Dear John, Ryan and rest of VM team,
After taking this offline into personal messages and after days of continuing to ask me to provide Virgin Media with personal data so you could 'assist' I am updating this thread for all to read and for all to see how hopeless Virgin Media has been in dealing with this most basic query. I am DISGUSTED. What on earth was Virgin Media doing taking so much personal data from me that it DID NOT NEED IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM to answer this query and to finally give me a response of "look at your online account, we only hold 12 months". Now a matter for your Data Commissioner and the ICO. Anyone else out there that has had Virgin Media take unnecessary data from them and has not been able to obtain previous bill information - you may like to try these steps.
1) submit a SAR (subject access request) to its Data Commissioner (every organisation has to legally appoint one) and request VM to provide you with all records (including bills and call details) that it holds for you with a from and to date - and this can be for more than the last 12 months. Whilst VM may want to lead its customers into thinking that it is only obliged to retain phone records for 12 months IT IS NOT. It may choose to only display bill/phone records online for 12 months but it will retain earlier information offline. IT HAS TO.
2) Report Virgin media to the ICO (Information Commissioners Office) if it does not respond to your SAR and give you want is needed. It is obliged to and the ICO can enforce that it does.
3) Report Virgin media to the ICO (Information Commissioners Office) if it has unnecessarily collected personal data from you that it did not need.