Virgin mobile & mis sold insurance

Mayweed · 9 March 2012 at 3:53PM

Hi,

Has anyone experienced problems with being signed up to mobile phone insurance with Virgin that they didn't ask for?

I have been a Virgin mobile customer for several years and upgraded my phone on 22 Feb. When the contract was emailed through I found that I had been given a month's free insurance that would be £5.99/mth thereafter. I emailed straight away asking them to cancel as I had neither asked for it or been told about it during my upgrade conversation. It took until today (9/3/12) to get an answer which was basically 'you have to call the insurance company yourself'.

I have spent 20 mins on the phone to customer complaints getting absolutely nowhere. I was told the line manager was unavailable, I couldn't speak to a director or the legal team and if I wanted to escalate it, talk to OFCOM. The long and short of it is that Virgin say that the insurance contract is between me and the insurance company and won't/can't act on my behalf even if this is their error.

Waiting to hear from Ofcom, but curious to hear if this common practice.

poshparrot · 9 March 2012 at 4:31PM

So due to upgrading your phone on the 22nd of Feb you should still be within your free month's of insurance as it is not yet the 22nd of March?

Me, my mother, father and sister are all with Virgin Mobile and had been given one month of free phone insurance like yourself. To cancel you just have to phone up, it's pretty easy?

vuvuzela · 9 March 2012 at 4:33PM

Not with Virgin, but last contract I took out was with T-Mobile via affordablemobiles.co.uk and they signed me up for insurance as well that I couldn't seem to remove from the basket. However they told me about it and gave instructions on how to cancel it.
If Virgin have not given cancellation instructions or details of a cooling-off period, I suspect this would be on dodgy legal ground. Maybe if you don't get assistance here, this post would be better being moved to the consumer rights forum as there are people there that might be able to help.

Mayweed · 9 March 2012 at 5:04PM

Thanks guys. I have the company details and yes it is simple to phone and cancel, but my grudge is that I have to do it and not Virgin. They didn't ask me or tell me about the insurance, yet the onus is on me to sort it out.

The chap at Virgin said that maybe if enough people complained something might get done about changing the process. I just wondered if anyone else has had a similar experience.