Virgin Media Cancellation Charge

tusagirl

Hi all

Can anyone help me with info...

After 2 full weeks of no service in Sept/Oct, and then no service since 12 November, I cancelled my Virgin Media contract and went to Sky.

This was after many frustrating calls to Virgin, and absolutely NO attempt to fix our services (apparently a faulty cable) - we have no TV on demand, nor broadband, only telephone and some live Tivo, we had to buy a dongle for my husband to work from home - I got fed up, and told them to cancel the service. We moved to Sky on 13 of Dec, and up that time we had not received a single call from Virgin regarding anyone fixing our issue.

I have now received a final bill, and they are charging £109 contract termination fee. Since they did not fulfil their contract with us, are they legally allowed to due this? They are in breach of contract, aren't they?

Thanks
Karen

macman

No they are not, because there is no SLA on a residential contract. All you are entitled to is a credit for the downtime.
After an extended period of no service you could claim breach of contract, but 2 weeks is unlikely to be sufficient.
You could have used the price rise to leave without charge if you had your letter in time?

tusagirl

Hi

Thanks for your reply.

It was actually about 6 weeks in total - 2 weeks of no service around Sept, then we had no service again from 12 November to the 13 Dec, which is when we switched to Sky. From the 12 Nov, no attempt was made by VM to fix the issue - it was left to me to call them repeatedly (and everyone who has called them knows what a nightmare that is).

If we had not switched to Sky, who knows, we may still be without a service? How is this legal? (We depend on broadband for more than just browsing the internet, so being without broadband was a huge inconvenience to us).

Thanks
Karen