Virgin charging us £70+ for their mistake?!

Thrifty_Pixie_2

Hello, I'm a mid-term lurker on the forum so hooray for me coming out of the lurking closet and joining in! :T

I don't really know where to start with this one.

We signed up to a 12month Virgin Media cable contract.

After 6 months we needed to re-locate for work, OH phoned Virgin a month before the move and asked if we can move the remaining 6 months of the contract to our new flat.

As the new flat didn't have cable and we were moving in with family for a month inbetween Virgin said its absolutely fine but they would switch us to ADSL with them for the remainder of the contract and it would cost us an '£18 holding fee' for the month we weren't using it in between.

When we moved OH called to say right we've moved what now? and Virgin told him we had to set up an installation date as new property needed phone line activating (had been disconnected by landlord/previous tennant)

the installation date was 2 months away (we were annoyed by this delay as we'd informed them of our move date 2 months previously) we decided we wanted to get internet faster than that and to use the fact that they are raising their prices to cancel our contract early instead without penalty.

HOWEVER my OH then recieved a bank statement from the period we were between the two flats with a £70+ payment taken by Virgin (I'm flippin annoyed about this beyond words :mad:)

It appears they charged him for early contract cancellation at the time when he phoned to ask about moving our account to the new property (december) when all he agreed to on the phone was this holding arrangement and moving it to a new property .

Virgin just say he cancelled the account with them - and the fact that we had then phoned to cancel the (what we thought was moved old contract and they must think is new swiftly cancelled 2nd contract) has just confused the matter even further.

I cant believe that off the back of one phonecall they can a)Cancel the contract without our permission b)charge us for the privilege of having done so and c)Be so monumentally unhelpful when we are trying to set the matter right.

Sorry for the epic rant but I'm at a complete loss as to how they could get away with such a practice and wondered if anyone has any advice or similar experiences with Virgin Media?

We are drafting a letter to send to them as phone calls have got us nowhere but I'm fearful they are so slippery and dis-interested in our complaint that we will get nowhere and I don't know what other recourse we have?

Any help massively appreciated!

Thank you....

macman

Did you have a TV contract at the old property, as well as phone and broadband? If so, as you can't transfer the TC service over if cable not available-could the charge be an ETC for early termination of the TV contract?

Thrifty_Pixie_2

Hi, thanks for your reply , To clarify we dont own a TV and definitely didn't sign up for a package with them that included TV at any point.

~^-^~