Virgin Media trying to rip me off, advice please.

Fish1979

Hi, I rang to cancel all my Virgin Media package on 29th October as they'd put their prices up to £92 and Sky were offering a great deal so because Virgin upped the price it gave me a get out clause. I was told on the phone that I had activated my 30 day notice so it would go off on 28th November. Today I got an email saying my bill was in for 22nd December of £120 to be paid on 15th January!
So I rang up fully expecting an apology and that it was a mistake but instead I get the rudest customer service guy from Teesside and subsequently his manager, saying that they could only go off the notes on the account and there was nothing about cancelling, so they basically think that I rang up unhappy with the £92 price and instead said I wanted to pay £120! Anybody even half intelligent would surely realise that the mistake was their end but no these clowns would not have any of it, so I said they can just listen to my original phone call and they would hear that I did indeed cancel everything, but this was too much trouble for them and they said they could not access the call as it was made to their Swansea call centre, and I would have to call back and take pot luck that I got connected to Swansea on answer, unbelievably poor service and incredibly rude.
So I did call back and spoke to a really nice lady who was staggered when I told her how unhelpful the Teesside office had been as she said it would be easy to email the Swansea office manager to try and pull the original call and she could not understand why they had not tried to help in any way.
So I am now waiting on a call back from the Swansea manager which will hopefully be good news and all sorted but I would like advice please on what to do should they not be able to pull the call up and try telling me I still owe them as there is no way I am paying another £120 due to their mess up, I will just cancel the direct debit, but I don't want it to go down against my credit rating. Hopefully it gets sorted but if not, what would you advise please? Thanks for any help, Ian.

iniltous

Hopefully it will be sorted out when the Swansea staff listen to the call, but if not email the chief executive of VM or even Richard Branson himself, insisting they cancel your account ( with the appropriate notice) from the day you called, out of curiosity did your services stop working on 28 November ? and if the price was increased to £92 , even if they say there is no record of you calling to cancel , how come this bill is £120 not £92 (unless £28 worth of pay per view or call charges)

Although no use to you now, it may be worth in the future asking for an email to be sent recapping any discussion you have with any service company like this , incase of disputes about who said what.

Neil_Jones

Richard Branson doesn't have anything to do with Virgin Media now, it was sold to Liberty Global about five years ago and even up to that point Branson only had 10% share in the company that created Virgin Media (when they merged with NTL/Telewest). Now he has about 2% if that but the company makes more of the licensing of the Virgin name. On that basis getting Mr Branson involved is most certainly a fruitless endeavour.

On the OP, it may be worth for future use getting a device to record your calls for your own use/information but you may be obliged to inform the other party that you're doing this.

[Deleted User]

Neil_Jones wrote: »

getting Mr Branson involved is most certainly a fruitless endeavour.

He wouldn't get involved anyhow.

Branson never owned Virgin Media, he just licensed the use of the Virgin name to the company created by the merger of the old Telewest and NTL cable outfits.

Fish1979

Hi, I've been and checked my account online and bizarrely it has me cancelling just my Sky Movies but not the rest of The to, and my home phone but not my internet, but then the prices up to £120 from £92 for less services which if they properly look into would surely make them realise that I'm hardly likely to ring up unhappy at the price rise, and tell them I want less but I want to pay more money! It would be laughable if it wasn't so annoying, havnt had a phone call back from them yet so I guess it will be after Christmas as I can't see them ringing me on Christmas Eve.

Fingers crossed.