Switching to Virgin Media Social Tariff Nightmare

M0therNature

I'm a long standing Broadband only customer with Virgin and recently applied and was accepted for the Essential Broadband Plus Social Tariff package priced at £20 per month. However it's become a nightmare that Virgin don't, won't or can't sort out.

My new contract seems to be a mix of 2 packages (Broadband Essential Plus and M-50 Fibre Broadband). The contract mimimum period is 1 month at a price of £28 per month and recently informed it will be increasing to £35 from April.

I've complained via the complaints service who haven't acknowledged the actual problem with the package, just my complaint regarding the incompetence of the human I eventually got through to.

I also brought it up on their discussion forum where a member of the Admin team has tried to sort it out for me and promised that I will instead be given a rolling discount so that I will only pay the £20 per month but they are not able to provide me with a new contract or confirmation of what has been said which I feel he may not have the authority or legal rights to do so or is a roundabout way of trying to shut me up in the hopes I'll give up and accept the package.

I don't know whether I should wait for 'deadlock' or wait the 8 weeks before contacting the ombudsman. Changing to another provider isn't an option either, there are no other fibre providers in our area and I really need the reliability of fibre.

Anyone any ideas? I've spent days trying to resolve this but still not getting anywhere.

johnph

I know how you feel. VM ar not good at explaining things.

I applied to VM online for social tariff and completed questionaire on Chat, inc consent to Pension Services for verification of Benefit.

It then says login to VM account and follow instructions. Except nothing happened and only option was to Upgrade or Cancel account.

No mention of Social Tariff option. Does it rally exist? Why dos MSE promote it?

VM agent was not much help either, suggesting I repeat whole process again which I have already done several times. Looks like VM don't know their own procedures, or don't want to have cheaper tariffs.

Still awaiting outcome of my request, but not much hope.

Also, initially Pension Civil Servants were on strke so that was not much help. What now?

May try Hyperoptic instead if necessary, but not sure how emails work with them. Would I need another router for that?