Virgin media have misled me

[rhysdb]

I recently completed a move with virgin media. When doing so, it was explained to me that my account would be paused during the period between tenancies and would be reactivated when I moved into my property on the 4th of July. It was not explained to me by the support team that a new account would be created and my customer reference number would be changed. A date was scheduled for the 5th of July for an engineer to install services at the property, however, I was no longer in possession of the virgin media hub and had to request a new one. When reaching out to the support team on this matter I explained to staff that I no longer had the hub and needed a new one as this was my only issue and that I had recently competed a move. However, support stated that my account had been closed, not simply paused as I had been told previously. The worker then told me that I needed to set up a new account for services to be established at the property. However, the member of staff failed to notify me that a separate account would have been already created when I completed the move.

May I reiterate that I was never made aware of the existence of this second account as I was told that my original account would be paused and then reactivated. The support staff then led me to create a third account and subsequently another contract.

I feel that I have been severely misled by virgin media as I now have two active contracts for the exact same package at the exact same property, especially considering that I do not even have WiFi at the property.

I wish to highlight that an engineer never attended the property on the 5th of July and thus still have no access to WiFi and have since been billed.

I feel betrayed by the awful service I have received after 1 year of loyalty to virgin media. Virgin have now taken action by closing the second account creating during the request to move in a months time, however, I have already been billed from this account despite not being connected to services as an engineer never attended the property. 

[jem101]

As far as I am aware, there has NEVER been an option to 'pause' an account. Now I can't even begin to imagine why the customer services person would have told you that (well actually I have a fair idea), because when moving house, the arrangement has always been this;

The contract is for supply of services to a particular property, NOT to a person - so if you move then the old account has to be closed down and a new one started at the new address.

If you are still within the original 18 month period, then what should happen (doesn't always I'm afraid), is that the old contract is closed, a new one for the new address started up with a new minimum 18 month period, BUT this new contract is manually adjusted to take account of how much longer you had to run on the original one, ie if you were 12 months in then the new contract has a minimum period of 6 months etc.

But this implies that the new contract starts immediately, you always have the option to simply close the old one, pay off any early disconnection fees and then start a new one at the new property whenever you want.

I'm afraid that the advice you were originally given was absolutely wrong in every way!

The engineer not turning up, this this does happen and you are entitled to compensation of £5.25 for each day past the original installation date, and just to add insult to injury, there is a non-zero chance that VM will bill you for not returning the original hub!

This all sounds like a mess of biblical proportions, if you hang on a member of the forum team will get to this thread, (maybe a day or so), offer to contact you and see if they can't sort it out - you will have far more chance of them doing it than the normal customer services.

John

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @rhysdb,

Welcome to our Community Forums! Thank you for your first post and I'm sorry to hear that this has been your experience with your house move! I can understand how frustrating this must have been and I'm sorry that this happened.

As advised by @jem101, our systems keep track of the particular property, not the person taking out the account. I understand that this issue happened as you were incorrectly advised by an agent and a secondary account was set up incorrectly. I'm glad to hear that you have been able to have this secondary account closed as it was opened in error. I'll be more than happy to investigate further and see what we can do to help.

I will send you a Private Message, so please keep an eye out for a purple envelope at the top right corner of your Forum page. I will be in touch soon.

Thank you.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @rhysdb,

Thank you for coming back to me via Private Message! I'm glad to hear that I've been able to help resolve your issue and that your services are back up and running! 🙂

If there's anything else we can do to help, please let us know. We're here to help.

Thank you!