Virgin Media HIDDEN FEES

Robtee

4 months ago I added evening and weekend calls to my existing Virgin account. It was a few pound extra a month to have evening calls added to our tariff. Unknown to me, this meant I was restarting my contract for another year fixed, as opposed to a rolling contract that I was on, having been with VM for 2.5 years at this point. Now Im moving to a non Virgin area, I have been told I will have to pay £200+ to end my account of 3 years, due to this apparent commitment to them for another year from Nov 15, that I had no idea I was signing up to.

Apparently it was in the small print - although notably THEY DID NOT TELL ME THIS ON THE PHONE WHEN I WAS ASKING FOR IT - so they seem to have legitimately conned me and have me apparently sign up for this without telling me on the phone when I committed myself to it. After 3 years I expected some sort of common sense.. apparently not - when you deal with Virgin - you are an asset to be squeezed - they do everything they can to get more money out of you- whatever the outcome.

Has anyone else come across this malpractice? And more to the point, has anyone had any luck in making this corporate monstor have some sort of common sense and loyalty to it's customers? Additonally,, I didnt actually sign a piece of paper or anything, so is this legally binding?

It seems foolish of Virgin - as guess which company I will NEVER use again - and guess what I will tell EVERYONE I know who is thinking about changing to Virgin Media? DONT - AVOID VIRGIN MEDIA AT ALL COSTS!

JJ_Egan

Normal with any ISP .
Same penalty would apply for cancelling a contract .

Robtee

I see your point, but after initially signing up in 2013, I passed the intial 1 year fixed term on the contract. It was only as I added a single feature to my landline tariff in November 2015 that they restarted my fixed-term, when up to this point I was on a month-to-month rolling contract.. and assumed (wrongly) that it would be like this despite adding or taking away elements of TV or phone. The TV and broadband was fine otherwise, but this was underhand of Virgin. Had no such trouble with Sky when with them.

Perhaps some fees are expected in the small print, but £200+ is excessive.

duchy

Some companies will cover exit fees up to a certain amount to move your services to them (usually for talk and BB not TV). For example if you move to Sky before you move (then do a home move with them ) they will credit up to £100 in termination fees you were charged by Virgin.

JJ_Egan

Robtee wrote: »

Perhaps some fees are expected in the small print, but £200+ is excessive.

Not excessive these fees should only be what you are committed to pay on the contract .

jpwjpw

It's massively cheeky of them to lock you into a 12 month contract for any changes made to your account.

I found this out recently when my contract ran out and phoned to downgrade my broadband.

At least they were upfront about the 12 month addition though.

James

DCFC79

It is cheeky yes but the OP could have asked if it would mean being locked into a 12 month contract.

AndyPK

BT are just as bad

Super_Whiskey

Why not dispute it and ask for a copy of the phonecall where you alledgedly locked yourself in to another 12 month contract?

When you say it was in the small print, did they do it on the phone and then send a copy of the new contract out to you via email/post?

Ted_Terry

I changed my package last September but was aware I was agreeing another 12 months with them, they made this clear to me on the phone.

visidigi

You are not locked into 'another' contract.

You have a new minimum term applied tot he same contract you had before.

The contract you were being supplied under was changed, hence the new minimum term applied.

The fees are not excessive. If you owned the company and your customer wanted to stop paying you for a service which you had front-loaded with discount to encourage take up what would you do?

Alot of these companies make the actual profit on the far end of the minimum term, the early months are usually loss-leaders.