To think Virgin media are utter bastards!

[Buddah101]

We have been with virgin media since last september in a 12 month contract, only having the phoneline and broadband with them, the internet in our area has been awful so we've always thought come the contract ending we would be leaving them.

Around the beginning of june we had a phone call from virgin, asking how our internet was as we had called so many times regarding it not working, on that phone call dp was asked how we were getting on with it and would he like them to bump up the speed of of our internet to see if that would resolve any problems - so he said yes, and actually wondered why we weren't on a better speed in the first place.

Queue us calling yesterday to give our 30 day notice only to find out that by him saying yes to faster speed we have verbally agreed to a new contract which now runs out next June. They are saying they also sent out a contract which we never recieved and believe me if we had wouldn't have got this far!

Now for the past 3 years dp has been recovering from a breakdown, he still suffers from depression & anxiety, he is not in a position to sign any contract or agree to anything. he is On medication daily and needs to be supervised when on them - not the behaviour of someone sound of mind. put together with yesterday his father went into a hospice so he is even more stressed than usual and this has caused him to be awake all night. The lady on the phone was so awful yesterday, talking over him and shouting at him - he doesnt get angry or raise his voice but he ended up crying and she still carried on regardless talking over him, saying on repeat i will not disconnect you until you have paid your contract off.

I feel they are utter bastards! weve put a complaint in but im asking for help is there anything else we can do, we really dont need this right now. It might not be much to any of you but right now this is the straw that broke the camels back.

Go and see Citizens Advice.

They are awful to deal with.

DH signed us up with them, and he gave the notice at the end when we wanted to leave.

He then went away for three months with work, while I stayed at home and had Virgin Media call the landline two or three times a day, every day, asking for DH.

They would not accept that he was away and would not be home for weeks.

They would not speak to me, as DH was the name on the contract, and "Data Protection Act" meant I wasn't allowed to know what they were ringing for.

I said I knew what they were ringing for, he'd ended the contract and they wanted him to continue with it.

They denied it.

When I said he had given permission for me to speak to them they asked me for a password. When I gave it to them, they lied and said that was the wrong one.

When I confirmed it with DH, during one of our limited calls together, he confirmed it was the right one.

When I gave them it again, they lied again.

They refused to stop calling. They said that I could not tell them to stop calling for DH because they owned the landline so they could call it if they wanted, and he was their customer so he had to tell them to stop calling him.

I kept asking them what the point was, in ringing me two or three times a day just to tell me they weren't going to speak to me.

Eventually one really rude woman said that if DH was really working away, she would ring his mobile phone and speak to him.

I told her good luck with that, as he was working in a bloody war zone and even I wasn't able to ring him when I wanted to.

She said she'd do it anyway, and read out his mobile number to prove it to me.

It turns out they had his old mobile number, so I told her he had a new one.

She asked me what his new number was. I said "Data protection act says I can't tell you that" and she put the phone down on me.

It took complaining publicly on Facebook to get the daily calls to stop. They are aggressive salespeople who don't give one tiny shit about their customers or the stress they cause to people. They want money and once they have it they don't care how they keep it.

Bloody hell. Make sky seem positively saintly! I, too, was tempted by them-definitely not now!!

OFCOM sorted out an issue I had with another ISP who were being bastards. Very much recommend.

Haggisfish don't do it. Once we were out of the offer period they put the price up every single month. We had TV, landline and broadband with them.

We had the first six months at a special offer price, then the last six months of the contract were at full price.

Fair enough, but in those last six months they also kept adding extras to the bill so it went up by £3 - £4 per month every month as well. These were for our benefit apparently, and not something we could refuse to have. They would send a letter, we've improved this so we're charging you that now.

By the time we left them we were paying about £70 per month, so about £20 more each month than we ever thought we'd be paying.

I think we'd started on about £35 per month and expected it to go up to about £50, so it was really expensive to find ourselves paying £70 and more for a service that wasn't great.

Just something I would like to mention here. Whilst I sympathise with your situation I have worked in a similar environment/ company. Verbal contracts are legally binding. Regardless of your husbands state of mind, it sounds like he verbally agreed to the contract. If you don't see your husband fit enough to have such conversations then don't allow him to enter into such conversations / decision making on the phone. Everyone wonders why service charges for gas, electric, Sky, virgin, etc etc why they have to increase their service charges year after year... well that's because they have to employ thousands of people, to spend thousands of hours to deal with thousands of people like you who thoughtlessly agree to terms & conditions then forget / want out/ say you didn't ( when you actually did ) when you decide it no longer suits you. Just saying!!!

well that's because they have to employ thousands of people, to spend thousands of hours to deal with thousands of people like you who thoughtlessly agree to terms & conditions then forget / want out/ say you didn't ( when you actually did ) when you decide it no longer suits you. Just saying!!!

Just a little bit harsh Lou

Bumping because I absolutely hate big companies screwing little people over.

It happens far too often, usually driven by aggressive sales targets filtering from the top down.

Necker Island not enough Richard??

Place marking

Lou while I understand your point, the reason people like the OP (and others) are complaining is that Virgin don't tell the caller over the phone that the 'extra' they are having put on their service such as quicker broadband speeds, means that they are entering into a new 12 month contract. It's not that its the caller failing to understand the t&c's, it's Virgin not even mentioning the new contract at all and then trying to claim that this new contract has been sent by letter/email to confirm this which magically seems to never have arrived with the caller. And it's not just in OP's case - it's a systematic problem they have no interest in fixing.

I agree with those posters saying to request a copy of the phone call. If they say no, request a copy under the Data Protections Act - they then have 40 days to provide it or they are in breach and you can report them to the ICO. If they don't have it, and you have never signed a contract/received an email, they have no evidence that any contract has been agreed. Then report them to Ofcom if they are still not willing to pay ball.

lou i agree with your point, however they didn't tell the op's husband that it was a new contract.
Companies do this and it's despicable as a lot of people don't realise this means a new contract.
I agree though op if your oh isn't capable of making decisions he needs to have his name off.
I hope he starts to feel better soon, and you are coping with it!

Virgin are dreadful for this, the last time they did it to me I had specified more than once during the call that I didn't want to do anything that tied me in for another year - guess they didn't hear me! Still not as good as the time their tec people told me that my broadband doesn't work because my house has furniture and interior walls.
My contract ends in November & I will be getting rid of Virgin as soon as it runs out.

Verbal contracts are legally binding

That maybe but telepathic contracts are not. And "just saying" doesn't excuse the rudeness of your post.

My father in law left Sky to join Virgin and needless to say within a week or so he went back to Sky, they really are a shower of shite.

Take it to ofcom. Also ask re recording.

All sounds like good advice on this thread, but wanted to say that we've been with VM for over a decade now, and I've found their customer service really quite good, but then again I've never tried to cancel.

IME, all telecoms companies are bad at customer service. Virgin have yet to screw up as badly as BT did with me, but I suspect it will just be a matter of time. The bar for customer service is set low, and many of them still fail to reach it.

Yep..they are useless...only high speed broadband provider in our area so we are stuck with them and don't they know it....TV service is abominable and customer service is not what you would expect from Virgin. When I call up to complain am told it is a 'known issue' but they don't seem to be doing anything about it. My husband called up earlier this week as we are now out of contract and he was looking for a deal partly to compensate for the poor TV service....the guy on the phone offered us a reduced broadband speed for more money! When we pointed out that wasn't exactly a compelling offer, he mentioned the prices are going up in November so that would help protect the price for 12 months. We asked when the TV issues would be fixed given they are putting the prices up....they have been 'working on it' for about 2 years now. Answer...soon. Hmmm....don't believe it.

Op yanbu to be angry. Get dh to add you onto the account/ give permission to discuss. Ask them under freedom of information act for a copy and state that this is an unresolved complaint that you are not happy to close until you receive the evidence of contract. If he didn't agree a contract they will drop the dispute and close the contract. You might have to pay a little for the transcript though.

Lou- I worked for years in a big company call centre (bt) in the first three years I had a minimum of one of my team having a freedom of information demand disputing a contract per month ( I was a manager) I only ever saw two that hadn't clearly read the script, and were therefore in the wrong agents disciplined and contract dropped. One other particularly awful man won his case by claiming that the call centre ladies accent was too hard to understand -along with many racial slurs and personal attacks so a total of 3 people hadn't agreed as they claimed. so less than 10% didn't actually agree the contract.

These complaints almost always come from children( adult children of older people) or partners who go into great detail about the mental health/vulnerability etc of the actual customer. Which I understand. BUT prior to this point if you have never advised a company of your vulnerable status (understandable as it's not something we discuss with our landline provider) I'm always at a loss as to how they are supposed to have known.

The reality of it is that when call centre staff are rattling off the contact and you want to get off the phone, you are saying yes, mmmhmm , yes and not listening. People shut off after a certain period.

Also- asking for a manager. I was employed as a manager of people. I'm great at that. I get the best of people and get good result and well formed teams. I didn't look at bills all day every day, or understand the computer system and contract deals as well as the centre staff. I simply put the calls I took onto a split headset and the agent they had already dealt with would do the work. I never authorised or offered any more discount etc than my agents had already - because I'm a good manager with faith that my team are doing the best job possible and are fair. Many, most?, people who refused to accept no from the call centre staff, accepted it from me. Often I would offer the £50 discount that my staff had offered and be told " Thank you! That's all I wanted!" They'd already been offered it but had got to a point where they don't value the initial person they have spoken to and because sites like mn, FB etc peddle that managers are somehow better. It was a depressing few years, where I learnt a lot about the general public that I didn't know before. ( I also learnt a lot about big companies and they're practices that I didn't know before )

VM are grade A cunts. I had a to do with them a few years ago after I moved to an area where they don't operate.
TalkTalk did to me exactly what VM have done to you. I kept escalating and asking to speak to a manager. After about 3 days of phone calls they eventually backed down and cancelled the contract.
My advice is to find out the name of the person you are speaking to (They normally tell you at the start of the call) and use it, e.g. Hi Jane I wondered if you could help me with ...
I find if you know and use their name you get a bit further.

These complaints almost always come from children( adult children of older people) or partners who go into great detail about the mental health/vulnerability etc of the actual customer.

I have a client with LD who signed up with Virgin, despite being locked into a contract with Sky that doesn't end till November. It took 3 really long and very assertive phone calls, followed by submitting a formal complaint, but I got it cancelled in the end. (He enters into a ludicrous contract for something every couple of months, so I've had a lot of practice at this, had to cancel a mobile internet contract this week!.)

Go down the formal complaint route, and ask for a transcript of the call. Take it to Ofcom.

Given the number of people on here alone who've had issues with Virgin, I'm amazed that they haven't been on Watchdog before.

CAB will help.

Ask them under freedom of information act for a copy...

Please don't do this. FOIA only applies to public bodies.

I think Cookingongas might be referring to the data protection act. Worthwhile making a subject access request under the DPA for a small fee. Have a look at this: ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/principle-6-rights/subject-access-request/