Virgin Media wants to charge £240 fee for cancelling a contract
We must move out of our rented flat after our landlord unexpectedly decided to sell. Luckily, we have found a new place. However, when we called our broadband provider, Virgin Media, to notify it about the move we were told it does not offer a service at our new address.
Despite us being with the company for more thn two years, it insists we pay a £240 early termination fee because we had just renewed our 18-month contract.
These charges seem blatantly unjust.
AB, Edinburgh
We are getting so many complaints about Virgin Media at the moment – with a lack of customer service and the fact that it frequently cuts off callers particular sources of ire. Having read the terrible recent reviews on Trustpilot and our postbag, I’m struggling to understand why anyone signs up with this company.
AB’s problem is not a new one. Unlike BT, and all of the other broadband firms, Virgin Media only offers its services in certain roads, therefore if you are forced to move home mid-contract it’s a lottery. The company, though, will make those in a contract pay up whether it provides the service or not.
The regulator Ofcom fined Virgin Media £7m in 2018 for failing to make its early termination charges clear enough. What Ofcom should have done was to cap them at a more reasonable £100, rather than the £240 limit – and scrap them entirely for those who had already served their initial contract.
Virgin Media says: “Our contracts are designed to apply over a specific period, so we urge all of our customers to consider the length of a contract before entering into it. Details of early disconnection fees are clearly set out on our website.”
In the meantime, you have switched to BT and it has agreed to meet Virgin’s early termination costs, which will hopefully help others who find themselves in the same boat.
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