Virgin Broadband costing elderly couple £70+ pm

Lulu0110

My mum is 81 and partially sighted, dad is 80 and never even used a computer. I do all the online things for them, shop around for their annual bills but I has no idea that their Virgin broadband had never been reviewed and was now over £70 pm. They use the phone and my mum tries to have a squint at Facebook so they are not heavy users by any means. Mum told me she had written to them some time back and got no reply. I appreciate it is down to the consumer to check their bills but these people have allowed her contract to run out and up her bills year on year to a disgusting amount, as well as switching, is there anything that can be done here as MSE top switch today is Virgin at 23.95pm for 18 months but of course mum is a current customer and can't get that. I'm so cross.

JJ_Egan

Check the contract and how long left .

But reads to me as no contract and just rolled to 30 day contract with 30 days notice required .

Lulu0110

Yes I assume so, I will visit Friday and see what I can do. It seems to have rolling over for years, with no contact from them.

JJ_Egan

Get them to cancel and see what VM retentions offer to stay .

Caz3121

Lulu0110 said:

It seems to have rolling over for years, with no contact from them.

might be worth checking what details they have in their profile....I receive an email every month 

"Your latest Virgin Media bill is now ready and waiting for you online.

Your charges this month include £xx.xx for your package. To see the detail behind your charges, please use the 'View this bill' button above and sign in to My Virgin Media.

You've chosen to pay your bill by Direct Debit. There is nothing more for you to do, and we will request £xx.xx from your bank or building society on or immediately after 5th July 2021."

macman

Since she's OOC, you can certainly ask them to match the new customer office, and on the basis that she's been paying a premium rate for years-but they are under no obligation to do so.
If you have been doing 'all the online stuff' for them, does that not include their banking, which would have realised that £70 was going out each month?
Sounds like all they need is a modest BT-based broadband package, no need to pay for VM speeds, and do they even use the subscription channels?

miniemma

I have had a similar experience with my mother in law's account and ended up ringing Virgin head office and asking for the complaints department.  Very helpful, massive discount backdated but now have to go down this route annually.

BT have only recently upgraded the green box near her so were never an option in the past but even now she doesn't want to risk transferring, they have been cable since NTL installed cables.

alastair_1954

Same happened with my dad. He died last November aged 92. I discovered he had been paying huge amount every month for Virgin broadband, although he didn’t have a computer, email or even a decent TV service. Apparently the monthly payments had simply run and run. He also had about a dozen or so product breakdown  insurance policies, each totally worthless as nothing in his house was any less than 20 years old. These were also auto renewing. Seems our elderly are easy targets for such practices.

JJ_Egan

Many younger people also ignore their pay outs and auto renew .

Judged by posts over the years on here its the guilty sons and daughters ignoring their elderly parents and wanting to shift the blame .

alastair_1954

JJ_Egan said:

Judged by posts over the years on here its the guilty sons and daughters ignoring their elderly parents and wanting to shift the blame .

Easier said than done. My dad was fiercely independent and would never discuss money with me. I knew he had sufficient funds and he was very careful with his daily spending, a bit of an old miser to be honest. I think he just forgot about his direct debits -out of sight, out of mind - and, with no immediate money issues, no alarm bells were sounded.

Laz123

Every cloud has a silver lining. At least they're contributing towards Prat Branson's space program.