Virgin Media renewing contract.

s76_eamus

Our TV & Broadband package was finishing on  3/01/2021. We decided on the 11/12/2020 to agree to an offer made by Virgin Media to an upgrade to another package for a 12 month  contract, an increase of £1 per month. We received an e-mail summary of the agreement, and waited for contract confirmation. This never happened, until we received our monthly statement for December, To our surprise we had started to be billed for an increase to our existing contract. Despite doing eveything that Virgin requested to do for a change of contract,they now refuse to acknowledge the new agreement, of which have a referance from them agreeing the price and  details of the new package. I spent 3 hours talking to an Indian call centre without success. They referred to the problem as a price mis-match, whatever that means. I have tried to complain to  Cisas,but you have to wait 8 weeks until your complaint has been dealt with by Virgin. We have been with Vigin for 25+ years, and any dispute before was handled extremely efficiently. Mr Branson states that brand is key,well like all things the bigger the brand they forget who made the brand bigger,

Aylesbury_Duck

I don't think Branson has anything to do with VM.  If he does, he has a tiny stake and certainly doesn't own it.

davidmcn

Aylesbury_Duck said:

I don't think Branson has anything to do with VM.  If he does, he has a tiny stake and certainly doesn't own it.

Yes, it's basically a franchise, owned by some other multinational telecomms bunch (who don't trade as Virgin elsewhere). Nevertheless it is his "brand"...

MoneyMate

I thought they were owned by Vodafone ?

Aylesbury_Duck

They also care nothing for loyalty, and value new customers more than long-standing ones.  OP's 25 years of loyalty is actually to their detriment.

JJ_Egan

Does the email summary not indicate what you bought ??

Bearingup

MoneyMate said:

I thought they were owned by Vodafone ?

Vodafone purchased Cable & Wireless, who used to own what is now Virgin Media (I think it was Nynex when C&W purchased it iirc), when C&W decided it wanted to get rid of it's consumer telecom services & just concentrate on business telecoms, it got rid of the cable business to NTL who became Virgin Media.

JJ_Egan

As above and since 2013 Liberty Media own the brand .

s76_eamus

The point of the post was to see if there were any other persons that have had a similar experience. The brand issue was about the name not the relevance of ownership. The Virgin brand is significant in public opnion, not the importance of ownership.

unholyangel

If they're refusing to adhere to the new agreement then call their bluff and cancel. They might tell you there is nothing they can do, but normally you'll receive a call back before the contract actually ends, offering a much better deal than the sales or cancellation team can offer. 

Potbellypig

Can't help but we move house at the end of January and one of the things I'm looking forward to is ringing Virgin up to cancel.