Virgin Billing & Package Advice...

Nemo

Hi. My elderly mum has Virgin TV and phone (no broadband). She's just phoned me saying that she's been checking her bank statements and there are no monthly payments to Virgin on them for 3 or 4 months although there is one this month.

Around 3 years ago I sorted out online statements for her to avoid having to pay extra for printed ones. I checked these for a while, although not recently. In September my mum got a letter saying that her line rental saver was due, so she phoned up and paid the £120. On checking the statements now, I've found that the £120 she paid for advance line rental was just put on as a credit and was used to pay each bill while this money was used up. The latest bill shows line rental of £15.99, and the previous two show £14.99 .

She going to phone up tomorrow to try and sort out. I guess it should be done something like pay the £120 again and credit the £5.99 and 2x £4.99 which have been overpaid. I've told her to kick up a bit of a fuss and try and get some extra credit given.

Looking at the rest of the bills in detail, I'm trying to make sense of them, bearing mind not being a Virgin customer myself and therefore not being up to speed. The latest bill shows bundle charges of £25.75 for:-

Talk Unlimited
Free Voicemail
V HD Monthly Fee
Fully Itemised Billing
T V Size: L

Looking on their website, it says for TV L, V HD Box + phone (weekend calls) it's £13.50 for 6 months, then £16.50 . Even adding unlimited calls it's not going to come to £25.75 .

Is she paying more than she should be? Is the V HD Monthly Fee chargeable? (She hasn't got a HD TV). Is Fully Itemised Billing extra?

Thanks in advance for any info/advice.

[Deleted User]

Why doesn't she set up payment by Direct Debit? None of this would have been necessary if this had already been done.
It's also the fault of the call centre for incorrectly applying the money she paid towards the whole bill rather than annual telephone.
As for itemised billing, that's not chargeable as far as I am aware. It doesn't sound like she's being overcharged, but she (or you) could probably haggle for a cheaper deal.

The V+HD is a PVR which has an extra fee for recording etc.

Nemo

Having looked in to this a bit more it seems that unlimited calls is £8. Seems expensive to me, but anyway. While the last bill is £25.75, the previous few were £24.50 ie. the £16.50 quoted on the website for the TV and the £8 for the calls. At least that makes sense now. I think there's been a price increase recently.

The box is a V HD not a V+HD. It has no recording facility. Still not sure what the V HD Monthly Fee is and if it's actually free. The fact that the bill seems to add up as above indicates that it's not an extra.

She does pay by direct debit. Not sure what I put which indicated otherwise.

Thanks for your reply.

[Deleted User]

Nemo wrote: »

She does pay by direct debit. Not sure what I put which indicated otherwise.

The fact that her payment for 12 months line rental was used to pay the monthly subscription gave the impression that there must not be a DD on the account.

Probably easily solved with just a call to Virgin.