Misleading Renewal Process for Existing Customers
On 21st February 2024 I was looking to renew my contract with Virgin Media and found a handy Contract Renewal Offer button in my customer account. I clicked on that and was offered £83/month renewal price. I then called Virgin Media to check if there were any better packages on offer to which there was not, although the agent did offer to apply another £5 discount to my online order once it had gone through. So whilst on the phone with the agent, I renewed online through my personal account and received an order confirmation (CH2061184317). All done, or so I’d thought. The order wasn’t processed. Instead, Virgin Media charged me full price of £162.50/month. I renewed very close to my contract end date, so was not expecting my next invoice to be updated to my new contract price, but when the following invoice came along and it was still £162.50, I called Virgin Media to ask why my order had not been processed. It was then that they said they had no record of it (even after giving them the order number) and that it was only for new customers anyway. So why are they offering it to me? Why are Virgin Media offering contracts for new customers through the renewal process found in existing customers’ personal accounts, making them believe (via email confirmation) that they’d renewed but were instead being charged full price unbeknown to them? I received an apology, but did not receive a course of action to make sure this doesn’t happen again and no offer of credit for the period of time where I was deceived into paying full price.
Now this is not a new issue. It has been going on for several months now. See link below for another customer with the same complaint August 2023
This leads me to believe that Virgin Media are happy for this deception to continue and offer no refunds when it does.
I currently have a complaint running (Ref C-050424810) with the Resolution Team, but I believe they have zero functionality when it comes to correcting the online process so that existing customers aren’t offered bogus contracts and no authority to offer credit. They can only adhere to the script that’s written down for them, but this problem goes beyond that.
