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

[Sneakyben]

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?

[Andrew-G]

Looking at all of the posts in this thread, it's clear on two things:

1) Forum staff haven't taken the opportunity to own the problem and fix it

2) There's some good and varied advice from the community.

I think I'd go with jem101's suggestion, if that works: Cancel the upgrade (to add to his view, I agree speed upgrades NEVER solve connection quality problems), then serve 30 days notice of cancellation. 

Find yourself a new ISP.  Large ISPs like Sky, BT group, Vodafone are fine if you want a good new customer discount rather than decent customer service, if you want decent customer service than consider smaller ISPs like uno, IDNet, Aquiss, AAISP and CIX.  I'm with Aquiss now because this time last year my VM connection had the sort of crappy quality you describe, and customer service was pants.  With most of the smaller ISPs you'll need to provide your own router or mesh wif system, so allow for that in your calculations.

[jem101]

---

@Sneakyben

(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 🙂 )

---

Sorry but no, if there is a systemic connectivity issue, then upgrading does absolutely nothing - and if I’m wrong, then I welcome any member of the forum team (VM employees) to wade in and dispute this, <tumbleweed>. As part of your ‘upgrade’, you got a new hub, no? Could it be that what fixed it was you paying out more money so they can replace a faulty device which they should have done for no cost anyway?

John

[Sneakyben]

we cancelled the new 1gb contract within the 14 days... because the speeds were not as advertised (typically 500ish)

and they put us back on a rolling contract NOT the old old fixed term

[Zach_R]

Hi @Sneakyben,

Thank you for the update on this situation. I'm sorry to hear that you weren't getting the speeds you were looking for with a package change and have now changed back.
 

Please let us know if there's anything more that we can assist you with at all.

Thanks,
 

[Sneakyben]

even 'funnier' story

I have clear whatsapp evidence that what I signed up for was a 30 day rolling contract... but when the documentation came through it said 18months fixed... so now I am having to go back and get that fixed

so

so

so

so

fed

up 

with

virgin

[Kain_W]

Apologies for the issues faced Sneakyben,

Just to clarify can I ask, were you out of contract previously on in a fixed term? 

As the message prior to this one states the team placed you on a rolling 30 day?

Regards,

[Sneakyben]

Hi Kain_W,

to explain the whole story so far:

i was on a contract due to finish in june 2023 (for M250, mixit, phone)... but even after 2 engineer visits, our connection was getting steadily worse with no obvious way to get it sorted...

we upgraded (to 1Gig, mixit, phone)... new contract for 18months (june 2024)... but then decided we wanted this CANCELLED within the allowed 14 days (as legally/contractually allowed, because the connection was dropping out too many times... less problems, but confirmed by virgin phone tech sup that local external issues were causing poor local network)

started a whatsapp chat this morning to execute the cancellation of the upgrade...

as per Section M para 8 in current T&Cs I expected to be reverted to old contract due to finish in june 2023 (for M250, mixit, phone)

instead, offered M250, mixit, phone 30 days rolling... i asked specifically if this meant i could "give 30 days notice cancel my virgin services at anytime"
was told "since you are in a 30 days rolling you are not tide [sp] to any contract", so thus took this new contract
(it sounds like the old contract was shut in such a way that it couldn't be restarted... a virgin problem, not a me problem)

I asked to receive written confirmation (for M250, mixit, phone, 30 days rolling)... was told would be with me in 24 hours by email

email arrived... it did not state 30 days rolling, it said 18months fixed (i.e. in direct contradiction of the contract i had actually been offered, and agreed to)

I started another whatsapp chat to correct the contract documentation to what was agreed

eventually the operator agreed to email me within 24 hours (again) with corrected documentation

so here we are, waiting for the agreed documentation, expecting to have to do this all again if it is wrong

[Paul_DN]

Hi Sneakyben,

Thank you for reaching out to us in our community and welcome back, sorry to see your request to revert back to your previous contract didn't happen and that the information around your 30 days rolling contr4act haven't been sent.

I was able to locate you on our system with the details we have for you and can see you have spoken to us, it can take a little while, up to 72 hours for any changes to be added, if you do not receive anything in the next few days I will be happy to help further, I will send you an invite into a private chat, once received if needed please click on the purple envelope to start 

Regards

Paul.

[Sneakyben]

Hi, all I want is formal proof that contract is 30 days rolling, as I have this all written in WhatsApp chats... There are clearly notes on the contract that say this, but I keep getting sent the wrong contract info... If anyone can send me the info confirmation of 30 months rolling that would be great 

[Sneakyben]

was promised a reply in 72 hours... haven't had a resolution in 100+ hours now

Was in DM-chat with " Paul_DN" ... but no replies (transcript is below)

also, I followed up with the official complaint email to find out what was going on... but no replies

previous thread on this forum:
https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Managing-Your-Account-Cable/planning-thinking-of-leaving-does-t...

PLEASE can someone reply and tell me what is going on?

...

DMs: (with private info redacted)

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

Thank you Ben, I can confirm the notes on the account show that the agent has requested for the rolling contract to be added and the current 18 Months on to be removed, as advised this can take up to 72 hours to change once requested, if you don't receive any confirmation by the end of the week I...

Expand full mess

Sneakyben

yesterday

Hello, the contract on myvirginmedia is still showing the in correct 18 months not the correct rolling... I got an email on the 16th as shown below, I guess this is part of the correction in progress, but I never spoke to anyone on the 16th and still no new correct documentation has been sent to me...

When will I get the correct documentation? (I will also be following up the complaint email to ask this question)

Customer account number: 789#####
Complaint reference: C-14022#####




Hello Ben Armstrong,





Thanks so much for the chat on 16/02/2023. We’re very happy to be able to resolve things for you.






Here’s a quick recap






Your complaint was:
Cable -> My Contract/Package -> My contract price/length is incorrect






And here’s what we agreed:
Package -> Package correction"

Sneakyben

yesterday

Should say 'Hello, the contract on myvirginmedia is still showing the incorrect 18 months not the correct rolling... '