I pay £17 a month for a Virgin phone that doesn’t work
MY VIRGIN landline stopped working after April 6, with a message showing there was no signal. Virgin sent an engineer on April 24. He said a new line was needed from the road and someone would get in touch to make arrangements. They didn’t.
I called, arranging for another engineer to come. He had a screwdriver. He used this to examine the external box. I needed a new line from the road.
Another phone call. This to a helpful lady who clicked her tongue in sympathy.
I explained that the job would require equipment to run the cable beneath a blockpaved path from the road to front door. Two men arrived with plenty of cable which they left for another team to continue the run underneath some lawn and the blockpaved drive.
Later, two more men arrived. One of them had a screwdriver. Promising — but the van contained no sand, cement or wacker plate.
Another phone call, another engineer, another screwdriver. One look and he pronounced he couldn’t help.
Finally, I arranged to have the drive lifted myself, the cable run underneath it and the drive relayed. It cost £120. It still needs wiring up.
Meanwhile, I am being charged £16.99 a month rent for a phone I cannot use — though I have received a £5.10 ‘goodwill gesture’.
A. M., Herts
Oh, the goodwill and bounty of Virgin Media clearly knows no bounds. As I read your letter I was transported back to the sagas esther Rantzen featured on that’s Life, illustrating consumers’ struggles with incompetent organisations who failed to fix simple problems again and again and again.
Once I made contact, Virgin Media sped into action. Men appeared at your house and reconnected your phone. Your line rental for the missing months has been refunded and they’ve coughed up for the £120 you spent on your drive. In total they have paid you £165.87.
Now, if a bank had messed you around like this I would expect it to pay you some compensation for your time and the fact you had been denied a service it had been contracted to supply.
But Virgin Media declined to offer anything further. It said that just refunding the line rental is ‘the standard rate of compensation we offer in our terms and conditions for loss of service, and from our conversations, Mr M appeared happy with the resolution’.
Well, I think that being without a service for two-and-a-half months deserves more than the standard rate of compensation. You are as unhappy as I am about Virgin’s meanness. So I went back to the firm, emphasising the pathetic level of service it had provided, and after some umm-ing and aah-ing it agreed to pay you an extra £50 compensation. BRITISH Gas i s running an advertising campaign for boiler fitting which says ‘the price we say is the price you pay’. I paid £300 more than it said. I was given a price of £2,830.29. Afterwards I was told I would need an earth spike fitted at an extra cost of £375. I was given £75 off for paying by cheque, but my total bill was £3,130.29.
I wrote to British Gas and it sent £30 for the inconvenience. Further letters have gone unanswered.
A. C., Orpington, Kent
It SeeMS British Gas’s accounts department needs to speak to its marketing and advertising people.
the British Gas campaign says that for boiler installation customers, the price they are quoted will be the price they pay, with no hidden costs even if there is unexpected work to complete.
Your £300 of electrical work was identified after the quote was issued but was not removed from the cost of installation.
When you called to complain, you were mis-advised that because you had been informed of the additional cost on the date of the electrical visit, it would stand. the £30 goodwill gesture you were offered at this stage was for the difficulty you had in making a direct debit payment.
British Gas apologises and has fully reimbursed you for all the additional costs. It says that this is an isolated incident and it fully stands by its commitment on quotes.
A spokesman adds: ‘Mr C was issued with a quote for his new boiler that did not include the cost of some electrical work. this was our mistake and we have apologised for the time it has taken to resolve this.’ I DECIDED to change my TV, telephone and internet provider from Sky to Virgin Media.
I spoke to a lady at Sky on March 4. I received letters saying disconnection would take place on March 26 — when the Virgin Media installation was due to take place — but there was no mention of television.
On March 17, Sky took £125.79 from my bank account for the period March 20 to April 19.
I phoned to say I would no longer be a customer from March 26. It claimed that I had not cancelled the TV. But I had cancelled everything.
I stopped my direct debit on March 31. Sky then sent a letter on April 24 saying I owed £84.17 for the period April 20 to May 19. I have continued disputing this, but recently I got a ‘final warning’ letter from Sky demanding the £84.17 be paid or a debt-collecting agency would be called in.
H. H., Belfast
It CAN be far too difficult to cancel Sky’s services. We must phone — on a number that can cost 9.58p per minute in Sky’s case — and then wait on hold before someone tries to persuade us to stay.
Why can’t we cancel on the internet as easily as we can sign up? If it wants us that badly, the firm can write a letter offering a better deal.
In your case it seems your call dropped out before being concluded, and Sky says attempts to call you back failed to reach you.
With the 31 days’ notice you gave, your television service should have been cancelled on April 4, but this did not happen.
And although Virgin Media took over your other services on March 26, Sky’s charges would still have applied until April 4. Your March 20 payment of £125.79 covered your March services. the incorrect April bill was then generated, resulting in the outstanding balance of £84.17.
All of the incorrect charges have now been adjusted and the resulting overpayment of £23.85 has been repaid to you by Sky.
A spokesperson adds: ‘We are sorry about the inconvenience Mr h experienced. We didn’t properly process the cancellation for his tV services f rom the date he had requested.’