Not happy with the new situation

[Whiteshark]

having been a Telewest, then Blueyonder, then Virgin customer, I’ve been with them for years. Recently, when trying to renegotiate our prices my wife was offered a bundle which included a sim from o2. She was told it didn’t need to be used, and was free , but some of our bill (£25) would now be paid to o2. Thinking about it, we realised this was crazy as I’m already with another company for my mobile and she doesn’t use one. We cancelled the o2 contract within two days of receiving the sim, and received an email from them confirming the cancellation three days later (26/6). Then on 7/7 the £25 was taken from our account. Called o2 and was told I’d need to call back on 22/7 to have it refunded. Have just received an email from o2 saying they’re billing me £407.12 for ending the contract. Can’t get any sense from them and have cancelled their direct debit. Is anyone else in a similar position?

[Omadawn · Accepted solution]

It does strike me that this is a textbook case of ‘mis-selling’, on VM’s sorry excuse for a customer service provision, which is actually a criminal offence - promised a ‘free’ O2 sim which turned out to be nothing of the sort?

I suggest you hang on for a member of the forum team to get to this thread, offer to contact you by direct message and sort this out. Of course if they don’t, then do post back on here after a couple of days and some of us will be able to advise you as to how to raise an official complaint, escalate to the Ombudsman service and even, in extremis, launch legal action against VM.

[Daniel_Et]

Hi @Whiteshark, thank you for your post and welcome to the Virgin Media Community.

We're really sorry to hear about what's happened 😔

In order to look into this for you further, we'll send you a private message on here. 

Look out for the envelope in the top right-hand corner. If you're on a portable device with a smaller screen, click on the icon in the top right-hand corner and select "messages" from the additional menu options.

Regards,
Daniel

[Ianl51]

Daniel, 17 months ago I was told that I had to be moved from a free virgin sim to O2 and I would be paying £25 to O2 same as Whiteshark. I have just renewed today but everywhere I read it says the sim is free as part of the ultimate package ?

I’m also confused

[newapollo]

The O2 sim is £25 a month on the Ultimate Volt package

[Daniel_Et]

Hi @Ianl51 👋 Thank you for your post and welcome to the Virgin Media Community 😀

As advised by @newapollo, the O2 SIM card is £25 a month on the Ultimate Volt package.

If you have any further queries, please don't hesitate to contact us. 

Regards,
Daniel

[Ianl51]

thanks, it’s very confusing. Actually it’s more than £25 after this years increase and I wish the media price was £60 as newapollo.

[newapollo]

Hi again Ian,

Yeah, so do I but that's the introductory pricing for new customers.

The out of contract media  price as shown in the screenshot is £136.

You could speak to O2 and change the unlimited sim  to a lower data allowance to help reduce the cost further.

I'm on Ultimate Volt but dropped the sim to 50GB (which doubled to 100GB) That was £18pm but increased  to £21.10 in April. 

[japitts]

The flip-side of this, is that VM offer multibuy discounts that often more than offset the cost of the additional service - this tends to apply to fixed & mobile telephony,

What you do with the "free" SIM is then upto you. If you're happy with your service from another operator, then there's no compulsion to use O2.

[Omadawn]

All true and above board, well except there have been more than a few posts on here from people claiming that they have been offered a ‘free’ SIM if they sign up for xyz package for £xyz.

Only later do they find out that the ‘free’ SIM actually is an extra £25 over and above what they have been quoted and what they have been led to believe is the total price.

Now, of course, it is possible that every single poster claiming this simply misunderstood the (mandated) clearly given prices, or possibly something else is happening. Can’t help but wonder what the Advertising Standards Agency might make of it, were they to receive a number of complaints?