O2 have been taking £5 unauthorised direct debit from my 81 yo Dad for 15 months

tiny_girl

PHK said:

tiny_girl said:

Grumpy_chap said:

tiny_girl said:

Nope.  Just TV, Broadband & Landline + £1.75 admin fee for paper bills: 

My Gosh!!!
£115 per months after discounts, until it increases to £150 per month in October.
Does he really need such a comprehensive package?
There seems to be far more scope for efficiency here than just the £5 per month mobile.

You do need to look a the original paperwork, though, as that may indicate that the package also includes the £5 SIM to be billed separately - particularly if it was just after O2 and VM joined forces but they had not combined billing.

RedLorryYellowLorry1 said:

Hi I had simular issues with my mother and wrote to them in a formal letter asking for the costs to stop and refund to be issues (they had set up a new account and not delated the other). What worked well was that I sent a copy of the letter to the CEO - the matter was resolved within days with flowers. Alway consider talking to you local councillor and get in touch with the company HR/CEO who emails and address is normally public knowledge.

I always feel that issues should be resolved via the company complaints process first - it is hard to see how a local Councillor can really do much in the case of Virgin Media.  Amazed that you got a bunch of flowers.

We've got the original paperwork and there's no mention of a mobile or sim card being part of the package. It is expensive but he likes his sports and they said the best way to get that was to get the Max package 🤷🏼‍♀️ It was going to be £184 before we renegotiated. Not relishing doing it again in October. It seems really unfair that they can't just offer everyone a fair price without having to renegotiate a better deal every 18 months 🤬 especially for older people 

Is it possible he’s added it since he took it out. 

No, he hasn't.  Plus the payments started in April 2023, which is when he renegotiated the contract, so it has to be related to that.  There's no mention of O2 being part of Volt on the contract either.  He specifically said that he didn't need the SIM in the package:

 .  

Kim_13

It is all a little odd, there is no such tier as 600 broadband, they have 50 (seems to be being phased out), 125, 250, 350, 500 and 1 gig.

Having looked at ours, where it is known that an O2 sim is involved, the contract had an X against the sim, as the sim was taken directly with O2 and never agreed via VM at all. So the problem here is mainly with O2, as Virgin have been told that there is an active O2 contract sim at the address and increase the speed to the next tier up accordingly free of charge. Virgin need to answer as to why Volt M600 is listed on his bill - given their available BB speeds, it should be M350 as a non-O2 customer and Volt M500 if they think he is an O2 customer.)

Our breakdown was similar, stated as Volt M250 broadband on the bill, having been M125 before their boost offer came along.

What are forumites’ opinions on him submitting a SAR request to O2? Would that flush out the evidence that they think they have that he is a customer, and force them to refund if they can’t produce it? If they came back with a contract, wouldn’t the next step be reporting that as fraudulent?

After this length of time any call recordings will be gone, sadly.

tiny_girl

Kim_13 said:

It is all a little odd, there is no such tier as 600 broadband, they have 50 (seems to be being phased out), 125, 250, 350, 500 and 1 gig.

Having looked at ours, where it is known that an O2 sim is involved, the contract had an X against the sim, as the sim was taken directly with O2 and never agreed via VM at all. So the problem here is mainly with O2, as Virgin have been told that there is an active O2 contract sim at the address and increase the speed to the next tier up accordingly free of charge. Virgin need to answer as to why Volt M600 is listed on his bill - given their available BB speeds, it should be M350 as a non-O2 customer and Volt M500 if they think he is an O2 customer.)

Our breakdown was similar, stated as Volt M250 broadband on the bill, having been M125 before their boost offer came along.

What are forumites’ opinions on him submitting a SAR request to O2? Would that flush out the evidence that they think they have that he is a customer, and force them to refund if they can’t produce it? If they came back with a contract, wouldn’t the next step be reporting that as fraudulent?

After this length of time any call recordings will be gone, sadly.

This is really useful.  Thank you so much.  The renewal process was a bit of a nightmare.  We tried to do it a total of 3 times between January and April, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone had clicked the wrong button or signed him up to something they shouldn't have done somewhere along the way. 

The first two times, we were told it hadn't "gone through".  We only knew because the package included a hardware update on his old TiVo box and the engineers failed to materialise at the agreed appointment date & time, so we called up, only to be told there was no record of the contract, even though one had been generated and sent to my Dad by email.  We asked to regenerate it but were told the package was no longer available, so had to start all over again.  This time, we were promised a box would be sent in the post and were told to call to book the engineer when it arrived, but again nothing happened and we were told the same thing.  On the 3rd attempt, a very helpful engineer came out and installed the boxes, as planned, but none of the agreements contain anything about a SIM card or an arrangement with 02.  

An SAR request is a good idea though.  I'll look into that.  O2 have since responded to our email via Resolver, saying the complaints process might be delayed because he didn't give them his O2 mobile phone number!  It's obviously automated because anyone reading the complaint would know that he doesn't have one and that's the problem!  

Thanks for your help!