Virgin cancelled my transfer to BT! Added £250 to my bills.

[DanHaydn]

I paid for new BT fibre service on 11 October, to start at beginning of November 22.  All good until three days later BT informed me that I had cancelled it.  

On checking the details with them, it was Virgin who declined to transfer the landline number, asserting that I had had a change of mind.

It took till start of January to resolve this, as Virgin failed to transfer the line, delaying my cancellation by three months.

They have so much time to work out these schemes to manipulate account terminations and rip off customers; they're masters of them and each time can pretend to be surprised.  

Is this straightforward fraud?

[goslow]

This sort of issue is reported fairly regularly on here (huge delays/time taken in processing cancellations by phone, cancellations thought to be underway but never actioned by VM, cancellations actually turned into renewals by VM etc. etc.)

If you are seeking some form of compensation for the failure, suspect the only way you might possibly achieve that would be via a formal complaint to VM first of all (a required formality) before taking a complaint to the ombudsman (Ombudsman Services).

If you care to voice your complaint to OFCOM, there is a form here to do that

https://ofcomforms.secure.force.com/formentry/SitesFormCCTMonitoring

but it is for monitoring purposes only (so won't start any sort of investigation into your case).

If everyone who had been messed about by VM's questionable admin processes did this, it might possibly increase the chance of the dormant regulator taking some kind of action against VM to improve.

[Andrew-G · Accepted solution]

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@goslow wrote:

This sort of issue is reported fairly regularly on here (huge delays/time taken in processing cancellations by phone, cancellations thought to be underway but never actioned by VM, cancellations actually turned into renewals by VM etc. etc.).......<complain to Ofcom>...If everyone who had been messed about by VM's questionable admin processes did this, it might possibly increase the chance of the dormant regulator taking some kind of action against VM to improve.

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That's a noble concept goslow, but I gave this a good try over the past year or two trying to encourage unhappy punters to share their experience with Ofcom, but despite horrendous numbers of complaints (not solely down to my efforts) Ofcom continued to do nothing, and in the meanwhile the likes of Vodafone, Talktalk and Shell Energy have managed to be even worse than VM without any sign of action.  I'd really like Ofcom to get off their backside and use the ample powers they have under the Telecommunications Act, but it is quite obvious they won't do that any time soon (and certainly not under the current minister and government).

The best way in my view is for customers to use VM's crappy formal complaints process, wait for their complaint to be fobbed off or otherwise mis-handled, and then take the matter to Ombudsman Services.  That will cost VM around £350-450 for each complaint that the ombudsman investigates, plus whatever settlement the ombudsman offers as an independent adjudication.  So the customer gets a fair outcome, and VM get stitched with a very well deserved bill.    

[DanHaydn]

Thanks @goslow, but I think that reflects your good nature and VM's cynical game - knowing there is no regulator they have worked out that poor service and designed-in obfuscation maximises their revenues at minimum cost. There are bigger battles to fight - and there may be some jujitsu move we can each make to use their own crumminess against them.

[goslow]

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@Andrew-G wrote:

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<snip>

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That's a noble concept goslow, but I gave this a good try over the past year or two trying to encourage unhappy punters to share their experience with Ofcom, but despite horrendous numbers of complaints (not solely down to my efforts) Ofcom continued to do nothing, and in the meanwhile the likes of Vodafone, Talktalk and Shell Energy have managed to be even worse than VM without any sign of action.  I'd really like Ofcom to get off their backside and use the ample powers they have under the Telecommunications Act, but it is quite obvious they won't do that any time soon (and certainly not under the current minister and government).

The best way in my view is for customers to use VM's crappy formal complaints process, wait for their complaint to be fobbed off or otherwise mis-handled, and then take the matter to Ombudsman Services.  That will cost VM around £350-450 for each complaint that the ombudsman investigates, plus whatever settlement the ombudsman offers as an independent adjudication.  So the customer gets a fair outcome, and VM get stitched with a very well deserved bill.    

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If the past stat's from CISAS are anything to go by (which IIRC were something like 85% for complaints upheld or settled against VM) then VM is not too worried about those costs either. They are happy for them to go through as a known cost each year (based on the likely numbers of complainants willing to go all the way through to arbitration with their issue).

It will be interesting to see what the outcomes are via Ombudsman Services (although the info on their website is nowhere near as detailed as CISAS). Perhaps VM are hoping for (expecting?) more favourable outcomes!

A good test case for the OFCOM form would be the long-running 'Hub 5/missed call notification' fault currently up to 28 pages in 'Home Phone'. If everyone posting in that topic dropped a line on the OFCOM form, and there was no response, then all hope for OFCOM would, indeed, be lost (if not lost already!).

[DanHaydn]

Thanks @Andrew-G.  I will follow your gentle path!  Incidentally I see you too are Alessandro Volta; decades ago, when the class photo of my engineering course was printed, about 40% of the undergraduates' names were A Volt, outnumbering the dozens of Brunel brothers.

[goslow]

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@DanHaydn wrote:
Thanks @goslow, but I think that reflects your good nature and VM's cynical game - knowing there is no regulator they have worked out that poor service and designed-in obfuscation maximises their revenues at minimum cost. There are bigger battles to fight - and there may be some jujitsu move we can each make to use their own crumminess against them.

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Can't argue with you but, if I have to go through the process of complaining about an issue, I like to use all of the tools available (even if one of the tools happens to be somewhat broken and not that useful!)

[Andrew-G]

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@goslow wrote:

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If the past stat's from CISAS are anything to go by (which IIRC were something like 85% for complaints upheld or settled against VM) then VM is not too worried about those costs either. They are happy for them to go through as a known cost each year (based on the likely numbers of complainants willing to go all the way through to arbitration with their issue).

It will be interesting to see what the outcomes are via Ombudsman Services (although the info on their website is nowhere near as detailed as CISAS). Perhaps VM are hoping for (expecting?) more favourable outcomes!

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Ombudsman Services publish annual sector reports - most recent available for Telecoms is for 2020, and 83% were upheld which is broadly comparable to CISAS, but since all of the regular Sin-Bin Companies (SBCs) including VM, Talktalk and Vodafone all at that time used CISAS, you'd expect CISAS to uphold more complaints like for like.  VM may be hoping for an easier ride, they may simply have chosen to move because they felt CISAS fees were too high, or maybe they're hoping to avoid their dismal showing at adjudication being made public.  The real answer is the same as it always was - for the SBCs to pull their finger out and treat their customers fairly, and to resolve complaints internally.  But the SBCs share a common mindset and business model, and are incapable of change.

Since the profile of Ombudsman Services is much higher than CISAS, I wouldn't be surprised if more customers were inclined to take complaints to adjudication.

[Matthew_ML]

Hey DanHaydn, thank you for reaching out and I am sorry to hear this has happened.

We wouldn't normally refuse to cancel your services to BT, is this what has been advised?

Also did you hand your 30 day notice into us at all? Thanks 

[DanHaydn]

Matthew,

Your defence that "we wouldn't normally refuse.." is meaningless.  It is what happened.  

In this instance your systems caused the cancellation of my new BT service order - by falsely representing that my number port request could not be completed.  That led to a delay of three months in the process during which Virgin benefited by an improperly extended contract, and I suffered loss of three months of charges which Virgin made.

It seems that the standard tactic in any dispute and especially in terminations is for Virgin to claim not to have records of calls or other communications.  That leads to a delay of a month or two in the process, allowing Virgin to extend the billing period.  That process is enabled by not issuing any form of confirmation or record on the online account recording a cancellation and disconnection between the request being made and the disconnection being completed.  This cannot be anything but a deliberate process.

From my latest 72 minute call to customer care, Virgin had closed my complaint and 

The agent was at a third party call centre in India and claimed the records they had were "200%".  Given that we know that the Virgin CRM system has many gaps, I wonder how that less than 100% content is built up to 200%. He ludicrously claimed that both BT and I had had no correspondence before 4th Jan this year, he asserted that my original complaint related to March 2022, and after repeated cycles of sarcasm and rudeness said that he would send me a deadlock letter for so I can engage with the ombudsman. In conversation it was clear that the third party service providers had no interest in resolution of complaints or the underlying customer issue.  

The tactic of just making it too slow, boring and hard to resolve seems to dominate the process.  I suppose that works economically for Virgin. Does anyone at Virgin have any interest in being straightforward and authority to act fairly?  The brand was built on values of customer delight, but that was a long long time ago.