Virgin Media Community

[irishrichy]

I have been a Virgin customer continuously since 2011 in my current apartment.

I have just sold the apartment and moved overseas, and have spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to cancel the contract.
When I phone the number listed on the website, it tells me their call centre is closed and directs me  to visit a webpage. That webpage tells me to call them on the same number I'd just called.

So obviously I'm getting nowhere there.

Emails are getting bounced back as "The mailbox is full".

So, taking advice from another thread here, I texted them on 07533 051809

I have sent literally hundreds of texts in the past week. I keep getting asked the same questions, my name, account number, . Keep being told they can't help me but "We've transferred you to the right team now". I have spoken to nine different people on this chat. Often times, there has been a delay in getting a response for days at a time.

I am now under the firm belief that there is nobody on this chat who can cancel my contract, and they are deliberately stalling to keep me as a customer. I cannot see how this is any more difficult than changing a setting on their system. It took me about 30 seconds to cancel with my electricity supplier.

I have spent hours and hours on this, and it's been incredibly stressful.
I've already cancelled my direct debit, and have officially launched a complaint with Ofcom. But I still want to close my account officially, so it's all tidied up and I can move on. What can be done? I will quite happily launch a small claims court proceeding against them if it means getting a resolution.

[gary_dexter]

Ofcom don’t take complaints and a small claims court will laugh you out the door. 

Calling the number and speaking to the retentions/thinking of leaving team is the way to give your 30 days notice to cancel. 

[irishrichy]

I have tried calling that number more times than I can count, and each time, I get a message saying that due to Covid19, their call centres are unable to take calls, and I have to visit the website, which of course, tells me to call them. So it's an endless circle.

[jbrennand]

Lots of people are still getting through - its luck of the draw - be persistent.

Calling in at 08.00 sharp is usually the best time. Go to “Retentions” on 150 or 0345 454 1111 - options 1-1-4-4 "Thinking of leaving" when you have the best chance of getting through to the only still open (UK) call centre. They are the people who can help you.

[irishrichy]

I keep just getting through to an automated message. Are you suggesting that this message only comes on when the lines are overloaded, and there's a chance it would connect me to a person?

[jbrennand]

I have just tested it exactly as per my previous note...
Options 1,1,4,4 then another 4 - then 3 characters from my password, then waited until the annoying music comes on.... saying "it could be some time until you are connected"
I waited a minute then hung up.
People are reporting getting through.. so my assumption is that a UK person will pick up the call when they get to it.
Although I also suspect that there is a 1hr auto-cut-off time in place - so you may have to try different times.    Did you wait an hour ?

[kerrymehome]

Yes! And we were good customers for so many years. It is listed in my father's name, and he died in 2017 but my mother never substituted Her name, she is 94. She sold the house and moved to America without closing the account. My brother and I spent a day talking to a succession of customer service people and thought we had closed it out finally, with the only sting being an 80pound penalty if the new owners did not mail the old tivo box back to them. That was in December. Now in late January It seems the new owners cannot get their own broadband hooked up to their own company because Virgin Media has not and will not budge! They say it is because they need my dead father to talk to them first. I am going round and round the website while I hang on to the phone line circling each inane juncture before getting dropped.There is no human, no online box, apparently, who can sort this. No off ramp in these ghastly rounds. I put my question: How to cancel Virgin Media from overseas, and then went through over a hundred of their helpful guesses at my meaning. Of course CANCEL ACCOUNT meant signing on to a new bundle, or needing technical help with my internet, AI has come a long way in logical inference, one gathers. I am a money pit, is my inference. How can I get severance from this parasitical monster?

[gary_dexter]

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@kerrymehome wrote:

Yes! And we were good customers for so many years. It is listed in my father's name, and he died in 2017 but my mother never substituted Her name, she is 94. She sold the house and moved to America without closing the account. My brother and I spent a day talking to a succession of customer service people and thought we had closed it out finally, with the only sting being an 80pound penalty if the new owners did not mail the old tivo box back to them. That was in December. Now in late January It seems the new owners cannot get their own broadband hooked up to their own company because Virgin Media has not and will not budge! They say it is because they need my dead father to talk to them first. I am going round and round the website while I hang on to the phone line circling each inane juncture before getting dropped.There is no human, no online box, apparently, who can sort this. No off ramp in these ghastly rounds. I put my question: How to cancel Virgin Media from overseas, and then went through over a hundred of their helpful guesses at my meaning. Of course CANCEL ACCOUNT meant signing on to a new bundle, or needing technical help with my internet, AI has come a long way in logical inference, one gathers. I am a money pit, is my inference. How can I get severance from this parasitical monster?

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Phone and speak to the retentions team

[kerrymehome]

I am advised by John to call the Virgin Media customer service number at 8AM, -2AM from Mississippi. Is that a possible way to get a manager? Could I email the empowered representative my father's 2017 death certificate, also the part of his will where he leaves everything to my mother? He is still listed as account holder.

We resisted so many overtures by BT and others to cut our media bill in half, only to have this tick of a company hanging on from overseas! Where we cannot turn them off, despite a whole day in the attempt, weeks ago, talking to 3 sympathetic but apparently ineffective reps.I hear from the new occupants of our house that they cannot get their own media company in. Ours is a zombie, that cannot be killed, a pest on both sides of the atlantic!

[kerrymehome]

Irishritchy Exactly! You are so much more succinct than I am, Bless you,

(from Kerrymehome)