Ending Vrigin Media Contract Early

Masta.c

Hi

A friend of mine has broadband, phone and tv with virgin for £20 a month. she wants to cancel because the broadband service is not very good, she doesnt use the phone and she wants sky plus instead.

How can the contract be ended early? will there be any cancellation charges?

She has told me that she never returned the signed contract to them, so they dont have her signature saying she has agreed to the 12 month contract.

Thanks

normanmark

If she's used the broadband already then its as good as agreeing to the terms & conditions.

If the service worked from the first date then she's got a good claim for being able to cancel without any charges. If its worked then she's not got much to go on in terms of not paying the cancellation charge for leaving the contract early.

lg789

I tried to cancel my Virgin Media today to change to Sky Plus, thinking we only had 2 months left on our contract. Turns out they very sneakily imposed a new 12-month contract on us when we moved house in September and transferred service over, so to get out of it we would have to pay for the months remaining on our contract - £105 (now we know that was in the small print, but it was never at any point made clear).

Virgin Media have been the worst company we've ever dealt with - terrible broadband service, very rude customer service advisers, sneaky charges and they even threatened us with legal action at one point for non-payment of bills because they'd lost our direct debit instruction! I shouldn't think your friend has a chance of getting out of her contract without paying for the remaining months when the company is so unwilling to do anything for their customers - the only thing I can do to stand up for myself now is to tell everyone what a terrible company they are!!

normanmark

lg789 wrote: »

(now we know that was in the small print, but it was never at any point made clear).

Just out of curiosity how come you didnt take responsibility to read through the small print?

lg789

I didn't read the small print because I have better things to do with my rare free time than read the small print of every single company of which I am a customer. I consider imposing a new contract on someone for moving house to be a pretty major thing - not pointing this out to customers (even when I was on the phone to them for an hour trying to get the service transferred over because they messed it up) is quite clearly a deliberate move on their part to mislead their customers who do not have time to read their small print. I really do think there are some things too big for companies not to make 100% clear to their customers, and imposing a new contract is surely one of them.

I am fully aware that I am legally at fault for not reading the small print, but I feel strongly that I have business morality on my side - I cannot be the only person who does not have time to read the small print for every single company they use, so my only intention in posting this is to warn people in a similar situation to myself about, what I consider to be, Virgin Media's sneaky ways.

saad_awal

When I moved my house, I was told on the phone that I was being signed on for a new 12 month contract.

franklally

The same happened to me and I had to pay a fortune to leave them early -they didn't send me a final invoice for the 'leaving payment' so thought I was in luck (the broadband service they gave me though was such rubbish it was quite just I thought not to charge me) they passed by details on to a debt collection agency - it turns out they send the final bill via email which of course they have closed.

Absolute cowboys.

SnowMonkey_3

I'm in a similar situation.

My property was damaged in a fire and I'm having to move out so that the building work can start. I'm moving in with my partner who already has a Virgin Media package so I cant move my service there, if I did, she'd have to cancel her package and pay the cancellation fee.

I've been told that I have 6 months left so this will be added onto my final bill. I gotta say that during my discussions with them, I've explored any options available to avoid doing this. I've not had any problems with my phone, internet or TV so I would probably continue being a customer if I could.

However, I too still have my contract that I'm supposedly signed into so I'm wondering if I've agreed to anything at all.

Sure, they've connected me and provided me with a service for the last six months but surely they should only do that once the customer has signed and agreed to the terms and conditions in this "Residential services contract: Hire agreement regulated by the consumer credit act 1974"

I'm not pleading ignorance here or expect them to waive the charge based on the fact that "I didnt know..."

But surely the reasons these contracts exist is so that if theres non payment or early cancellation, the provider can state that the customer gave written agreement to be bound by its terms.

They didnt send me it for no reason. But on the assumption that I would return it, they arranged installation anyway.

Since you cant discuss this with them over the phone, I've emailed in a complaints thing asking what they propose. I'm gonna put something in writing too.

If theyre gonna quote T&C's to me, then they have to make sure that theyve followed the rules as well!

I'll keep you updated of how I get on.

BexTech

If you have issues with broadband post in their support newsgroups, they will help put it right.

I wouldn't want broadband from anyone else, cable is the real only reliable and decent broadband provider out there.

Dando83

I too got roped into another 12 month service following a house move. I think something's not right about restarting a contract on the basis of a move.

I had previously noted the appearance of "12 months" on the top of "contracts" that Virgin sends when I'd added a service. I queried it once with any agent who said "don't worry, you only need to give us 30 days notice". Funny how that wasn't the case when I called to cancel the other day hoping to move to Sky.

Shame because the Sky promo at the moment is quite good and our friends here at MSE even have a link to get a free Ipod touch out of the move.

Virgin willing to install me the Virgin + HD box for £50 and charge me £45 a month for XL TV. Large broadband and Talk anywhere 200 phone. Bit more than I was comfortable with.

furbix

Same thing happened to me, they extended the contract unbeknownst to me when I made a change in the service and now require £65 cancellation fee plus the monthly fee even thought I won't be in the property (over £120 or at least thats what the person on the phone led me to believe). Have to agree with above, when you work you don't have time to pour through mindless contract terms. This is a public service isn't it, they shouldn't be allowed to pull the wool over our eyes like this. The agreement should be crystal clear from the outset.

In addition, god help us if all call centres up north are like this one lol; their actually worse than the asian ones.