Moved to Sky Talk / BB - Virgin continued charging - now need to get it back

[Pieman]

Hi All

Hope someone can advise best way forward here....

Mother was with Virgin for ADSL Broadband and Phone calls (via the BT line).

Advised VM last week of Sept that she wanted to leave and requested MAC code - this was provided. All minimum terms have been served.

2nd October - email received saying "sorry you're leaving us...."

12th October - bill received including advance service charges for Oct/Nov

17th October - transferred over to SkyTalk / Sky BB

11th November - VM send bill - includes future service charges.....

This has continued in December and January billing cycles, until I got involved.


Spoke to Billing team in VM - he discontinued the account which has changed the Bill for January. He checked and the tags were all showing Sky had the lines etc. He then said he could not refund what they took incorrectly as Sky had taken the line "by force" and done a Cease request. We had to speak to Sky to get them to refund - he then said "if they refuse to help you will need to speak to Ofcom".

So - spoke to Billing at Sky, who did some checks and says "sorry VM are wrong we did take the account correctly using the MAC code....it's not possible to take the lines forcibly.....you will need to speak to VM to get it".

So now we are limbo....in my eyes VM should refund. They can see that the account was not there's from 17th October....when I speak to them on Monday can anyone advise who can sort this on the day - I don't want to be passed from piller to post.

Thanks all....

[bubblegun]

Originally Posted by Pieman

Hi All

Hope someone can advise best way forward here....

Mother was with Virgin for ADSL Broadband and Phone calls (via the BT line).

Advised VM last week of Sept that she wanted to leave and requested MAC code - this was provided. All minimum terms have been served.

2nd October - email received saying "sorry you're leaving us...."

12th October - bill received including advance service charges for Oct/Nov

17th October - transferred over to SkyTalk / Sky BB

11th November - VM send bill - includes future service charges.....

This has continued in December and January billing cycles, until I got involved.


Spoke to Billing team in VM - he discontinued the account which has changed the Bill for January. He checked and the tags were all showing Sky had the lines etc. He then said he could not refund what they took incorrectly as Sky had taken the line "by force" and done a Cease request. We had to speak to Sky to get them to refund - he then said "if they refuse to help you will need to speak to Ofcom".

So - spoke to Billing at Sky, who did some checks and says "sorry VM are wrong we did take the account correctly using the MAC code....it's not possible to take the lines forcibly.....you will need to speak to VM to get it".

So now we are limbo....in my eyes VM should refund. They can see that the account was not there's from 17th October....when I speak to them on Monday can anyone advise who can sort this on the day - I don't want to be passed from piller to post.

Thanks all....

Sounds like they are acknowledging you shouldn't have been charged but they don't want to be the one having to apply the credits. Follow the complaints procedure or email chief executive.

What they said about forcibly taking the line probably means a 3rd party cease going onto Skys' LLU network where you didn't even need a MAC. But even if that means that you cannot get a refund for the billing period you were in when transferred you would still be entitled to refunds on the subsequent monthly billing.

To escalate to OFCOM you will still need to follow the companies complaints procedure in the first instance.

This is a serious issue. TalkTalk were fined £3million for a similar thing.

[Pieman]

Thanks for the info.....will follow up with them later.