In January 2011, whilst paying a bill over the phone (we don't use direct debit), we were offered an upgrade to the 50 meg service and a 'superhub'. We agreed to this having read about VM's claim that it would be 'perfect for gaming', this was the sole motivation for the switch.
However, several months later the service wasn't performing to the standards expected, although the actual internet speeds seemed reasonable. I began to look further into the issue and set up a broadband monitor which continuously displayed the latency issues that were the root cause of the problem. I then discovered this was a wide spread problem amongst customers of VM, one post on their forum in particular drew my interest.
In the post a user was having similar problems to those of mine, and was on the 50 meg service, he enquired as to whether an upgrade to the 100 meg service would resolve his problem. VM stated that the poor latency was due to UBR issues that an upgrade wouldn't improve. Having read elsewhere it appears these UBR issues are a fundamental issue and one which VM doesn't see as a priority in improving.
As a result, and due to the continually unimpressive latency graphs/superhub faults, I decided to switch to BT Infinity. Having placed an order with them they contacted VM who phoned me up to discuss the decision. I had a lengthy and interesting conversation with a member of customer services who accepted nothing could be done, and then said he would place a cancellation order for us.
Having had BT installed and received great performance we thought the issue was resolved. However, when our next Virgin Media bill arrived (we retained our TV service with them), they cost for the months internet was still there. As was a £93 cancellation fee. Upon enquiry with customer services, they claimed that in accepting their offer to upgrade to the 50 meg service we had agrred to a new 12 month bundle. We stated our surprise, given that this was never mentioned over the phone, nor had we ever received a contract through the post, despite their claims they had sent one. We insisted we were never made aware of the terms of the contract, but it appeared to fall on deaf ears to the member of staff who was very aggressive. She stated that our payment for service suggested an acceptance of the contract. However we argued that in paying for the services we were merely continuing to pay what we thought was the original agreement, not entry into a new contract.
We then sent a recorded letter to the cancelation team explaining our case in detail. A few days later the complaints department sent us a letter suggesting someone would phone us to discuss the problem. Today customer services phoned agreeing that the bill was wrong, charging for a service we were no longer receiving was incorrect. However, despite this there would still be a £93 cancellation fee. We then hinted we would like to cancel the TV as well if this was the case. They then stated we would have to pay a further amount as the whole bundle was renewed when agreeing to the upgrade and that the TV had 5 months to run contractually also.
I have no intention of paying a cancellation fee for a contract that never existed. From our standpoint there was never mutual ascent so a contract cannot exist. I would be eternally grateful to hear from anyone who has any thoughts or experience of any dealing with VM in this manner. I now plan to take further action firstly with the ISPA, and then ofcom, perhaps with a view to ADR. Any thoughts on this course of action are more than welcome.
Apologies for the long read, but I thought I may as well get all the details out there. Thanks
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