I don't think you have factored in consumer protection law my legalistic friend.
The argument that customers should read the terms and conditions of the contract as you assert they are "supposed" to did not impress OFCOM
when they fined EE and Virgin. It's such a shame they did not hire you as their brilliant advocate and then perhaps they would have won their cases with your incisive arguments.
The point of most consumer laws are to protect the "ordinary" consumer, who is busily getting on with their lives and often engages only fitfully with organisation that make a business of trying to get their money. This means that contracts and terms must be fair and the options available to consumers need to be clearly represented at all critical junctures of the selling process. This includes telephone conversations, websites and emails as well as the formal contract. It sounds as if you have missed the entire financial PPI misselling scandal or the multiple interventions that OFCOM have made to make service contracts for Broadband and mobile "fair". In all of those cases the courts or regulators ruled that despite the contracts clearly stating the terms to be agreed between the parties, yet they were unfair because the seller ignored information which could have changed the buyer's agreement to enter into the contract in the first place. This was the original poster's point, that alternate options were not made clear by the seller.
Re your specific points
1:/ You state that Virgin's undertaking was not specifically for "existing" customers. That is not correct...If you read the actual case from the link I provided you will see that the scandal occurred only for "existing" customers who after 12 months were placed on new 12 month contracts, even when they indicated to Virgin that they might be moving. In addition, in that case Virgin charged them penalties at the non-discounted rate after they had moved. New customers might also face this issue but that was not the basis of the issue here.
Virgin made restitution to as many customers as it could find and the remainder of the estimated overcharging was allocated to go to Charity, so you are wrong to suggest that Virgin made the same assumption that you have.
4:/you state "4) I neveree changed ‘but’ is not a solid foundation for any argument."
You have misquoted and omitted a key word from my statement,presumably in an attempt to undermine my argument for no good reason in my view other than to show how "clever" you are..
I actually said "per se" which if you bother look up the meaning in a dictionary, modified my statement to make it clear that the only change I had made was to remove a particular option which had expired while completely recognizing that this is a "change" in strict legalistic terms. I am entitled as a consumer to make the assertion that a "non-material" modification of certain terms does not necessarily constitute a "change" to an agreement "per-se" . Indeed, I was requesting a "change" to remove multiple services but was told there was no alternate agreement I could enter into other than the substantive 12 month renewal including television and telephone services which I had stated I did not require.
I realise that you may believe you are being helpful to some people or even to Virgin, with your comments but all you are doing is illustrating and giving more airtime to this intrinsic "unfairness" of a situation whereby a consumer is told one thing incorrectly, and which Virgin already accepted was unfair and agreed to change.
I am fairly sure that an intelligent Virgin Manger will look at my case and others like it and, unlike you. I very much doubt they will assert that I "should have read the small print" in any representations they make.
Brgds
P
