TiVo : Being charged for on demand programmes which were never requested

[Stevedore78]

Hi,

Apologies if this is a query that has been answered before. I was wondering if anyone has heard of a scenario whereby on demand services repeatedly appear on a bill in circumstances where the services have not been ordered by the occupier of the house in question.

This is the situation which applies regarding my Mother. She is 75 years old and barely has the ability to switch the television on never mind order an on demand programme. There is no one else in the house would be able to order on demand services and the programmes which are ordered - generally children's programmes aren't ones that she would have the faintest interest in watching.

This has been going on for some time now. She raised the issue back in 2012. Virgin sent out an engineer to check that everything was functioning properly. However, the problem persists. It has gone on the back burner due to bigger issues coming to the fore. However, she was charged £20 in December for a series of on demand programmes and games.

The total amount that she has overpaid is now in excess of £80 and there seems to be no sign that the problem is or will be rectified. Previously Virgin's attitude was that unless she could prove that she hadn't requested the programmes that she would have to pay for them - a pretty appalling attitude in the circumstances.

I am going to take up the cudgels with them but I was wondering if this is a common problem. I'm not technically minded but it would seem to me that someone is hacking into her account and using her pin number to order programmes. It may be that she will have to leave Virgin in order to be sure that further unauthorised are not made from her account.

I'd be happy to hear if anyone has encountered this or has any suggestions how I go about addressing this.

Many thanks

[jb66]

It is possible for virgin to disable all Pay per view on an account

[spiderplant]

I suggest you contact ceo.office@virginmedia.co.uk. They can investigate what is happening and, as jb66 says, block On Demand.

You can also change some settings on the Virgin box yourself. Go into the Parental Controls and/or Purchase Controls menus (the menus available will depend on the box type), and set everything to the maximum. Then change the PIN to a random value instead of the easily-guessed default of 1234.

[RichardCoulter]

I have a friend who left VM because of this.

He is housebound and lives alone. When his bill erroneously stated that he had watched a PPV movie, he rang to complain and it was removed.

The following month, the same thing happened again, however, when he called VM the second time, they insisted that somebody must have ordered the movie and refused to take it off again.

Apart from effectively being made out to be a liar, he didn't want to risk it happening again, so cancelled.

He received his final bill and didn't want to have any trouble, so decided that he would pay it in full next time his carer went to town.

Within DAYS, the debt had been passed over to a debt collection agency and letters were sent to him. In due course, his carer went to town and paid the bill.

Even after doing this, he kept being harrassed by the debt collection agency, who refused to accept that the bill had been paid.

Eventually, I got him to write an email to the CEO and it was sorted out.

As the old saying goes, it can take years to build up goodwill and loyalty from customers and seconds to destroy it.

[Stevedore78]

Hi all,

Thanks very much for your responses. I have e-mailed the CEO as suggested. Hopefully, they will refund my mum and disable the on-demand function. I get the sense that this isn't an isolated case. It calls into question how secure Virgin's set top boxes are. If it was widely known that your account could be hacked into like this ........

Thanks again. I find it quite heart warming that people are willing to take the time to respond to things like this.

[theone2k10]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

I have a friend who left VM because of this.

He is housebound and lives alone. When his bill erroneously stated that he had watched a PPV movie, he rang to complain and it was removed.

The following month, the same thing happened again, however, when he called VM the second time, they insisted that somebody must have ordered the movie and refused to take it off again.

Apart from effectively being made out to be a liar, he didn't want to risk it happening again, so cancelled.

He received his final bill and didn't want to have any trouble, so decided that he would pay it in full next time his carer went to town.

Within DAYS, the debt had been passed over to a debt collection agency and letters were sent to him. In due course, his carer went to town and paid the bill.

Even after doing this, he kept being harrassed by the debt collection agency, who refused to accept that the bill had been paid.

Eventually, I got him to write an email to the CEO and it was sorted out.

As the old saying goes, it can take years to build up goodwill and loyalty from customers and seconds to destroy it.

BIB is exactly what happened to me the day after i recieved my final bill it had gone to a debt collector so i made the scumbags wait for their money then they have the nerve to ask you to go out of your way to return their equipment instead of sending someone around to pick it up, vm are scumbags in my eyes and i will never go back to them, they are overpriced money grabbers.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by spiderplant

I suggest you contact ceo.office@virginmedia.co.uk. They can investigate what is happening and, as jb66 says, block On Demand.

You can also change some settings on the Virgin box yourself. Go into the Parental Controls and/or Purchase Controls menus (the menus available will depend on the box type), and set everything to the maximum. Then change the PIN to a random value instead of the easily-guessed default of 1234.

Just to back up spiderplant's advice, the best people to deal with this would be the Ceo's office.

[spiderplant]

But also change the box settings as I advised.