Virgin Media Direct Debit Penalty

Ray99

Hello money savers

This is my first post, but it's a tricky one.

Following the success of bank customers recovering unfair bank charges and penalties, I decided to try to recover the penalties that Virgin levy against me for not going Direct Debit.

Currently this charge is £5 per month and accounts for 10% of my bill. I used the template letter from this site to register my complaint and I recieved a template letter of refusal along with 5 pages of photocopied Virgin Terms and Conditions. My original contract several years ago was with Eurobel, the company that laid the cables in our area. Then Telewest took over, then Telewest/NTL and now Virgin.

Has anybody managed to recover this penalty and if so how did you go about it? Virgin are stonewalling me at the moment, and I don't want to move providers with all the upheaval that involves.

Regards Les

quidsin

I had a problem with this a couple of years ago, I use to pay my telewest bill at a paypoint. Telewest charged for paying by other methods than DD. I argued that paying by paypoint was the same as DD as they had the same administration costs as far as I had known, I had a refund of £5 every month .

Ray99

Thanks for your help. Bolstered by the success of other MSE's I rang the VM customer relations and asked for the free upgrade to digital. That offer finished at the end of March, but by way of compensation, I got £9 per month knocked off my bill without even asking for it.

I have now decided to give up the unequall struggle to have my penalty charges refunded and go DD despite the risks. That's £14 per month saved.
Cheers Les