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planning/thinking of leaving... does this sound right?

Sneakyben
On our wavelength

Hi there everyone,

I just wanted to run these plans/thoughts by everyone to if we have missed any costs etc that are involved with leaving.

Situation:
For at least 6 months our VMedia M200 had been having intermittent connection drops that made working from home hard. Prior to this it was fantastic. In December we had an engineer out and they said they had fixed a problem in the street... The problems persisted...
In January another engineer came out and replaced the Hub 3 router... The problems persisted...

So, as we decided to replace our contract with a new one, the 1Gig package, as we felt the problems might be fixed with 'Moar Speeeeed' ... 

This New Contract (thus a new 14 cooling off/cancellation period) started Friday 3rd Feb 2023...

So far we have had 2 service outages (both confirmed to be external-to-house issues by virgin tech supp via phone call)... so we are THINKING about leaving... and today I called Virgin to find out what would happen if I did...

The kind person on the call explained the following:

"You can announce cancelation up to 16th Feb"
"on this date, this will start a final 30 days period, and your services will stop on 15th Mar"
"You will be charged for your usage, but there would be no extra cancellation costs'
"I cannot tell you will be charged on leaving until you have said 'yes' to cancellation'

So, I am assuming the charges IF we cancel are:

any old contract usage billing from Jan/Feb
any new contact usage billing from Feb/March
the £35 one-off charge for the new contract...
and nothing else (?)

and then after its all turned off on 15th March we send back all the old kit in the box provided that came with the new router for the new contract

Should we chose to leave, this course of events would suit us just fine until we would have new internet installed (patchy overpriced temporary internet is better than no internet)

Is there anything strange or unusual with this situation, or how you think I am understanding it?

 

22 REPLIES 22

Akua_A
Forum Team
Forum Team

Hi Sneakyben,

Welcome back to our community forums and sorry to hear you are thinking of leaving our service. We can understand the inconvenience caused and we want to do our best to help. If you are leaving during your cooling off period, you may not be entitled to Early disconnection fees as seen here https://www.virginmedia.com/legal/fibre-optic-services-terms-conditions and here virg.in/EDF . To best explain the final bill, please try the following link https://my.virginmedia.com/discover/welcome/your-bill/intro.h#:~:text=Bill%20date-,Upfront%20top%20a... 

Is there anything else you may need help with?

Thanks,

Akua_A
Forum Team

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Sneakyben
On our wavelength

so my assumption that only what i listed is what i am due to pay is correct?

(the t+cs you posted clearly say:
If you have ordered the services online, by telephone or from an agent attending at your home, and have entered into a new contract, you have the right to cancel those services within your 14 day cooling off period. You can cancel immediately during this time without having to pay an early disconnection fee.)

ALso, "If you are leaving during your cooling off period, you may not be entitled to Early disconnection fees" is a really weird way to word that sentence... 
do you mean "If you are leaving during your cooling off period, you will be entitled to the Early disconnection fees not being charged"?


@Sneakyben wrote:

so my assumption that only what i listed is what i am due to pay is correct?

(the t+cs you posted clearly say:
If you have ordered the services online, by telephone or from an agent attending at your home, and have entered into a new contract, you have the right to cancel those services within your 14 day cooling off period. You can cancel immediately during this time without having to pay an early disconnection fee.)

ALso, "If you are leaving during your cooling off period, you may not be entitled to Early disconnection fees" is a really weird way to word that sentence... 
do you mean "If you are leaving during your cooling off period, you will be entitled to the Early disconnection fees not being charged"?


Yes it is all very badly worded.

In your case the important thing is this, if you exercise your right under the 14 day cooling off period within the next couple of days, then you revert back to whatever contract terms you were on before upgrading - incidentally, upgrading in an attempt to 'fix' an existing issue, never, ever works!

What was the status of your prior contract, were you outside of the minimum 18 month period and hence paying the full costs?

If you were safely outside of the 18 month minimum period then what you could do is immediately call VM and request to revert back to it now, citing the 14 day cooling off period. When that is all sorted, then call them again and give them the required 30 day notice that you want to cancel and make arrangements for an alternate provider - you need to carry on paying for the 30 days (plus sometimes a little more depending on the billing cycle dates, but that gets refunded), but after that it's done, no EDF.

On the other hand, if you still had some months left on the minimum period, then you do the same as above but would be liable to pay the EDF.

However, if you don't cancel the upgrade before the end of the 14 days, then that will start a new 18 month minimum term and if you then want to leave, you'll get hit with the full EDF costs of £288.

Sneakyben
On our wavelength

Hi, jem101

Thank you for your reply, it was really helpful and useful to read!

"In your case the important thing is this, if you exercise your right under the 14 day cooling off period within the next couple of days, then you revert back to whatever contract terms you were on before upgrading"

Please could you tell us where this is the Ts and Cs this is, because we can't find it, and the Virgin people we have spoken to have never mentioned it...

Our old contract for the M200 was due to expire in June 2023... if we get hit with an EDC of £250-ish that is a PITA but nevermind (divided over the next year whatever we might replace virgin with + that cost is still going to be a saving and better service hopefully)

(Incidentally, we disagree with your "upgrading in an attempt to 'fix' an existing issue, never, ever works!" because for us it kind of has 🙂 ...
with the old Hub 3 router we had for M200 didn't appear able to cope consistently anymore AND we had local network issues, where as the new Hub 5 we appear to only be having local network issues [yay?].. We are not sure why no-one at virgin suggested this as an option, whereas our trounleshooting investigations for our situation suggested this as definitely something to try 🙂 )

 

goslow
Alessandro Volta

@Sneakyben wrote:

<snip>Please could you tell us where this is the Ts and Cs this is, because we can't find it, and the Virgin people we have spoken to have never mentioned it...
<snip>


Section M para 8 in current T&Cs

https://prod.ctassets.virginmedia.com/uploads/Terms_and_Conditions_TV_Fibre_and_Phone_POST_01_NOV_22...

newapollo
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Hi @Sneakyben 

It's possible that the hub 3 was faulty, or was struggling to cope with your wifi coverage . The hub 5 is a newer hub with a better radio coverage for wifi signals, so that may result in fewer dropouts.. However if there is a problem with the VM wiring wiring or signals then upgrading to a higher speed wouldn't solve the overall reason for the problems, in fact a higher speed can often result in more problems as the hub struggels more to lock onto the connection.

If you do cancel the new Gig1 package and revert back to your former M200 speed then at present you would still be liable to the early termination fees

However VM are currently sending out letters/emails regarding an annual price rise which is due to come into effect on April 1st  for some customers, and May 1st for others. It's being phased out over 2 months so as not to overburden the phone lines too much.

If you receive a letter/email advising you are going to be affected by the annual price rise, then providing you contact VM within 30 days of receiving that correspondence, you can cancel without any early termination fees.

Dave
I don't work for Virgin Media.
I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge.
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Anonymous
Not applicable

I think it's arguable that s 49 (1) of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 comes into play here re VM's failure to demonstrate reasonable care and skill in addressing your poor and unreliable connection for the past 6 months or so re the early disconnection fee.

Maybe speak to Citizens Advice 

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/49/enacted

Hi @Sneakyben thanks for your reply here.

It looks like @goslow has kindly provided the help regarding the pointer to where this is in our T+C's, but if you do need any further help following this information then please don't hesitate to let us know!
Many thanks

Tom_W

spell
Knows their stuff

Apart from anything else I suggest any contact by phone is recorded by you - there are good free apps available. It worked for me as a means to evidence lies when VM attempted a fraud.