Dispute With Virgin Media

mije1983 wrote: »

There is no law that states businesses must treat customers 'fairly' apart from the protected characteristics. How could that possibly be enforced?

As an example, some people pay full price for Sky, others get 75% off. Is that legal? Yes. Is that fair? No, but neither is life!

As you say, is the hassle even worth it? Moving house is more than enough to keep you occupied!

It's not about costs, it's about giving me no other choice but to enter into a 12 month contract given my circumstances just because I want to remove a couple of services, I think it's wrong. And if no one ever challenges them on it, they'll continue to do it.

I agree with you that it might not be worth the hassle persuing it all the way, but when somethings not right I can get like a dog with a bone.

I beat Sky with their nonsense before. When I moved to this house, 3 months beforehand I asked sky as a rough estimate how much it would cost to cancel my contract early. I said I was willing to pay the remainder of the term in one go. They said £150 something. I said fine, I'll call and pay it when I move.

The new house has no BT line, only virgin media. It's a new build. I called Sky they then said you can't cancel your services during the mininum term if we can provide it at a new address.

I said I don;t want holes drilled in the render of the new house to put a dish up. I'm willing to pay the remainder of the term in one big payment etc.

They still said, nope you need to take it with you.... again that's sticking with the forcing narrative.

I said ok, show me either a signed or verbally recorded contract of me renewing a new contract. They couldn't find it so let me go, waved the £150 odds I was willing to pay, and gave me £50 in Tesco vouchers for the 26 phone calls I had to make.

Honestly there's a reason these companies get a bad name for hassle when you want to cancel.

Netflix etc is obviously screwing their happiness so they're playing hardball now.

mac.d wrote: »

The fact is you are requesting a change to the services provided in your contract, which automatically puts you on a new contract. This is common with most telecom/broadband suppliers and isn't them being unfair. Its immaterial that you are "just removing services", you are making a change to your contract with them.

If you don't want to a new contract, don't change anything, and continue on the rolling contract which you can leave at any time (but still need to give them notice).

You'll need to look at the cost of continuing as you are versus the cost of taking the broadband only option and potential fees for ending that contract early.

What is unfair is them telling you the 30-day broadband is only available for new customers, but that would just make me determined to not use them as a supplier and look elsewhere.

My gripe is not about their choice to do this or that. It's that they don't state this in their terms and conditions to allow me to make an informed decision before taking the contract out.

In their terms it says if you add any additional services you are then subject to the minimum term, which is fine, common sense and no one would argue with that.

But there's nothing saying if you remove part of your package then you need to take a new 12 month contract on the part you want to keep even though you already have it and have finished a contract.

This is obviously them playing hardball as a lot of people will remove both the phone and tv for the same reasons I'm trying to.

There's zero cost to them just to let me carry on as normal. I've already allowed them to break even and make a profit by completing a contract... now they want me on another contract even though I'm taking nothing new out.

No way that's right. And yeah I agree, double standards... giving new customers 30 day rolling contracts and not an existing customer that only wants to remove services they don't use.

If I wasn't selling my house, I'd have cancelled the whole lot for sure. They're at it.