We've been disconnected... again :(

[BenMcr]

What was your bill before the XL upgrade?

[rickymallory]

£31.25 so definitely gone up this month - They said it would be compensation receiving BB XL for 4 months at the price of BB L... obviously not

[BenMcr]

That's not what I asked. You should be able to access a bill from six months ago - so what does that say?

[rickymallory]

Our XL upgrade happened only after the last month. I'm not too sure what you mean? Totals?.

15th July 2009
£84.72

14th August 2009
£94.21

15th september 2009
£101.16

15th october 2009
£92.66

13th November 2009
£104.80

15th December 2009
£118.05

15th January 2009
£112.30

Here's the bill from August last year... 6 months ago:

Payment Summary
Balance Brought Forward £54.72
Previous Bill Balance £84.72
Payment Details £-30.00
Date Description Amount
Fri 14 Aug Late Payment Charge £10.00
Tue 21 Jul Payment - Thank you £-30.00
Fri 24 Jul Payment - Thank you £-10.00

Service Charges
Total service charges £30.93
Includes VAT at the appropriate rate(s)
Refunds and adjustments £-0.32
Main services (Provided by Virgin Media Ltd) £-0.32
Description Date/period Amount
VAT Credit 13 August £-0.32
Advance charges £31.25
Main services (Provided by Virgin Media Ltd or Virgin Media Payments Ltd) £31.25
Description Date/period Amount
Telephone Line Rental 24 August - 23 September £11.00
Phone & Broadband L Discount 24 August - 23 September £-11.00
Talk Weekends 24 August - 23 September £0.00
Free Voicemail 24 August - 23 September £0.00
Payment Handling Charge 24 August - 23 September £5.00
Broadband Size: L 24 August - 23 September £25.00
Paper Bill Charge 13 August £1.25

Telephone Usage Charges
for 013-------
Total telephone usage charges £8.56
Call charges £7.44
See Call details section
VAT £1.12
VAT on Telephone usage charges at 15% on £7.44

[BenMcr]

No I mean a bill breakdown before you were upgraded to XL - same as you posted from the PDF

[rickymallory]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

No I mean a bill breakdown before you were upgraded to XL - same as you posted from the PDF

Sorry I just added that to my previous post... in text form this time, trying to save bandwidth so wont upload a piccy from it..

[BenMcr]

Ok I had possibly though that you hadn't recieved any discount (or a lower one) when you were on BB L - but everything seems correct

So I'm not sure what the 4 month thing was all about. You would need to query it with VM

[rickymallory]

Yeah, the 20Mb upgrade wasn't an 'upgrade' as such... it would be 20Mb for 4 months then go back to 10Mb (no extra charge)... but it seems that something has gone wrong and it's being classed as a permanent payed upgrade.

This was due to the bills not showing up and then us ending up having to pay £10 late payment charges every month.

I think we will definitely drop the phone... the XL BB will be £30 a month + £5 processing charge = £35? That does seem much more affordable.

But still we need to try and clear this £114.04 arrears from the account. that won't be easy.

[TheDon]

You could look at what type of call charges you're getting, if they're non-mobile then either phone L or XL will both be cheaper than the charges on the bill you posted.

The thing that's caused your arrears seems to be that you've been paying in arrears for months, and so accumulating late payment fees and call charges as you haven't known how much and when to pay.

If you look through the bills you'll probably find that the charges aren't much more than £35, it's only £36 for XL BB and phone M with the non-DD charge, so it depends how much you can get your call charges down by. If you can get a bank account to pay it from once you've cleared the arrears then you'll also be in a much better position, £5 for the luxury of not paying by DD isn't at all worth it IMO.

[rickymallory]

Yup I agree, Mum is reluctant to do DD as it's my step dad... unless it's something to benefit him he doesn't care... he just got a blackberry curve on Orange... he says it's £12 a month which seems impossible... that phone on Orange is £30/m at least!!

[rickymallory]

Mum has decided we will be dropping the phone and just having BB XL... we're fully entitled to drop the phone? I think you can alter your package once every three months. if VM say no mum said we would still keep the phone but just not use it.

One of the reasons is they keep messing up the street cab and crossing the lines, we can hear other people talking on our line sometimes.. They fixed it once but it's still like it, we were getting other peoples calls at one point.

This should be £30/m + £5/m payment processing fees?

BB XL is £30 (without phone) AFAIK (says on the website) but on our bill it says we're being charged £37 with a £17 discount for having the phone.

Anyways, something isn't right somewhere my mum thinks especially as we're being charged for the XL BB when it was supposed to be compensation for 4 months at the cost of BB L, When they phone VM tomorrow I think Hell will break loose.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by rickymallory

BB XL is £30 (without phone) AFAIK (says on the website) but on our bill it says we're being charged £37 with a £17 discount for having the phone.

And if you do end up on BB XL by itself it will be £37 with a £7 discount

[rickymallory]

Thank you for that Ben, that's cleared it up!

I never knew you got any discount with BB XL on its own!

Fingers crossed we can get this sorted tomorrow, I'm hoping we will be able to clear this up and hopefully get some of that whopping £114.04 bill wiped off.

What's weird is my step dad phoned them yesterday and was quoted that the current outstanding balance is about £41 so I'm not sure why the e-bill is showing that huge sum of money if they aren't saying about when we ask on the phone how much is owed.

Also Thank you to Joglynne!

[BenMcr]

The e-bill balance doesn't change if payments have been made in between the bill being produced and now.

[rickymallory]

We haven't paid anything yet.

We can't pay anything until Thursday and then we can only pay the usual amount, I suppose we will have to pay some more the Monday after, anyhow we should be able to pay enough on Thursday to get our services back... That's £41 + £10 late payment + £5 handling, So I think £56.

We can then pay another £50 on next Monday that will leave £23.04 left out of that £114.04 chunk left to pay.

They said we can't change our services or drop our phone until we have paid some money and been reconnected. Sounds fair to me!

We would have paid some today but we need to get electric, food and gas, last week was a bad week.