VM have a system whereas if you move and continue to take their services and make absolutely no changes, then a new contract is set up BUT the terms are adjusted to honour the time remaining in your old contract.

Now apparently, the automated system will set up a new contract for a minimum of 18 months (fair enough), except a manager needs to override this and reset the minimum end term to reflect the terms of your old contract.. Now this doesn’t always seem to happen properly a much more cynical person might think it was deliberate in the hope you won’t notice and carry on paying - I couldn’t comment.

So call VM tomorrow at 8am, follow the ‘thinking of leaving us’ option which at that time is more likely to put you through to a UK based call centre, explain the situation and demand that they fix the issue. Any messing about, then ask for a ‘deadlock letter’, if you get one (hint, you probably won’t), you can complain to the industry regulator CISAS immediately, otherwise after eight weeks you can formally complain regardless of what VM do or don’t do.

Post back and let us know how you get on. If necessary we can advise accordingly as to your next steps.

[zhen7]

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@jem101 wrote:

I can see where this has come from, although that doesn’t really excuse the inability of VM’s customer services to sort it out. Technically the contract is to supply a service to a particular address for a certain minimum time period (18 months). So if you were to move within that period, then what should happen is that you pay off the early disconnection fee and start again at the new property. But VM have a system whereas if you move and continue to take their services and make absolutely no changes, then a new contract is set up BUT the terms are adjusted to honour the time remaining in your old contract.

Now apparently, the automated system will set up a new contract for a minimum of 18 months (fair enough), except a manager needs to override this and reset the minimum end term to reflect the terms of your old contract.. Now this doesn’t always seem to happen properly a much more cynical person might think it was deliberate in the hope you won’t notice and carry on paying - I couldn’t comment.

So call VM tomorrow at 8am, follow the ‘thinking of leaving us’ option which at that time is more likely to put you through to a UK based call centre, explain the situation and demand that they fix the issue. Any messing about, then ask for a ‘deadlock letter’, if you get one (hint, you probably won’t), you can complain to the industry regulator CISAS immediately, otherwise after eight weeks you can formally complain regardless of what VM do or don’t do.

Post back and let us know how you get on. If necessary we can advise accordingly as to your next steps.

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Thank you for your reply!

I honestly spent over 3 hours with different departments & even retentions trying to get this corrected. 

However every single time they just said that because I moved house, this makes the contract start again. 

this is something I was NEVER told & I explicitly said that I didn’t want this to happen. 

Because now I’m stuck, Ive had issues with my connection for FIVE MONTHS. 

And an engineer confirmed my hub is faulty as supposed to come back today to swap out but hasn’t.

I don’t want to be in a longer contract than necessary because I will want to cancel my service ASAP. 

5 months of issues with no help. 

I had 55 mins on the phone to customer services who claimed a 3m Ethernet cable is too long and causes speed issues. 

1). Ethernet is good for 100m and more

2). My speed is fine, there’s noise ingress at my cabinet as confirmed by technicians (but no fixes a different team has to fix). 

my priority is to fix the contract issue and then leave VM asap. 

[jem101]

@zhen7 OK I’ll escalate this to the forum team to see if they can’t sort it out for you. Otherwise then you’ll need to take this to the industry regulator CISAS for an adjudication, oh no doubt you will win and get compensation form VM. Shame really that it has to come to that.

[Zach_R · Accepted solution]

Hi @zhen7,

Thank you for your posts. I am really sorry to hear you're having some disputes with the length of your contract at your new home, and are also facing some ongoing issues with your connection and services.
 

I'm going to send you a private message in a few moments so I can take some additional details from you and have a closer look at what's happening here. Please respond to this at your earliest convenience.

Thanks,

[Zach_R]

Hi @zhen7,

Thank you for reaching out to me via private message. Huge apologies for the longevity of the problem you faced, but I'm glad that were able to reach an amicable resolution and get this problem sorted out.

If you need our help again in the future, please do feel free to reach back out to us here on the forums.

Thanks,