The Dreaded Virgin Media

david_bedford_2

Hi Guys

Need your help, i currently received my Ebill from Virgin for £71.49, normally this comes out via direct debit on the 20th of each month.

however there is a facility that you can pay the amount via Visa/debit card, so to save waiting to the 20th of this month i paid it early which was taken out of my account on the 15th Jan, whilst checking my online bill they have taken £71.49 again today, surely if i paid this early then my balance would be set to £0.00 being owed as iv'e paid the balance.

i spoke to virgin media customer service, they said that they would refund my ammount owed, however all they have done is put the balance to £71.49 which i have already paid twice.

this is stupid, i feel like cancelling and going to SKY, i paid for their service and they cant even make the right billing.

help and advise would be much appreciated.

thanks
David

creditcontroller

My suggestion is that you write to their Customer Complaints dept, unfortuantly you can't speak to them in person on the phone! I did this and the response was very good but it's annoying that they won't transfer you to them.

If you list your complaint they will call you back and hopefully they might even offer you a little gesture of goodwill!

davethorp

The issue seems to be that the OP made a manual payment but a direct debit was still taken. Unfortunately a lot of companies do work in this way where a direct debit will still be taken even if the bill is paid. Also as direct debits have to requested in advance and take a few days to clear, chances are VM had already requested a direct debit when the manual payment was made

I dont think there are too many grounds for a complaint over this and personally if I'd have done this, I'd have just left the credit balance on there and got a free month next month (obviously providing the overpayment didn't leave me broke but even if it did, by time it was all sorted, the next bill would be generated and a free month would be just as beneficial)

As for switching to sky, as long as you are out of contract, no problem doing this. We switched from VM to sky about a year ago (with BT for our phone and O2 for our broadband - though plan to switch to O2 for phone too once contract with BT runs out) and haven't really looked back. The main issue is that our broadband is now 5Mbit rather than 20Mbit though as VM throttle the speed down to 5Mbit once you try to use it thats no great difference.

mazza111

I used to work for Virgin when it was Telewest. They cannot adjust or cancel a direct debit within the 7 days prior to the due date. If in future you decide to make a card payment early, it would be a better idea to do it more than 7 days in advance and call them up to adjust the Direct Debit for that month.

robt_2

You only left two working days - not enough time for the DD to be altered sorry. Does it state the time-scales involved anywhere?