Line Rental Charge for Line never used!

Jimmy7

Hello Everybody, Im new to the forums, and apologise in advance if this posted in the wrong thread. I need some help with the Virgin Media bill my parents are currently paying.

For the last four years Virgin Media have been charging line rental to my parents on a line which has never been used. The home phone my parents actually use is with Talk Talk and has been since 2007. I spotted this charge when helping my parents look through their bills as they have now decided the cost of Vrirgin is proving too high.

The breakdown of their bill is as follows:
Line Rental £12.99
TV Size: XL £26.00
Broadband Size M £21.50
Sky Sports 1/2 £22.50

Virgin have continued to charge line rental on a line which has not been used and they surely must have known this as their records would show no calls ever being made on it??

I think my parents just assumed this line rental charge was something do with the internet cost and had not appreciated this is actually a charge on a phone line which is still in working order despite never being used.

My mother has tried to cancel this charge and been told simply "its your fault your paying this, you should have told us"
Now I realise that had my mother been more vigilant she would have spotted this far earlier but the attitude of Virgin considering my mother has been a long term customer since the days of NTL seems to be to be wholly unsatisfactory.
They have still not cancelled the line rental charge and say contractually they have to carry on paying??

I would like some help on what my parents rights are with regards paying for a service that has never been used and if possible how money paid for this service may be refunded (I realise this is possibly a longshot)

Any help is appreciated

Regards
Jimmy

Jimmy7

Hello Everybody, Im new to the forums, and apologise in advance if this posted in the wrong thread. I need some help with the Virgin Media bill my parents are currently paying.

For the last four years Virgin Media have been charging line rental to my parents on a line which has never been used. The home phone my parents actually use is with Talk Talk and has been since 2007. I spotted this charge when helping my parents look through their bills as they have now decided the cost of Vrirgin is proving too high.

The breakdown of their bill is as follows:
Line Rental £12.99
TV Size: XL £26.00
Broadband Size M £21.50
Sky Sports 1/2 £22.50

Virgin have continued to charge line rental on a line which has not been used and they surely must have known this as their records would show no calls ever being made on it??

I think my parents just assumed this line rental charge was something do with the internet cost and had not appreciated this is actually a charge on a phone line which is still in working order despite never being used.

My mother has tried to cancel this charge and been told simply "its your fault your paying this, you should have told us"
Now I realise that had my mother been more vigilant she would have spotted this far earlier but the attitude of Virgin considering my mother has been a long term customer since the days of NTL seems to be to be wholly unsatisfactory.
They have still not cancelled the line rental charge and say contractually they have to carry on paying??

I would like some help on what my parents rights are with regards paying for a service that has never been used and if possible how money paid for this service may be refunded (I realise this is possibly a longshot)

Any help is appreciated

Regards
Jimmy

Heinz

Regardless of whether they use it, does the 'line' (I appreciate it's cable) exist?

I have to say BTW that I can't think of a time in my life when I would have missed such an extraneous charge on a bill. We're wll different though.

macman

TT and VM run on completely different networks, so it's perfectly possible to have both a TT line and a VM cable phone line in one property.
If when they had the TT service installed they failed to cancel the VM phone package then VM can hardly be held to blame. Line rental is payable whether the phone line is used or not. The lack of calls made is irrelevant.

christie_m

Jimmy7 wrote: »

Hello Everybody, Im new to the forums, and apologise in advance if this posted in the wrong thread. I need some help with the Virgin Media bill my parents are currently paying.

For the last four years Virgin Media have been charging line rental to my parents on a line which has never been used. The home phone my parents actually use is with Talk Talk and has been since 2007. I spotted this charge when helping my parents look through their bills as they have now decided the cost of Vrirgin is proving too high.

The breakdown of their bill is as follows:
Line Rental £12.99
TV Size: XL £26.00
Broadband Size M £21.50
Sky Sports 1/2 £22.50

Virgin have continued to charge line rental on a line which has not been used and they surely must have known this as their records would show no calls ever being made on it??

I think my parents just assumed this line rental charge was something do with the internet cost and had not appreciated this is actually a charge on a phone line which is still in working order despite never being used.

My mother has tried to cancel this charge and been told simply "its your fault your paying this, you should have told us"
Now I realise that had my mother been more vigilant she would have spotted this far earlier but the attitude of Virgin considering my mother has been a long term customer since the days of NTL seems to be to be wholly unsatisfactory.
They have still not cancelled the line rental charge and say contractually they have to carry on paying??

I would like some help on what my parents rights are with regards paying for a service that has never been used and if possible how money paid for this service may be refunded (I realise this is possibly a longshot)

Any help is appreciated

Regards
Jimmy

Jimmy

The way I've interpreted your post, I think there's an active Virgin phone line installed in your parents home. If this is wrong, then it might open up some other options.

If my assumption is correct, then personally I think your chances are slim on this one, as there will have been a contract agreed by your parents at some point in the past with NTL or Virgin, and the phone line remains active. The documentation may have been long lost by your parents, but will have existed at some stage. The fact that the line hasn't been used isn't Virgin's issue, and I'm not sure their contract terms state they'll contact you if you're not using their service.

From my perspective your parents have three options:
1. Submit a formal complaint and chance their arm to see if Virgin can produce a contract document or other evidence. You could plead poverty/etc. and see how far you get, but I wouldn't be hopeful.
2. Call up and kick off the "cancel your services and renegotiate a better deal" game. There's plenty of evidence of other forum members doing this successfully recently, so read earlier posts for tactics and games to play. Effectively you phone up, tell them you're leaving, ignore any offers pitched to you, repeat that you want to serve your thirty days notice. Then you wait for a callback from the outbound retentions team, who can offer attractive deals (albeit often with a landline and calls package bundled in ). The deal on offer might make it worthwhile ditching the TalkTalk line...who knows!
3. Your parents call up, tell 'em they're completely hacked off with the way they've been treated and cancel their services and move to Sky if they want the bolt on packages such as sports, or rely on Freeview.

Someone else on here might come up with a fourth/fifth/etc. option, but I think the above are what you've got choose from.

Best of luck...

iniltous

When your folks became TT customers, what did TT advise them to do, if they said something like ' dont forget to cancel your service with VM' then Im afraid you will have to write off the costs of the VM line rental, as VM have done nothing wrong, they were providing the contracted services, if the end user choses not to use the service then thats up to them, but if a phone were pludgeed into the VM socket it would have worked, presumably your parents have now cancelled the VM line, if on the other hand TT said ' leave everything to us' then your anger is with the wrong Telco, and perhaps you should be talking to TT.
After so long it will be impossible to prove what was said at the time TT signed up your parents, presumably if the VM line was in first, and a TT line installed by BT/OR then your parents also changed their phone number, because if the number was exported from VM to TT, that process should have stopped the VM telephone service and they should have got a final bill from VM for the phone service

macman

TT would not even be aware that the OP's parents already had a VM cable line.

parallax_20

The VM phone line could have been installed as part of the bundled service. Which is often the case when taking out 2 or more services to get a discount. But the contractual period shouldn't be more than 12mths, in which case they would have been able to cancel that part of the service, if they remembered to do so.

Plus the VM Phone line charge will be increasing to £13.90, so in the worst case you can cancel it on the basis of the price increase.

Alternatively as suggested, threaten to cancel the whole lot and move over to Sky. They will soon change their tune.

Good luck.