Virgin media - mixing up customers bank details!!! Discusting customer service

KittyCatty_2 · 11 January 2009 at 9:35PM

Well where do I start?

My partner set up a Virgin Media account for TV, Phone and Internet in July 2008 - he entered his bank details onto the Virgin Media website, we received a contract which he signed and sent off to pay monthly for our bills by direct debit. For six months we revived thank you for your payment letters from Virgin Media.

Imagine our surprise on the 7th Jan 2009 when we received a phone call from Virgin stating that the direct debit covering our account was in fact coming out of a complete strangers bank account and Virgin had only become aware of this when the person in question rang up to complain! Virgin accused my partner of putting in fraudulent bank details onto their website, they then went on to inform him that we owed £246.42 in arrears and demanded payment immediately. After speaking to countless people at Virgin they agreed it was there mistake, that we could continue paying future bills by direct debit and pay the arrears via Paypoint with no interest.

We thought this matter was getting resolved until 10th Jan 2009 when we received a phone call from the collections department at Virgin who demanded full payment immediately and denied any record of our previously conversation on the system. After being passed around I eventually spoke to a ''Customer Care Manager'' who clearly couldn't care less about customer well being. After initially being somewhat sympathetic she put me on hold and came back with a renewed attitude. Basically she stated it was mine and my partners fault, our previous agreement didn't exist and was not acceptable. and that now our arrears were £282.93 She offered us two options:

1) Pay off the arrears in stages - but in doing so our service would be cut off until the money was paid in full and we would be black listed.

2) Pay off the full amount by Jan 17th 2009 or our services would be cut off and we would be black listed.

After crying my eyes out to this so called customer care manager I explained that I couldn't just get £282 just like that and informed her I would have to borrow the money from my parents. She didn't give a toss and we informed her would be back in touch if we could get the money together.

Can you imagine my disgust when an hour later the collections department rang to ask if we had got the money and could we pay! Does no one listen in this organisation?????

My parents very kindly offered to help us out and I called Virgin Media today (11th Jan 2009) to pay the arrears. I spoke to a lady who informed me that we didn't owe anything!!!!! That we were going to receive a full refund and that the creditors had admitted to making a mistake. The lady in question at Virgin thought that I was the lady whose bank account details had been misused by Virgin Media!!!! How stupid can you get? After explaining to the lady and putting me on hold she finally grasped who I was and said we now owed £285.93. An interest of £3 per day that the arrears were not being paid.

Virgin clearly has no idea what they are doing. They have mixed up our bank details with someone else’s and can give us no explanation as to how this happened. The people in the call centre are rude, intimidating and very threatening. Virgin will not accept any responsibility for this! They would not even let us pay back the money in instalments even though the error is theirs!

We have taken advice from consumer direct and have written Virgin Media a letter.

Be warned Virgin Media could lose your bank details!!!!!!!!

billsavings · 12 January 2009 at 2:29AM

Send an email to their Chief Executive [EMAIL="Neil.Berkett@virginmedia.com"]Neil.Berkett@virginmedia.com[/EMAIL] and mark it for the attention of high level complaints / executive office

It might also be worth complaining to Ofcom.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/landline/company/other/