I HAVE BEEN INFORMED BY A VIRGIN MEDIA ADVISOR THAT IN THIS YEAR THEY HAVE CANCELLED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF CUSTOMERS DIRECT DEBITS IN ORDER TO CHARGE THEM ADMINISTRATION CHARGES UNKNOWN TO THEM.

THERE REASON AND WAY OF HIDING THIS WAS BY CLAIMING TO COMBINING BILLS. YOU WOULD NOW RECIEVE A PAPER BILL WITH A £5 ADMINISTRATION CHARGE...

TENS OF THOUSANDS X £5 = A LOT OF OUR MONEY = NATIONAL SCAM

HERE IS HOW I FOUND OUT

MY LETTER
I am absolutley disgusted in the way i have been spoke to and the way i have been treated, After being a loyal customer for 3 years it is an absolute disgrace, also the infomation that one of your advisors has given has caused utter disbelief in such a big company . I was advised that you cancelled tens of thousands of customers direct debits in order to make more money by charging them administration fees for paper bills. It is totally disgusting, Over the past two weeks i have spent hours on end talking to people who dont seem to understand or speak a word of english yet they can call me a liar.

Like i said i have been a loyal customer for over 3 years, For the first two years i was just using your broadband middle for £18 last september i was contacted by a member of your sales staff who informed me for a 12 month period of a special offer of £2 only i would recieve a phone line with talk unlimited to any landline 01 - or 02 number, Yes thats correct so i would only pay £20 in total for the two services. I agreed- A month later i recieve two bills one for the internet and one for the phone, Yet the phone wasnt £2 it was £11 and they had decided to charge me £7 for the talk unlimited, I phoned and they said they would sort it out, Instead i never heard anything, a month passed, another month passed, then i recieved a threatening letter, It claimed i owed in the region of £100, This was very distessing to me as i had always paid my bill by direct debit and had never missed a payment. Anyway after another couple of hours on the phone we realised that VIRGIN MEDIA had combined both bills and unknown to me they had cancelled my direct debit. I wasnt once informed of these changes. I was also informed that the charges included £10 administration charges because i wasnt paying by direct debit, This really annoyed me as my original contract was direct debit and it was you VIRGIN MEDIA that had cancelled it so how could charge me administration fees, Then i get told £30 is 3 late payment charges, Again this is totaly disgusting as i had never missed a payment, i pressumed the money was coming out by direct debit-one that VIRGIN MEDIA cancelled. So after another hour on the phone i reluctenly pay it on my card and we agree to reset up the direct debit...everythings sorted
3 months pass guess what i recieve another threatening letter, this time sayin g the same thing i havent paid, administration charges, and late payment charges. This now cases me great stress i am absolutly raging another couple of hours on the phone talking to people who dont listen and dont understand, after 2 hours they realise they tried taking the money out of somebody elses account so they once again cancelled the direct debits. This is a joke an absolut joke, they appologise (ha ha ha ) And again i make a payment on my card, this time i say i dont want direct debit, just send me an invoice, they agree...

3 months later...i dont believe this another threatening letter, Is this some kind of sick joke are you really this ignorant, very annoyed i ring virgin straight away, I am put on the phone to an asian speaking man claiming his name is cyril daz, I ask him to spell his name he repeats CYRIL DAZ after about an hour of yet another aggonizing conversation of trying to explain to yet another VIRGIN MEDIA CA He calls me a liar, I say i beg your pardon he explains i am a liar as i am claiming i havent recieved a bill and he can clearley see i have been sent three bills, As he has called me a liar this totaly rages me, this is disgusting how dare he call me a liar, after another 20 minutes of me and him arguing he realises something on his screen that infact i was correct as no bills had been sent because Ebilling had been set up and they had sent the bills to an unused email address, it turns out that when i was last on the phone 3 months prior the woman had set up EBILLING, i vagely remember her explaining it to me but she convinced me my card would be charged automatically- after she took my registered email address and password without my knowlegde or permission she had set up EBILLING cyrill daz was now appologising for calling me a liar he said he was under great stress and he hated the way virgin treated people and that i was being scammed, This is the best bit.

He actually told me that virgin media had cancelled tens of thousands of virgimedias customers direct debits in order for them to be able to charge administration fees.

This is the icing on the cake i am totaly disgusted, i feel sick, you mean to say i am part of a national scam against VIRGIN MEDIAS customers, This is just too much, I phone up to sort out your mess and your troubles and stresses you have caused me and i get this infomation. I demand to speak to his supervisor he then strats appologising and saying no please, I speak to his supervisor who is not interested one bit in a word his colleage had said he couldnt understand what he had done and said that was so wrong, It was like he just couldnt understand how those comments would make me so angry he was more intersted in me making a payment, I demand to speak to a manager, A woman comes to the phone who again is not interested, she appologises for her staffs behaviour but insists i make a payment or i will be swithed off. Over the next few days i am contacted by virgin media staff hounding me, i have spent hours on the phone explaining the same thing over and over and it seems like there is one big communication fault inside VIRGIN MEDIA . I am disgusted.

Anyway after the phone call i decide to visit online forums to ask if anybody had been treated the same, to my amazement it seemed CYRIL daz was correct round about march virgin media had canncelled thousands of peoples direct debits and are now charging them money for administration fees, I couldnt believe it, How disgusted our we now,

I have contacted Ofcom, Trading standars and i have spoken to media and currently awaiting to make an interview with the national press this week, I have been contacted by THE SUN-THE MIRROR-THE STAR all who are more than interested for this story. i hav had to go this far as not once where you interested, i am now awaiting to see how long you take to sort this mess out.
also i would be very grateful to know what you intend to do about...

Charging me administration fees after you cancelled my direct debit.

charging me late payment fees after you cnever sent me any infomation regarding tpayments.

How i ring to complain and i am accused of being a liar.

How you can charge me administration fees for bills you never sent to my house but sent by em, ail.

i await your call

EVERYONE MUST READ THIS

I ordered SKY TV and a BT phone, and rang VirginMedia to cancel my monthly subscription to TV Channels, Phone and Broadband.

The disconnection department offered me such a tremendous deal to remain with Virgin that I accepted and cencelled all the new Sky and BT intallations. They ofered me a deal of under £45 for All normal channels except movies, 2MB broadbank and free calls on the landline phone, which was a massive reduction to my monthly bill.

We kept checking the bill and nothing had been amended, so eventually rang Virgin to sort it out. They denied ever giving us this deal and told us that no one at Virgin had the authority to give such a deal. You can imagine my frustration. They seem to be covering up these deals by dening they ever happened. They all but calle us liars. Basically we are paying £58 per month, which is a lot more than I agreed with the disconnections depatment.

Has anyone else has the same experience, becasue I want to take this matter further, and possibly take legal action against Virgin. But to do this I need other people with the same story to come forward.

Thanks
Bernie Harris

Just a word of warning to anybody thinking of signing up to Virgin Media- DON'T! The way they treat customers is beyond belief and every single person that you speak to is trained to lie to you. The only other provider that comes anywhere near these idiots is NTL who also lie and Virgin own them. They regularly hang up on you when you provide them with details that they cannot argue their way out of. Branson's basically a swindler regardless of the image he likes to protray. STAY WELL CLEAR OF VIRGIN MEDIA!

I was about to move house, so I contacted Virgin to arrange to cancel services and collection of equipment. They arranged to collect between 12-6 on Thursday 4th September, which was after I moved. I returned to the house to let them collect their equipment, but they failed to turn up. I arranged another appointment, but complained and asked for compensation for the 80 miles travelling involved. They say it is not their fault that I decided to move home so I am entitled to nothing - and attempting to take my complaint further would do no good as the complaint would only be returned to the person I was talking to!
My Fault? They had 6 hours to turn up, but they couldn't even be bothered to let me know they weren't coming! Now I have to bear the costs of an 80 mile round trip because of their bad service, all with no ombudsman to take the complaint to.
I have now managed to get a £10 reduction of my bill, which barely covers half my costs.
Customer service or customer circus?

Earlier this month my mother passed away. I rang VM to cancel her subsciption for her TV, Phone and Broadband Service. No problem. I was told that I was not to worry for a couple of weeks and to contact them when I felt I could make arrangements for the equipment to be collected. Fine. On the day of my mother's funeral an engineer called at her house on two occassions to collect the equipment, both times leaving a card saying that he'd called and the card stated that as we had not been there they would take legal action against us to recover their equipment. Obviously I was furious! I had made no arrangements with them and would have certainly not made them for the day of the funeral. I phoned the next day and spoke to a very apologic customers services lady. I also made an official complait through their website. In the meantime I made an appointment for the equipment to be collected. Last Friday at 1pm. Because of the problems I had it was agreed that I could have a fixed time appointment plus I also spoke to the engineer who would be coming and he said he would be there as near to 1pm as possible. Bearing in mind that my mother's house is a 45 minute drive, the house is empty and I have to take time off work to be there. I was there at 12.30. I waited until 3.30 and then rang customer services. I was told that no engineer would be coming. When I asked why I was told that there was a problem with the worksheets and no-one could come. Speechless and furious!!! I went home. On my way home my mother's neighbour rang and said that the engineer was at the house. He was threatening, agressive and rude and said that legal action would now be taken against us this time for £500. I asked my mother's neighbour is she would let him in to collect the eqipment as she has a key. Which she did. Thank goodnesss! Now I don't have to deal with them ever ever again! I have emailed the complaints department to tell them what happended and asked that they do not ring me or attempt to contact me otherwise I cannot be resposible for anything I might say... It's the most appalling display of poor customer service I have ever witnessed! Worse than BT! I think Virgin Media should hang their heads in shame!