Virgin Media Cancellation Fee Rip Off

riptoff_2

I cancelled my Virgin Media contract because I was moving house. I was with Virgin for years (It was NTL before that, and originally CableTel),

Virgin charged me a cancellation fee of £53 for each service!

To cancel the TV package: £53

To cancel broadband: £53

To cancel the telephone: £53

Total cancellation fee: £159

What a rip off!

spike7451

Unlike BT/Sky ect who 'flick a switch' to turn your services off,Cable companies (and I have worked with CableTel,NTL & VM) send an engineer out to physically disconnect the services in the street cab & the tie pairs in the mux.Outside companies collect the TV STB's/Modem ect & they in turn charge the cable company for this.
Obviously,if your equipment is not returned to VM,they will bill you for the cost of the equipment.
Someone has to pay for the engineer & equipment colelction,as VM are no longer getting a monthly revenue out of you,they have passed the charges on to you.
Quite fair imho.

richasshit

spike7451 wrote: »

Unlike BT/Sky ect who 'flick a switch' to turn your services off,Cable companies (and I have worked with CableTel,NTL & VM) send an engineer out to physically disconnect the services in the street cab & the tie pairs in the mux.Outside companies collect the TV STB's/Modem ect & they in turn charge the cable company for this.
Obviously,if your equipment is not returned to VM,they will bill you for the cost of the equipment.
Someone has to pay for the engineer & equipment colelction,as VM are no longer getting a monthly revenue out of you,they have passed the charges on to you.
Quite fair imho.

And thats exactly whats wrong with our country. It sounds like the original poster was a member of Virgin Media for years dont you think they mroe than covered this 159 pounds fee off this customer?

Its also amazing how they all cost roughly 53 pounds to do.

Nilrem

The question I would have for the op, is did he change any of his services in the year leading up to leaving VM?
If so that may have restarted his minimum year long contract (especially if he used any sort of special offer, or retention deal).

Otherwise I would be querying it with VM, as normally after you are out of the minimum contract there isn't a cancellation fee - unless you've taken advantage of a deal which had a minimum term.
They are rather similar to mobile phone providers in that respect, you have a minimum contract which gets reset if you take on certain services, but after that it's just something like 30 days notice.

riptoff_2

Fair pricing, £159 for cancellation?

The system was switched off automatically at 12.15am in the morning, so no engineer came out to fix the green box outside, it's all done at the central control.

Yes, we did change the tv package and broadband about a year ago, so going by what has been said, I should only have had to pay two lots of £53.

I have not gone into the many times Virgin have added charges that I have successfully challenged and which have been removed.

Add to that the diabolical service and outage we've experienced with the broadband and TV services, it's a case of good riddance.

Many thanks for your comments, I think the best thing now is for me to join the hundreds of dissatisfied current and ex-customers and broadcast warnings about this lot on the internet and through other media.

You should run a search about Virgin Media, some interesting results.

On a lighter note, everyone have a great Christmas, and a prosperous and Happy New Year! :beer:

robt_2

riptoff wrote: »

Fair pricing, £159 for cancellation?

The system was switched off automatically at 12.15am in the morning, so no engineer came out to fix the green box outside, it's all done at the central control.

Yes, we did change the tv package and broadband about a year ago, so going by what has been said, I should only have had to pay two lots of £53.

I have not gone into the many times Virgin have added charges that I have successfully challenged and which have been removed.

Add to that the diabolical service and outage we've experienced with the broadband and TV services, it's a case of good riddance.

Many thanks for your comments, I think the best thing now is for me to join the hundreds of dissatisfied current and ex-customers and broadcast warnings about this lot on the internet and through other media.

You should run a search about Virgin Media, some interesting results.

On a lighter note, everyone have a great Christmas, and a prosperous and Happy New Year! :beer:

Same as every single other ISP then.

Swipe

I moved house from a cable to non cable area and Virgin said if I took their ADSL service on a BT line the cancellation fee would be refunded, and so it was.

spike7451

The system was switched off automatically at 12.15am in the morning, so no engineer came out to fix the green box outside, it's all done at the central control.

Initially switched off on the SM systems but an engineer will still go out to remove the services like I said above,but I only worked for them as an engineer since 98,so what do I know about how they do things?...

simon1984

my advice mate is tell em to *** off..
i have just canceled mine today as its been off for the past 12 weeks due to a tec problem. absolutle useless idiots every one of them.. they can happy send me a bill and i will hand delv it back to them as i live 2 mins from their head office so i will call in!

simon1984

Nilrem.. your right about the special benefits of existing customers but thing is they dont tell you this on the phone.. i allways pretended to cancel my services and they offered me a deal of so much per month if i stayed which is not a new contract as it wasnt stated.. So hence there is no contract.. even though it states somewhere in the T&C which is given on recript of your contract but its not LTD to this.. refuse to pay and then tell em where to go.. prob get a letter of a some useless Debt firm who cant really do a lot FACT!

MercilessKiller

I'm moving to the states at the end of January though in a Virgin Media contract till June...

So it looks like I'm also going to have these charges? If you refuse to pay the charges surely you'd get a bad mark on the credit record would you not?

Thanks