Volt contract dishonouring, customer service hell

[bencowp]

Our old Oomph deal containing 350M broadband and 15Gb VM sim came to an end this month. Therefore in January I renegotiated a new deal to start this month.

The verbally agreed contact, which was repeated and confirmed with myself and the Virgin Media agent, was a package containing 350M broadband and a 10Gb O2 sim for £36 per month for 18 months.

In February I noticed that it didn't appear that we had a sim included, so I spent time to ring another Virgin Media agent, who confirmed that this deal was in place.

Both of these conversations are recorded.

On the 8th of March I contacted Virgin Media again because there the sim card has not arrived and there is no correspondence from VM or O2 regarding the sim card (of any type).

I was informed by the VM agent that VM do not plan to honour the verbally agreed contract, which is illegal in UK law.

A complaint was raised, which was supposed to result in an escalation to the UK based team, who would investigate the conversations.
Except what actually happened was an email 5 minutes later informing me that the matter had been resolved, without any apparent resolution.

Since Tuesday the 15th (of March) I have been continuously attempting to sort this out via WhatsApp.
I have been passed through multiple teams, each agent failing to understand the issue.
I has been days without any progress.

This has wasted an enormous amount of my time, can anyone here help?

[Tom_W1]

Hi @bencowp, thanks for your post here in the community although I'm very sorry to hear of your concens.

I'll need to discuss this via PM with you, just so I can discuss things in further detail and hopefully get this resolved to your satisfaction.

Please expect this PM to arrive shortly and respond when you can!

Many thanks

[Scurtis1]

Raise a DSAR on their privacy policy page under your right to access.

Ask (on a recorded call) for their compliance team to review your call and contact you to confirm then ask for a follow up in writing. They're a team in place, primarily to stop complaints going to the regulator. I'll admit I haven't actually received my call back from them yet. And the DSAR was missing data.

Which brings me to my last point. Prepare to fail. You will. Wait until complaint reaches deadlock and then refer it to CISAS. Use your well kept (your own generally) records and your complaint will in all likelihood be upheld. Ask for a high value compensation as it just comes out of a giant pot of money.

I was promised a call to offer me a deal to join volt too but as I've not received it seems like I've dodged a bullet.

[bencowp]

Hi Scurtis1,

Excellent tip regarding the DSAR, I filled a request out this morning, thanks!

The picture I'm building is VM agents don't understand how volt contracts work, and are therefore accidentally (being charitable) making "off-piste" offers.

This is compounded by new levels of customer service incompetence, which makes sorting the mess out even more painful that it should be.
This is highlighted when VM request that you (hopelessly) ring O2 to obtain details for a non-existent sim card: the difference in agent capability, comprehension and training is night and day.

The very moment that FTTP becomes available on my road (gigaclear, toob, etc) I'm gone...

[Scurtis1]

Hi bencowp,

Glad to help, I've just received one today, the first one was missing information so I had to raise a complaint with ICO but this one includes a lot more data that I had already asked for so be mindful of that, they won't always send out all data without a little nudge from the ICO.

That was good but they then sent me the wrong contract again for a 9th time. Which fits with your concerns about incompetence....

I was also advised that the calls I confirmed were recorded with the operative have gone missing and can not be passed over...

So whilst the compliance team might be able to help they can't check if the calls have gone missing.

Will wait till deadlock and then pass case over to CISAS, who were very effective last time, it's just a long process but then so is 18 months paying the wrong price...

Hope you've had some progress!

I think that is a tactic btw though to get you off the phone, make the deal, hook the fishy on the line, then hold them to ransom for x amount of months

[bencowp]

For anyone who is (or find themselves) in the same situation, here is a record of my case, now it's resolved. Hopefully someone finds it useful:

Background
It turns out that the VM agent who arranged my contract/deal did not understand how "Volt" packages work, and therefore accidentally sold me a deal that VM would not normally offer. With Volt packages, the O2 sim card portion is always billed separately by O2; VM only bill you for the internet/other part(s). The agent I dealt with quoted the VM billing cost as if it were the total overall cost (neglecting to mention the O2 cost). In my case they completely missed out placing the order for the O2 sim card, so I was billed the "correct" amount, but without the sim plan that had been promised.

To be clear: A verbally agreed contract is still a legally binding contract. If an agent promises you something, you repeat it back to them for confirmation, and they confirm it, that's a binding contract in the UK (as far as I can tell from my research). Normally this is problematic because "if a tree falls in the woods...", however VM record all of their calls.

The Mess
When I tried to sort this out with the off-shore front-line customer service agents, via call, online message or whatsapp I was passed from team to team (broadband, customer service, complaints, retentions, etc) multiple times with the same common problems throughout:

• None of the agents seemed to have a good grasp of how Volt contracts are supposed to work. In most cases it was clear that they had to ask someone else/perform ad-hoc research to find out, in some cases we even reached the end of the conversation without the agent comprehending the issue of separate billing.
• None of the agents where able to easily comprehend my problem. In some cases they mistook the existing Virgin Mobile sim card as the new O2 sim card ("so no problem"), in other cases they saw the VM billed amount as correct for the broadband portion ("so let me place a new order for the O2 sim card"), in all cases I had to re-iterate my problem multiple times.
• It never seemed clear to the agents which team should be dealing with me; I am sure I have now spoken with every team at VM, apart from maybe TV. This was exceptionally frustrating (to understate it), and possibly also a tactic employed by the agents when they'd had enough of me.
• None of the off-shore agents understood the severity or legality of the situation. Either they couldn't understand that forming a verbal contract and then not adhering to it was illegal (in the UK), or they just didn't care. In either case it was very difficult to obtain the escalation this case required through the normal call/whatsapp/message channels.

Trying to deal with my problem through the normal front-line customer service channels resulted in no progress for literally days. This was/is absurd.

The Resolution
In my frustration I looked for other channels of communication and discovered the VM forum. I also discovered at least one other user going through exactly the same issue, which gave me hope.

After creating this thread, I was contacted via private message by Tom_W1 (a VM agent) who was an order of magnitude more useful than the agents I had been dealing with via call/whatsapp. Tom investigated and explained how Volt contracts were supposed to work. Initially he tried to fix the issue by charging me extra for the separate O2 billed portion of the Volt contract; in the first instance he did not accept my position that this would be a breach of contract.

I made it clear that I considered this to be illegal, and that VM should uphold the verbally agreed contract. Tom then escalated the issue to a manager, who was able to listen back to my initial conversation with the VM agent who orginally sold the contract.

It was agreed that the terms of the original agreement, although unusual and unintended, would be upheld. What a relief!

Tom explained that VM have no control over the cost of the O2 sim portion of the contract, and therefore can only adhere to the agreed overall cost by applying a running monthly credit to reduce the VM cost, therefore offsetting the overall cost.

I should also note that in parallel I was also making similar progress by getting through to the retentions team on the phone. It may be luck of the draw, but I ended up speaking to someone in the UK. They almost immediately understood the problem (in fact they seemed familiar with this particular issue) and took it seriously from the beginning. They, like Tom on the forum, escalated to a manager who could listen to the original call. In the end Tom got there first.

The Lessons

1. When establishing verbal contracts, very clearly repeat what you understand the agreement to be ("So it's X internet with Y sim card at £N per month for 18 months?") back to the agent. Get them to confirm any and all details as many times as you feel is necessary for the deal/agreement/contract to be completely unambiguous. 
2. Record everything: I relied on VM call recording and it worked out for me, but in hindsight it left me vulnerable. Next time I will use a call recording app to keep my own records when verbal contracts are being established. I think you have to let the agent know you're recording? (I'm not a lawyer!)
3. If it all goes wrong, expect the first layer of customer service agents to be little help. They are bound by a rigid system and understanding, so if you've ended up with a problem because you've (unintentionally) strayed outside of that system, they will not be able to comprehend it, let alone fix it.
   Your mission is to get through to the next layer as quickly as possible.
4. Use this forum or the retentions team to speak to someone in the UK, who can escalate issue effectively.
   I really do hate this stereotype, and I don't see why it has to be the case, but the agents in the UK are just much more effective.
   Maybe their training is better, or they have greater access to some systems?
5. Raise a DSAR. As pointed out above by Scurtis1, you can request all of the information which VM hold regarding you as a customer, which should include phone calls. In the end I didn't have to use this, and in fact I'm still waiting for my information (it takes weeks as far as I can tell).
   Nonetheless its a useful tip and you should raise one ASAP in case you need to rely on the contained information.

To Virgin Media
I don't believe that this will be picked up, but just in case; some feedback:

Train your agents! Not only did the lack of knowledge in your off-shore front-line customer service agents create this problem in the first place, they then exacerbated the problem by not comprehending and escalating it appropriately. This generated more work for your agents, who in turn created frustration, which spawned complaints, that had to be dealt with by yet more customer service agents. Farcical!

Whilst this matter was sorted in the end thanks to Tom_W1 and the UK retentions team, I have lost hours of my time (which is finite and implicitly valuable to everyone). This leaves a bitter taste, which will surely lead to my household switching to a FTTP provider in the future.

[EnvyTheNV]

I’ve had a similar situation to you. The entire Volt team is a mess. Offshore call staff promising deals and then making a mess of things is a nightmare. Thankfully, my calls were also recorded and the correct price was honoured. 
I fully agree with Ben, the staff need training because there is a whole lot of incorrect information being provided and continuous chaos. 

[goslow]

Excellent explanation and description of how you dealt with the issue, bencowp. Top marks for persisting with it to the resolution that you wanted. Your post will be very useful for anyone else who ends up in the same situation. And credit to Tom_W1 too for assisting in the process!

[Andrew-G]

Although there was "Initially he tried to fix the issue by charging me extra for the separate O2 billed portion of the Volt contract; in the first instance he did not accept my position that this would be a breach of contract."  I've previously pulled up forum staff who don't understand that information provided by a company verbally or written is binding if the consumer relies upon it when entering a contract (Consumer Rights Act 2015), and it's disappointing that customer facing staff either don't understand the basics.  I'd also highlight that it is another instance of a formal complaint being fobbed off.

@bencowp got the deal they agreed only through their understanding of consumer law, and their persistence.  It shouldn't need that.

[goslow]

No argument here on those points but the quality of response from any VM employee will only be as good as the training they have received. Conclusion: better staff training required a) in the products being sold and b) on matters of consumer law.

In this case, bencowp's query via the forum could have easily been filed into the electronic dustbin of the VM CS system or referred back to telephone CS (passing the buck) but instead it was referred upwards which helped in the outcome for bencowp.