Quote:
Originally Posted by lostandconfused
Regardless of if you have it in writing or not, they can remove a discount whenever they want provided they give you 30 days notice. Likewise if this happens you are prefectly entitled to cancel you contract again with 30 days notice
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That's fair enough and I think that I will be cancelling because I don't like the way they do business.
The letter I received this morning is extremely patronising (Virgin housestyle though) and implies that I have been undercharged due to an error, rather than VM simply taking the periodic opportunity to re-assess the commercial value of agreements with customers.
So the letter itself is simply dishonest.
---------- Post added at 14:09 ---------- Previous post was at 14:00 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart C
True. Although they are actually merging billing systems because they have different systems for different networks (ex-Cable and Wireless and ex-NTL).
True. They are also cancelling a lot of discounts to save money.
If it were a contract, they would insist on you staying at least 12 months extra, which they didn't.
This is correct. Although I didn't do a law degree, I did study some contracts law as part of my degree. Basically, a Verbal contract is worthless as if it comes to court, no one can prove what was agreed. The same applies to offers. If a Customer Service agent promises you something, then doesn't make a note on your account and you have nothing in writing, then Virgin only have your word that the offer was made. As they don't know you from Adam, they won't usually take your word (I am not saying you would, but you could be phoning up and trying to get a discount you weren't promised).
Unfortunately, the above applies. They don't know what offers were made.
Unforetunately, NTL were desperate to retain as many customers as possible. As such, they seemed to encourage retentions to keep customers at all costs. This has led less scrupulous agents to basically make up deals, just to keep the figures up.
Note: I don't know if they did encourage it, but they certainly didn't seem that active in discouraging it either.
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Under English Law, a contract is concluded on an offer being accepted. Unwritten contracts are enforceable, although harder to determine if disputed. However, in my case, the contracted rate is evidenced by the subsequent billing pattern.
At the time, NTL rates had become uncompetitive so it was fairly understandable why NTL would offer a market-matching rate, rather than an exceptional deal for an individual customer.