Virgin chasing me for payment - I transferred away from them 2 days late

tallmandat

Pretty much a long shot, but I transferred my mobile phone number from Virgin to Smarty mobile, I had 14 days cooling off period from Virgin to do this but I did it too late, the transfer actually went through on the 16th day, despite me submitting the pac code on the 13th day. Apparently it takes upto two days for the pac code to kick in on the Smarty account and this is where I shot myself in the foot. 

Now Virgin are chasing me for a BUYOUT payment, which I feel is very harsh of them to charge as I was only 2 days over the 14 day period. Of course, this all happened before Covid, so I cancelled all my direct debits with Virgin and now that they've woken up a bit, they're now chasing me. What can I do? Shall I just pay them the Buyout amount? 

[Deleted User]

It'll be cheaper to pay them now than continue to avoid it.

It may be too late to avoid the damage to your credit files though.  Never cancel a DD to avoid payment.