Virgin media ripping off pensioners

[CornedBeef451]

I am fuming!

My DF is 80 and very independent. He recently complained about virgin media being expensive so I've had a look through his account and found out he signed himself up for an 18 month contract which includes a Sky package and an O2 sim.

Don't they have a cooling off period?? Can you contact them on his behalf and try and get it reduced??

Posted too soon.

He didn't know he had the tv package and doesn't know how to access it and has never used the SIM.

When he rang to renew someone must have talked him into it as he doesn't want any extras, just broadband and home phone.

His contract ends in August so I will cancel it for him then but does anyone know if there is anyway to claim back his money due to them taking advantage of him?

It turns out my aunt has the same package and she's nearly 90 with absolutely no interest in sports or movies.

Op I would contact citizens advice for legal advice, sounds like they have been pressured into signing up

@shellyleppard it's been running since Feb 23 but I e only just found out!

My DB used to deal with all of this but he died 2 years ago and I didn't think to pick it up.

So Virgin took advantage of a hard of hearing, recently bereaved 78/79 year old!

@shellyleppard thanks I'll give it a go, hadn't even thought of citizens advice.

It sounds odd I know but I renegotiated our package with VM shortly after the merger with O2 & it was cheaper to add the SIM - we'd have paid more for the equivalent tv, phone & broadband package without it. The timing sounds similar as the bundled deal ended in jan 2024. The frustrating thing with VM is getting to talk to someone competent! Hope you can sort it.

I was gobsmacked at the price of my.mums virgin package. We changed her to free view in the end with just a phone line. Virgin are utterly crap.

@legosnowqueen I think that was what he was told but he didn't want any tv packages, just basic broadband and home phone.

We're with Virgin but currently paying half what DF is.

At least there's only a few months left and then I can sort it out.

@CornedBeef451 I think it's worth contacting them now in that case. Ask for a copy of the recording or transcript of the call.

My DH aunt (age 84) was paying £137 a month for Sky tv. He called them from her house with her permission and got it reduced to £71.

Yeap, they do this to every person they can. I have signed contracts with yhem and suddenly my direct debit has gone higher than a kite!
To be honest, I have concluded that they should not be allowed in business. They are not honest.
Put your dad on another company.
Not sure you will get any money back, but definitively try via citizens advice.

This is the kind of question it could be worth putting to the company on twitter for them to answer publicly. I bet it happens a lot - likely with some minimum wage call taker being pressured to sell/commissions and if we're being generous maybe they're not considering the age/vulnerability of the customer they're talking to.

I worked for VM briefly last year around the time the merger with o2 was fresh. I left shortly after it was made mandatory that every department had to upsell on every call, regardless if it was just a fault or billing advice.

They obviously made it favourable for call center staff to prey on the vulnerable as you were promised 10% commission, plus independent benefits like extra time off, per sale. The bundles sold including o2 sim cards included set cash incentives (I think it was £10 per sim sale) so were obviously everyone's main sell. You'd then get a completely unreasonable disciplinary if you failed to meet these sales targets.

I left at the point they were bribing elderly or the most vulnerable customers who were calling in panic and tears due to the affects of the home phone switchover. You were made to make these customers agree to bundles they didn't want in the promise of being able to not lose their only form of contact with the outside world. I.e their landline.

Be prepared for some nonsense when you try to cancel, and ask for them to send you something in writing. We cancelled, they still charged us and we had to call them to cancel again.. They admitted the error was at their end. They then offered us a broadband only package for the same price as our TV and broadband package!

It's ludicrous really the way these companies work really, massive penalties for not shopping around/switching yearly or at least threatening to to get the discounts.

Just switched my mobile for example, my original number ported across straight away to the esim, I now pay £7 a month for unlimited minutes and texts, 25GB data (sim free/no new phone obs) on EE network.

Fibre to home 500mb connection switched from sky to Vodaphone this year when sky told me they were raising their prices - for doing so I got a £110 voucher from voda, £50 quidco cashback and my monthly bill reduced to £28 (from the £33 sky wanted) in the deal they offered. I'll switch again when the contract expires at a year so when you factor in the discounts we get our fibre to home line for £15 a month. Compared with the elderly whom are unlikely to do this plus likely to be on a reduced fixed income they'll be paying much much more.

I'm with Virgin and have a month of my contract left. They are constantly calling me and when I finally tried to deal with them, the upsell was relentless. I started off by telling them that I need to pay less and that I don't get enough use out of my TV package to warrant what I pay now, never mind any extra. So they came back with an offer giving me MORE channels and an monthly increase of another £6.

I try really hard not to get angry with call centre people, but not one of the three people I spoke to actually listened to anything I said, so I ended up being really frustrated.

Their call centre is in India or somewhere, which makes the conversation even more difficult, as I constantly had to ask them to repeat themselves, and presumably they couldn't understand me either, given that they were offering me the opposite of what I asked for.

It's so counter productive. I don't want the hassle of moving to Sky, so they'dhave kept me if they'd actually listened and just offered me what I asked for (which wasn't ridiculous). But the conversations made me so angry that I'm now determined to leave.

I really don't know how people older than me manage now that every single contract we have with any utility or service has to be re-negotiated every year/18 months. The AA is another villain in this regard, doubling the membership cost every year unless you're prepared to spec 20 minutes on the phone threatening to leave. Then there's every insurance I have ..

@TheDonNumber1 that's really disturbing but sounds like exactly wha happened.

I have tweeted @virginmedia with a complaint and I'll be following the advice from citizens advice as it looks like he should be eligible for at least a partial refund due to being mis sold.

Thanks for the support, it's really horrifying that big companies do this to vulnerable people. They must be making a fortune.

Not your question… but do you have POA for your father? If not you may want to sort that sooner than later

My mum was paying over £50 a month just for telephone & broadband until I pretended to be her & negotiated a better deal, I got it down to £30 a month.

Can you imagine what straits childless older people must get into? Everything that used to be simple is now complex and/or online. If you don't have someone who checks in on you and cares enough to take this kind of thing over, you could send up paying phenomenal amounts.

It's appalling. We take elder abuse very seriously when it's perpetrated by an individual; but then we quite happily allow these huge companies to build it in to their standard procedures and get away with it.

It's potentially even worse, as older folk are more likely to phone them - and then be given the hard sell by an actual person - whereas younger people are more likely to do things online wherever possible, so you can ignore any upselling messages that pop up much more easily.

You wonder if the people who make and enforce these predatory policies actually have elderly parents/grandparents themselves.

Hi

We also had a package with an o2 sim. We got a massive discount on the top package but we had to have a sim provided by o2 included in the bundle.

The contract lasted 18 months amd now they've separated and we didn't need am o2 sim when we renewed

I've seen people on MN saying that those who don't survey the whole market and just renew their policies/contracts automatically are stupid and deserve all they get.

It's truly nasty and dismissive of people with different life experiences, different levels of ability/confidence, growing up in completely different times etc.

I bet, if they bother to think about it at all, this is the same attitude that the big bosses of these companies that get rich off exploiting elderly people take: they must somehow want to be ripped off, otherwise they would 'simply' go online and do the same thing that comes naturally to somebody 60 years younger than them.

For example now apart from the o2 sim is about £90 a month when we tried to downgrade it was almost as expensive for a lot less.

That being said I have had issues in the past where they offered me a package for £70 a month and had it all set up and then it never went through and then when I complained they tried to pressure sell me another package and I even asked them if they were and they said yes. I put in a freedom of information request for the calls and phoned up so many times to be strung a long until they were "lost". I got offered £30 as compensation and then without the evidence it didn't go anywhere with the ombudsman

@saltinesandcoffeecups my older sister has POA, not sure if it can be extended to me too?

I am more likely to deal with this sort of thing so it could be helpful. I also have access to his emails and various accounts as I set them all up for him. DS is more likely to lead on health things as she used to be a nurse.

I have previously sorted out DM's mobile contract and various health things by pretending to be her but not sure I would be as convincing as DF!