I'm leaving VM after 34 years!

If you have written to cancel and used recorded delivery, you services should stop within a month of your last payment. I've done a previous cancellation by letter, recorded delivery, and it was processed as expected.

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Dissatisfied991 wrote:

You were incredibly lucky to actually speak to someone. I’ve had more luck with the National Lottery. I’ve rang over 20 times now and nothing. The chatbot leads to a dead end and no response to my written request to cancel

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Every time I Have rung using the telephone number (not the 150 number) its been answered. Its free from mobiles with unlimited minutes as well. Number is: 0345 454 1111

Call the landline full number, go though to the LEAVING VIRGIN option not customer service. When they start to babble deals that don't interest you, say you aren't interested in 18 month contracts that have 2 legal price increases with no free escape clauses and to cancel services. They admit defeat as they don't want to agree outside of 18 month contracts. It's a dead end for them totally.

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John2021 wrote:

Sad , if I could leave I will , just found out that open reach will be installing soon , so that will give me chance to move as soon as my contract is up , also after many years with Virgin ,ntl before and diamond cable before that, all taken over .

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FTTC (if you have in your area) can be done on monthly contract with NOW TV if you think FTTP is this year for example. OK you have to pay for the kit upfront, but stops you being tied into an 18 month contract with Virgin. Hopefully the line speed will not be too slow and you can slum it for 3 months before VM class you as a total new customer again. You can then rejoin with all new customer offers and cashback if you really wanted to if Openreach FTTP status is far away. Or a 4g/5g dongle if speeds good enough in the back of a compatible router.

Weirdly I had a flurry of FTTP flyers about 16 months ago (including from Sky and even Openreach themselves). Since then... nothing. It seems the whole of the rest of the estate is done though. OR eligibility says December 26.

It's not the money / cost, I've always paid for the best. It's the service when anything goes wrong.  I can find informaruon about most things here, except anything that actually helps. That only the first hurdle. Getting through to a person is the next, and when you do all you're told is to turn of an on again. Staff are always very polite, but I now find that simply condescending. Every episode starts with a humble apology, and then a marathon in trying to get things fixed. You can't speak to anyone that actually helps, and NEVER let them promise to call you back...IT JUST WONT HAPPEN!

I'm going to be reckless and move to anyone that gets better customer service ratings.

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linny40 wrote:

problem is its not easy moving from VM as it would mean losing all our email addresses, which we have had for 30 years + if i could completely move from VM with the same ntl email addresses i would. But over the years so many people have them and its a pain to try and start a new email address with all the accounts we now have online for banks CC's online shopping etc etc. so if we have old email addresses we are Stuck. I have both Ntl & virgin email addresses. Plus i did also have 2 accounts. I set of 10 email addresses under the origional dial up, then when we went to broadband i had to set up another account and had 10 email addresses then, so I lost a few non important ones that i used to use for junk-type email. But now we cant even change our email address with VM. They really do not seem to look after their customers like they used to!!!

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You are presented with a simple choice. Bite the bullet and start the process of migrating your email accounts or be stuck with VM indefinitely (with all its faults and problems) for your email and online services.

You have made numerous recent posts about various issues you have with VM and you have queries about email issues going back to last year from your posting history. Time invested in dealing with those problems could have been spent on migrating your email accounts elsewhere.

The harsh reality is that VM's email service is not going to get any better. If anything, there is regular ongoing speculation on the forums that the service is likely to cease in due course or be sold off to a third party.

New customers cannot create VM email addresses and existing customers cannot add new ones. VM is forcing customers to provide a third party email address during password reset procedures. These facts alone suggest the direction of travel. Whether it comes sooner or later who knows.

The process of migrating accounts can be time-consuming but is not an impossible one. I ditched my NTLworld addresses 10+ years ago and they would have been 10+ years old at that time and linked to lots of contacts and services.

I set up a service with a new provider and then began the process of migrating accounts. I started with the most important ones first (banking, main online shopping accounts, telecoms accounts, utilities etc.) and then gradually worked my way through to the less important ones. I kept the NTLworld accounts going for over a year to catch any annual renewals for insurance policies etc. Tackling the job in stages, and in batches, makes it manageable.

If VM really is going to close its email servers/services, or sell them, off I'd suggest it would be better to do any email migration well in advance and on your own timescale rather than having to get the whole job done on a timescale imposed on you by VM.

Email addresses.

1. Set up new email on Gmail or similar.

2. On your Virgin email set up an automatic reply for all emails to say you are moving your email and please use this new email address in future.

3. Forward all email to the new address.

This will keep working until your email is deactivated sometime in the future.

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Madswitcher wrote:

I am also going through the process of trying to cancel my contract

I actually managed to get through to a live person and gave my reasons - too expensive for what it is, crappy support, having ongoing technical techinal problems etc. - they want to charge me £600 to terminate the contract.  Absolutely disgusting business methods. 

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Early disconnection fees are common with most providers in the minimum term period.

What have you done to try to address, with VM, the problems you have faced?

If VM is failing to provide the service, as advertised, then you may have a (slow and convoluted) route out via the VM complaints process and escalation to arbitration.