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I tried to cancel Virgin Media broadband contract

170 points by lightgreen 6y ago

RandomBacon 6y ago
For those in the US: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov When I had an ongoing problem with an ISP that they claimed resolved multiple times in the past, all I had to do was say I was on this website and my issue was immediately escalated and fixed in no time.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
  For Australians: https://www.tio.com.au/ https://www.tio.com.au/ Don't be afraid to use the TIO. ISPs get away with way too much crap here, and you'll find all your problems (I'm looking at you Telstra) are magically fixed extremely quickly once the TIO are involved.
misnome 6y ago
My only conclusion can be that this is deliberate, and that they get enough extra money to be worth it. There have been similar stories going back decades - their predecessor company, NTL was notorious for things like this (e.g. at a student house in 2003, we moved out and they “cancelled” but kept charging for months, and didn’t pay it back for nearly a year). They had a terrible reputation even then, but it was that or Sky.
projectramo 6y ago
Good thing that in the US we hold capitalism in high regard so no ISP would ever make it hard to cancel.
- cumcastsucks 6y ago
  yea, commies are doing just great.
jibbit 6y ago
I’ve tried to cancel my virgin media subscription twice (because it’s too expensive), and each time was upsold a more expensive package. I explained this to my wife, who laughed at me, then the same thing happened to her.
- RandomBacon 6y ago
  Once you politely say you want to cancel, I suggest not answering their questions and to only repeat the word "cancel" over and over until the other person gets the point.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    Definitely don't let them run their script and mess you around. Personally, I tend to start any call with a customer support person with something like "Hello, I'm calling about an existing account, would you like the account number?". Almost invariably, they will say yes and then do a couple of checks to confirm my identity for data protection purposes. At this point they know exactly who I am, and they probably ask why I'm calling. If I'm asking to change or cancel something, I state that immediately, so now they have a record of both my identity and my request. By now, I'll also have a pretty good idea of whether I'm talking to a human being who is interested in helping me or some call centre automaton who's just going to be awkward and stick to a script. If they then try to give me the run around, I just repeat that I've informed them of my details and my wish to change/cancel, if necessary state that I'll be cancelling payment authority accordingly, and then tell them I'm ending the call. If possible, I'll also keep a recording of the call (which is legal in my country) but at the very least I'll make an immediate written record of the time of the call, who I spoke to, and what was said.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  This made me laugh (sorry). How do they upsell without you realizing it?
  - pydry 6y ago
    IIRC Comcast also does this. They tell you your account is canceled and then you start getting charged extra. A facet of giving pay based upsell targets to desperate call center staff.
jacquesm 6y ago
Cancelling anything should be easier but certainly not harder than signing up. The signup processes tend to be ironed out to the point that even the most minute friction is removed using endless AB tests and user surveys. The cancellation process tends to be manual, high friction, can require documentation that never needed to be present for the signup process to begin with and in some places when it looks like you might actually successfully cancel there is a fair chance your call will get accidentally disconnected and you have to start all over again, preferably with the one person manning the 'cancel' option in the VRS dealing with the 200 or so waiting callers before you first. It's terrible, and should be illegal.
client4 6y ago
In the US I've found Charter, after 6 months, either A. Forgets I own my own modem and start to charge me a rental fee. Or B. Decided that my first 12 month discount is expired after 3-8 months. With Centurylink they seem to just add random services once a year, and I only catch it after 2-3 months of it being on my bill.
Silhouette 6y ago
Abuses such as this infuriate me, and I typically have a very low tolerance for them now. Any business that is causing trouble at my expense still gets one polite attempt to contact them via their preferred means and a reasonable chance to respond, but usually only one. I'm not hanging around on the phone for more than a few minutes or waiting more than a couple of working days for a substantial response to an online message. My next contact is normally now a recorded delivery letter sent to their registered address, which here in England is something any business with the typical legal structure must have as a matter of public record and where mail sent to it must be read. I set out my grievance, what I want them to do about it, and often at this point some compensation I want for the problem and/or subsequent trouble getting it dealt with, in a form that can become the start of a formal legal action if necessary. This strategy has generally been enough to get whatever the problem was resolved reasonably quickly and without any further messing around. I suspect this is because anything that turns up in that form and is potentially relevant to a real legal action automatically gets passed to the business's legal team to deal with. The legal team presumably then has both the awareness to recognise a legitimate grievance and the authority to do something about it rather than let it escalate. I don't like that this seems to have become necessary to get a reasonable response from a lot of large businesses today, but fortunately for all of us in my country, there isn't actually any obligation to play by the business's rules in a dispute if they're giving us the run-around.
- derefr 6y ago
  I imagine there could be a good business in the automation of the creation + address discovery + delivery of such letters. Like automated DMCA takedown notices, but C2B rather than B2C. “Pay a dollar to have our lawyers cancel a subscription for you.” (Even better if you really do have a team of lawyers willing to work on contingency to take these sure-bet claims to court if necessary—just their existence would be an extra layer of deterrence.)
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    Maybe, but then the main point of having a small claims system is that a normal person should be able to use it with relatively little overhead and without needing to bring expensive lawyers into the situation. You do need to do a little homework if it's the first time you're thinking of making this sort of claim and as always you should make sure you are being fair and reasonable about trying to fix things before going all legal on them, but there's decent information about how to use the system available from the relevant government websites these days if you need it.
Terretta 6y ago
And this is why consumers like Apple’s iOS subscriptions.
- benologist 6y ago
  This is why consumers like easily-cancelled subscriptions, which iOS implemented. It was important to implement easy cancellations on iOS to show how you can cancel any time so you're not being defrauded when small utilities, kids games etc discretely charge $500/year with Apple's approval. It's your fault for not canceling the subscription that costs 200x more than the app did last year. https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/07/12/predatory-ios-app-subscriptions/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/07/12/predatory-ios-app-subscri...
FartyMcFarter 6y ago
In the UK, use this: https://www.aa.net.uk/ https://www.aa.net.uk/ I'm not affiliated with them in any way. They just have a great reputation for good technical knowledge, privacy, and support.
- ngcazz 6y ago
  Can vouch, they've the most competent customer support I've ever dealt with and especially they respect technical customers.
- mhandley 6y ago
  I've been a happy A&A customer for 15 years now. They're not the cheapest, but you get what you pay for. Excellent tech support, no nonsense attitude. Edit: as an example, a bunch of years back I detected a routing loop. Emailed them the traceroute. Got a response back in a few minutes saying they were looking into it, and it was fixed shortly afterwards. So nice to be able to communicate with someone who can actually fix problems. The only other times I've had to contact them have been related to diagnosing problems in the underlying BT copper (not really their problem), and they were super helpful there too.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  AA have a good reputation. Zen do too. I'm not sure why anyone who'd done market research would go with one of the bigger name ISPs these days. Well, OK, I am sure: AA and Zen both tend to be a bit more expensive. But this is one of those areas where you get what you pay for, I guess. Ironically, the one major exception to this is Virgin, because they do offer an alternative product with technical advantages, whereas almost every other landline ISP is ultimately just backed by the same physical BT infrastructure. But given the speeds you can get in most parts of the country from that BT infrastructure now, the difference isn't going to be as important for most people as it used to be a few years ago.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    We had a Zen account for a while. They were terrible - absolutely hilariously incompetent at getting us connected, expensive, and minimal bandwidth at busy periods. I'd used Zen about ten years earlier and they'd been much better, so I was very disappointed. My experience with Virgin was fine. The product was fast, there were a couple of short outages but no serious technical issues, and I had no problem cancelling when I moved a few years ago.
paultopia 6y ago
Nothing is harder than cancelling internet service, with the possible exception of cancelling a gym membership. In order to cancel Mediacom's 'service,' I had to send a letter[1] to them, with copies to their general counsel, threatening 99 kinds of lawsuit. I made the letter intentionally deranged, complete with footnotes about financial BDSM, to give them the impression that I would actually do it. They cancelled the account. It was pretty fun to ignore the panicked calls from their lawyers for a bit too. Once I had to cancel an entire credit card to get out from under a gym membership. [1] https://gowder.io/pgmediacom.pdf https://gowder.io/pgmediacom.pdf
- pteraspidomorph 6y ago
  The last time I changed my mobile phone number I did it to get away from the incessant harrassment from a gym after I canceled my membership (canceling was itself extremely difficult).
  - ianai 6y ago
    This sort of stuff should be regulated and outlawed out of existence.
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      It's already illegal, potentially for multiple reasons, at least here in England.
      - Nextgrid 6y ago
        Laws only work if they're enforced. It can be illegal but how much effort does it take to actually get the problem investigated by the relevant authorities?
        Silhouette 6y ago
        Well, harassment can be a criminal offence here, and depending on the circumstances actual police officers will turn up to formally notify someone that a complaint of harassment has been made against them. I imagine uniformed police officers turning up at your corporate HQ would be enough to get most businesses' attention.
laurent123456 6y ago
We've tried to downgrade our Virgin Broadband but never managed to succeed no matter how many times we tried to call. They ask for some passwords, which they are suppose to send by mail but never send it; they ask to verify our identity but always find some reason why they couldn't verify (despite having full access to our account). Every time it's 15-20 min wait in the phone, every time different new BS from a different operator, it's quite infuriating. Eventually, our contract expired and got auto-renewed to a more expensive one (because the one we were on didn't exist anymore). So every month we're paying for something we don't need, like TV etc, and we don't have a choice because there's only Virgin where we are.
sipos 6y ago
When I cancelled my home braodband contract a while ago (because I was moving), I eventually ended up with a debt collector after me because they had kept billing me. They had also disconnected me, connected someone else at the same property with the same cable, billed them and been paid by them, so they were not only billing me after I had cancelled, they were billing twice for the same connection. I tried csalling their customer services to sort it, they were no help. Eventually one of their agents admitted there was nothing they, or anyone else I could call with a publicly available number, could do. (Edit: I forgot, I had also sent recorded delivery mail about it, but got no response). I eventually got it resolved by finding the number for the CEO's secretary or someone, and harassing them about it until they got it sorted. Now, the same thing has happened with Virgin Media Business at work (I cancelled because it was always going down, including the PSTN phones, the service was awful and we no longer need it - we had it before I joined, they have been billing us for months after we cancelled). Worst ISP ever.
- Asooka 6y ago
  > I eventually got it resolved by finding the number for the CEO's secretary or someone, and harassing them about it until they got it sorted. You should post said number publicly so others can cancel more easily.
imheretolearn 6y ago
Would consumer protection help with this situation?
artistsvoid 6y ago
I remember once seeing a commercial for an 'online virtual credit card' website/company? Quick online search tells me there are many providers out there. As far as I know you can create virtual credit cards on the fly and use them to pay. So you could have one with which you pay your Streaming Subscription, one with which you pay for Cable, et cetera and their pitch was exactly this: You can destroy the virtual credit card and there is no fear of any fees whatsoever, so when you cancel some subscription or something... I didn't follow up at that time, but made a mental note. Has anyone any experience with such services? It's funny that the 'fear' of cancellations not working and being charged 'unlawfully' was the main pitch in the commercial I've seen. Also funny: Cable and Mobile Phone providers are the same devils in the US than in Europe it seems ...
- jrockway 6y ago
  Typically (in the US) the company that set up the recurring subscription that you pulled out from under them just sends your account to a collections agency. My credit card number changed and the New York Times did that to me.
  - artistsvoid 6y ago
    So they can't charge you but will still try to 'collect' and ruin your credit rating I suppose? Well, doesn't solve a lot then.
    - willcipriano 6y ago
      Yes, with a service like internet you are paying for the previous months service, not the next month so the money is owed even if you cancel the credit card. Netflix bills you for the month upfront, so when you don't pay them simply remove access to the service and you owe nothing.
      - syshum 6y ago
        I wish my ISP they would give me the option to prepay... I would
Scarnface 6y ago
I've not had working broadband for six months since moving house and signing up with Virgin. After explaining the issue to the fith rep for the third time one day I was told my 600m/s latency and packet loss was because I had a monthly usage of 500GB on a 100mb/s connection which was therefore five times as much as I'd paid for and that I needed to upgrade my package. There's a reason these lot link your account to your credit rating and good luck escaping them even with a regulator judgement in your favour, because they'll just ignore that too.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  You can't expect anything other than that response when it comes from a monkey getting paid less than a quid an hour and that can barely understand logic, let alone the technical implications of what they're selling. I don't know what it is with customer service, whether it's just the low pay or if there's something else at play that explicitly selects for the dumbest idiots on the planet or is it the working conditions that cause their mental abilities to deteriorate so much?
- Ballas 6y ago
  Meters per second as a unit for measuring latency? Although, it does fit in with the unit mangling done by the rep...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Havoc 6y ago
Looking for fiber in London next month. I guess VM won't be it. Reddit seems to think Hyperoptic is where it's at. With VM as second. That's on raw speed front. So if VM can't be trusted I guess I need to apartment hunt by Hyper...sigh.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  HyperOptic or G.Network I’ve used both currently on the latter. However you have little to no choice in the UK. FTTP is only absolve in specific buildings if your building isn’t connected it’s virgin or xDSL via Openreach (pick your ISP at that point however they are pretty much all the same unless you pick Tesco Broadband or some other small scale crap like that so for DSL I would got with Zen or well BT). The other alternative is a leased FTTP line but you’ll be looking at high 4 to low to mid 5 figures for connecting you plus a hefty monthly fee. So if you want good fiber for cheap you need to look for properties which are already connected to HO or GN.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    I have an FTTP line because there's no other choice. The connection fees were covered by the Gigabit Voucher Scheme which I believe is still around. It's only for businesses, however there is no requirement to actually be trading so you can very well set up a one-man company (12£ fee to companies' house) and then do it. The voucher scheme covered it for 2,5k which is a bit steep but also not that expensive in the grand scheme of things if you own your property. The monthly fee is around 400/month (unlike consumer plans, those are negotiable, I negotiated mine down to 384/month including VAT).
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      Yes but this is extremely expensive even with the cheats. G.Network costs me £22 a month for 1gig no caps, there is another small fee for a real IP address since pretty much all FTTP providers use CGNAT.
      - Nextgrid 6y ago
baby 6y ago
I’m not sure what that fuss is about. I just stop paying whenever I run into these kind of issues. It’s easier than what people think. I wanted to cancel my gym membership and they wouldn’t let me before I finished my year membership. So I just stopped paying. Some numbers were calling me but I never answer unknown numbers.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  Have you checked your credit rating recently?
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    To be fair, the credit score is the only leverage these nasty companies have and why they get away with being so scummy and get the customer to bend over for them. Not giving a shit about your credit score and not living off credit (which is a problem for a ton of other reasons) is the only way to thwart that and personally it's been a highly successful strategy for me.
    - lightgreen 6y ago
      Credit score matters for the mortgage which is a very good reason to have a good credit score.
    - cortesoft 6y ago
      Not having access to credit is really hindering to a modern life. No mortgages, can't rent from a lot of landlords, can't ever borrow money at decent rates if you need to. Some employers even check your credit. Even if you don't think you will ever want any of those things, you might change your mind in the future.
  - baby 6y ago
    yeah and it's fine, honestly I don't care if it takes a bit of a dip, don't want to be a slave of that credit score and I'm not planning to get a mortgage.
- deleted 6y ago
cumcastsucks 6y ago
i called and cancelled a "no contract" comcast plan one day. it took an absurd amount of time to cancel, and i finally had to yell at someone after being handed off 3-4 times to reps that each tried different tactics to get me to stay. i was able to cancel at some point and received confirmation. then - no joke - a few days later i get an email that my comcast starter kit would be coming in the mail. THEY signed me back up! i called and it was explained to me as "oh, it looked like someone cancelled your plan in error". i was astounded. they then sent me to a comcast store that had been closed for years to return the modem, which i couldn't ship. i was about ready to throw the modem through the storefront at this point when i finally drove 30 minutes to an open location. i will _never_ use anything comcast again. i feel so sorry for any poor souls that have no other option. i would not live anywhere it was my only option, that's how much i loathe them.
bfirsh 6y ago
I had the opposite experience with BE when I left the UK. I found out there the account wasn’t cancelled properly and there was an outstanding debt on the account. I emailed, then they replied and admitted fault, apologised, and refunded me. No sitting in phone queues, no treating me like a criminal. Unfortunately looks like they got bought and shut down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Un_Limited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Un_Limited Seems like the good guys lose in this business.
Latty 6y ago
They told me I couldn't cancel in advance, I had to ring the month before I wanted the service cut, otherwise I'd cancel and it would end at the end of the month. When I rang during that month, they then told me I had to give a month's notice and would be charged for an extra month. Took me a few hours of phone calls to eventually get that dropped. A good consumer protection law would be some requirement that cancelling a service is similar in friction to signing up for that service (obviously vague, but you get my point). You shouldn't be allowed to require a phone call to cancel a service. Oh, this was also while I was in Cambridge and I was getting dial-up speeds regularly on my fibre line because they were so oversubscribed, while I was still getting leaflets through the door telling me to sign up for their service. It shouldn't be legal to advertise a service you don't have the capacity to actually provide, and still take people's money for it. I remember one time I rang about it, explained and the guy went "I'll just look up and see if we have any congestion issues". After a few seconds, I heard him go "holy shit" away from the receiver, then come back to me and just start apologising and saying he could see why I'd have a problem.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  When it comes to marketing there's also the issue of ISPs being allowed to advertise copper cable (whether coax or DSL) as "fibre".
  - Lio 6y ago
    My father in law is very proud of his Virgin Fibre (“they’re the only ones doing fibre to the home!”) Doesn’t matter how many times I point out to him he has fibre to the cabinet not the home. I think both BT and Virgin should have been reined in years ago on their outlandish claims.
preinheimer 6y ago
The thing that kills me with these stories (and if you read the comments there's plenty more) is that customers _remember_. I'll never use Videotron again after the crap they put me through when I cancelled. I'd love to blame monopolies (sure, pick the other guys, but you'll be back in a few years when they piss you off) but the other big offender here is gym memberships, and there's no shortage of choice there. I think there's at least 4 different brands within a 5 minute drive of my house. Consumer protection laws should be: You can cancel anywhere you can sign up. You allow new signups online, over the phone, and mall kiosks? Great, you also allow cancellations online, over the phone, and mall kiosks. When adding a customer exit survey to our cancellation workflow the hard and fast requirements were "you cancel first, you need to understand that the cancellation has been completed. Then we can show you the survey". Don't be jerks, then hopefully people will remember you fondly if they need you later.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  > I think there's at least 4 different brands within a 5 minute drive of my house. And just like with ISPs, all of them are equally scummy, so it is indeed a monopoly/oligopoly of scumminess. UK has fairly good consumer protection laws, in fact if you express your intent to cancel, they refuse for an invalid reason or ignore it and you cancel the payment and let the "debt" accumulate there isn't anything else they can do besides threatening letters, a black mark on your credit report (which can be removed with enough effort) or debt collectors (who are actually reasonable and will drop the matter once you explain the situation). They could go to court, but they won't because 1) they know they are in the wrong and 2) it's not worth their time anyway. The mark on the credit report is pretty much the only leverage they have, and unfortunately it works due to most people either being afraid of it or actually relying on easy access to credit.
  - Lio 6y ago
    Is there any recourse to small claims court for the “ex-customer”? ie once you’ve stated you want cancel and they’ve ignored it could you bill them for your time?
kwijibob 6y ago
It is not clear what country this page is addressing... I can guess the UK but you should be explicit or use a country domain name.
- lightgreen 6y ago
  Yes, it's the UK. I picked that domain because Virgin Media domain is .com: virginmedia.com (Virgin Media provides internet only in the UK).
bnastic 6y ago
It's not that easy to get a contract either... First they said "health and safety", they can't get a man to bring the cable up to 2nd floor. I said fine, how about I buy that cable, I drill my own walls, and bring you the cable down to the ground, can you connect that? "Sure, let's set up a date for engineer visit". All is ready, engineer comes carrying a modem... wtf... you are supposed to connect this to your box outside the property. He goes back, they cancel my request for service outright. I call them, and an utterly rude person tells me that the cancellation is final, there is no one to complain to, I can't talk to his manager, goodbye. The UK broadband is in such an appalling state, that if you want better than ADSL you have to subject yourself to humiliation by Virgin Media who hold near monopoly over fast (for UK, anyway) lines as BT/Openreach are utterly disinterested in being part of the 21st century. The day this ridiculous duopoly is broken up will be the day to rejoice! But I'm not holding my breath, this is a 3rd world country is so many ways that matter. (Actually, that's an insult to "3rd world" - there I got an actual 100/100Mbit ethernet connection installed in a matter of days for half the money Virgin is asking for their slowest service).
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  > The UK broadband is in such an appalling state, that if you want better than ADSL you have to subject yourself to humiliation Agreed, it is terrible. I ended up going with an enterprise-grade leased line that costs ~400£/month because that was the only choice besides Virgin, but honestly I'd rather be paying that much and know it pays fair wages to honest people then pay less but having it go in scammers' pockets. Thankfully in London there is Hyperoptic and G.Network who offer real fibre (none of this fake fibre DSL or cable bullshit) at an affordable price (~50/month) so I'll switch to them as soon as they become available.
  - bnastic 6y ago
    Paying the equivalent of someone’s mortgage just to be able to get a decent internet connection in 2020 is infuriating. I would switch to Hyperoptic in a heartbeat but they are not rolling out to north London any time soon. Funny how in Scotland even Vodafone is rolling out a gig network, while in bloody London I still can’t get better than adsl speeds.
bzb3 6y ago
Can't you just stop paying the bill until they pull the plug?
- MrSaints 6y ago
  > after several attempts to cancel the contract, I cancelled the direct debit. They did do that. But, the issue is if it accumulates without a resolution, it'll reflect badly on your credit score.
Nextgrid 6y ago
I had an equally terrible experience with this nasty company. Been a mostly happy customer for over a year, contract has ran out so I was just paying month to month and didn't "upgrade" to another contract as I knew I was going to switch providers (already signed the contract with the new provider but it would've taken 6 month to actually install it). Finally new provider gives me an install date so I call Virgin to cancel. First off, despite telling me that the cancellation will take 30 days (as mentioned in every document), I come home to find the broadband disconnected already. Fine, it's only a couple days until the new provider is up and running. The new provider has an issue and it's going to take another few months to install, so I call back Virgin and ask if they can reinstate the previous connection. They say no so I ask them if they can give me the same plan on a 30-day rolling contract, explaining my situation and that I only intend to use it for a few months until the new provider is up and running (so even if they somehow missed the "30-day rolling contract" part, they would still realize it doesn't make sense to sign me up for a yearly contract given I intend to cancel in a few months). We confirm everything over the phone, the engineer comes in and gives me the new modem (why they couldn't just mail me the modem or let me reuse the old one is beyond me) and all is fine. New provider is set up 2 months later so I give Virgin a call to cancel. Turns out, not only is my new contract a yearly contract but apparently they've sent me an e-mail stating the new contract and terms and that I opened it, despite the fact that my e-mail client doesn't load remote content so even if I did receive it there would be no way for them to know that I opened it, so they're either lying or they sent it to someone else. I argue with the customer support monkey for an hour and we get nowhere, so I ask them to review the call recordings from the call where I initially set up the contract and tell them to call me back the next day. They say they can't promise that and sure enough, no call back. I end up writing a complaint letter by post explaining the situation and asking for a call back to sort out the situation, and cancel the direct debit on my bank's side. The letter also states that I will hold the equipment (modem) for a month and if I don't receive a shipping label by then I will discard it. No response despite the letter having been delivered and signed for. Account goes to collections so I explain the situation to them and they are being very reasonable (you know it's a problem when your collections agency has better customer service than your own one) and drop the matter. 6 months later I get a prepaid shipping label in the mail to return the equipment... well it's a bit too late now though as the equipment is well on its way to the landfill. No news since then and I'm quite happy to never have to deal with that disgusting company again. There's probably a black mark on my credit report because of this, but thankfully I don't need credit anytime soon so their only leverage didn't work out either. If the mark ends up being a problem I'll get a lawyer to send them a nastygram to get it removed.
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lor3nzo 6y ago
#LOL I'm loving it. #BRILLIANT
stephenbez 6y ago
I heard that you should write them an email saying that you want service cancelled and if they won't do it, that you will do a charge back on your credit card. Does anyone have experience with this method?
bastawhiz 6y ago
File a dispute with your credit card issuer. Chargebacks are a perfectly valid and accepted way to cancel recurring subscriptions (albeit perhaps a forceful option).
- scarlac 6y ago
  They also have the benefit of putting the merchant in a bad standing. Chargebacks usually incur a fee as well as credit card companies monitoring the chargebacks per 1k transactions. If the number gets too high you (the merchant) will be sanctioned or cancelled. So please use chargebacks. I speak as a former merchant: We hate chargebacks - they are an effective deterrent.
pseudobry 6y ago
I recently had fun cancelling my Comcast internet after switching to fiber. When asked why, I said "4x the download speed and 20x the upload speed for half the price". The tech just said "can't argue with that..."
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Yep, with all the horror stories around retentions and upselling I personally never had any issues in that front. I honestly tell the rep that I have a better deal on the technical level elsewhere (that their offering can’t match) and it was always easy.
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
I do not really understand. Why not sending a cancellation letter (recommended - not sure what the US word for this is, the kind of letter the other party signs when receiving it and which is a legal way to provide letters) and blocking the payments?
- DanBC 6y ago
  > the kind of letter the other party signs when receiving it In England this isn't the recommended way to serve legal documents, because the person receiving can just refuse to sign and refuse to accept the letter. You can send letters and get proof of posting without signed for delivery, and that's seen by the courts as good enough.
  - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
    Interesting, to me not accepting would be even worse : you actively avoid the information. In any case an attempt was done. We have both kind of letters in France (with sig and without). I just checked (https://blog.bureaudeposte.net/quelle-difference-entre-un-envoi-recommande-avec-accuse-reception-et-sans-accuse-reception/ https://blog.bureaudeposte.net/quelle-difference-entre-un-en...) and they have the same value. In some cases the "with sig" is recommended

170 points by lightgreen 6y ago

For those in the US: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov When I had an ongoing problem with an ISP that they claimed resolved multiple times in the past, all I had to do was say I was on this website and my issue was immediately escalated and fixed in no time.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
For Australians: https://www.tio.com.au/ https://www.tio.com.au/ Don't be afraid to use the TIO. ISPs get away with way too much crap here, and you'll find all your problems (I'm looking at you Telstra) are magically fixed extremely quickly once the TIO are involved.

misnome 6y ago

My only conclusion can be that this is deliberate, and that they get enough extra money to be worth it. There have been similar stories going back decades - their predecessor company, NTL was notorious for things like this (e.g. at a student house in 2003, we moved out and they “cancelled” but kept charging for months, and didn’t pay it back for nearly a year). They had a terrible reputation even then, but it was that or Sky.

projectramo 6y ago

Good thing that in the US we hold capitalism in high regard so no ISP would ever make it hard to cancel.

cumcastsucks 6y ago
yea, commies are doing just great.

jibbit 6y ago

I’ve tried to cancel my virgin media subscription twice (because it’s too expensive), and each time was upsold a more expensive package. I explained this to my wife, who laughed at me, then the same thing happened to her.

RandomBacon 6y ago
Once you politely say you want to cancel, I suggest not answering their questions and to only repeat the word "cancel" over and over until the other person gets the point.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  Definitely don't let them run their script and mess you around. Personally, I tend to start any call with a customer support person with something like "Hello, I'm calling about an existing account, would you like the account number?". Almost invariably, they will say yes and then do a couple of checks to confirm my identity for data protection purposes. At this point they know exactly who I am, and they probably ask why I'm calling. If I'm asking to change or cancel something, I state that immediately, so now they have a record of both my identity and my request. By now, I'll also have a pretty good idea of whether I'm talking to a human being who is interested in helping me or some call centre automaton who's just going to be awkward and stick to a script. If they then try to give me the run around, I just repeat that I've informed them of my details and my wish to change/cancel, if necessary state that I'll be cancelling payment authority accordingly, and then tell them I'm ending the call. If possible, I'll also keep a recording of the call (which is legal in my country) but at the very least I'll make an immediate written record of the time of the call, who I spoke to, and what was said.
mehrdadn 6y ago
This made me laugh (sorry). How do they upsell without you realizing it?
- pydry 6y ago
  IIRC Comcast also does this. They tell you your account is canceled and then you start getting charged extra. A facet of giving pay based upsell targets to desperate call center staff.

jacquesm 6y ago

Cancelling anything should be easier but certainly not harder than signing up. The signup processes tend to be ironed out to the point that even the most minute friction is removed using endless AB tests and user surveys. The cancellation process tends to be manual, high friction, can require documentation that never needed to be present for the signup process to begin with and in some places when it looks like you might actually successfully cancel there is a fair chance your call will get accidentally disconnected and you have to start all over again, preferably with the one person manning the 'cancel' option in the VRS dealing with the 200 or so waiting callers before you first. It's terrible, and should be illegal.

client4 6y ago

In the US I've found Charter, after 6 months, either A. Forgets I own my own modem and start to charge me a rental fee. Or B. Decided that my first 12 month discount is expired after 3-8 months. With Centurylink they seem to just add random services once a year, and I only catch it after 2-3 months of it being on my bill.

Silhouette 6y ago

Abuses such as this infuriate me, and I typically have a very low tolerance for them now. Any business that is causing trouble at my expense still gets one polite attempt to contact them via their preferred means and a reasonable chance to respond, but usually only one. I'm not hanging around on the phone for more than a few minutes or waiting more than a couple of working days for a substantial response to an online message. My next contact is normally now a recorded delivery letter sent to their registered address, which here in England is something any business with the typical legal structure must have as a matter of public record and where mail sent to it must be read. I set out my grievance, what I want them to do about it, and often at this point some compensation I want for the problem and/or subsequent trouble getting it dealt with, in a form that can become the start of a formal legal action if necessary. This strategy has generally been enough to get whatever the problem was resolved reasonably quickly and without any further messing around. I suspect this is because anything that turns up in that form and is potentially relevant to a real legal action automatically gets passed to the business's legal team to deal with. The legal team presumably then has both the awareness to recognise a legitimate grievance and the authority to do something about it rather than let it escalate. I don't like that this seems to have become necessary to get a reasonable response from a lot of large businesses today, but fortunately for all of us in my country, there isn't actually any obligation to play by the business's rules in a dispute if they're giving us the run-around.

derefr 6y ago
I imagine there could be a good business in the automation of the creation + address discovery + delivery of such letters. Like automated DMCA takedown notices, but C2B rather than B2C. “Pay a dollar to have our lawyers cancel a subscription for you.” (Even better if you really do have a team of lawyers willing to work on contingency to take these sure-bet claims to court if necessary—just their existence would be an extra layer of deterrence.)
- Silhouette 6y ago
  Maybe, but then the main point of having a small claims system is that a normal person should be able to use it with relatively little overhead and without needing to bring expensive lawyers into the situation. You do need to do a little homework if it's the first time you're thinking of making this sort of claim and as always you should make sure you are being fair and reasonable about trying to fix things before going all legal on them, but there's decent information about how to use the system available from the relevant government websites these days if you need it.

Terretta 6y ago

And this is why consumers like Apple’s iOS subscriptions.

benologist 6y ago
This is why consumers like easily-cancelled subscriptions, which iOS implemented. It was important to implement easy cancellations on iOS to show how you can cancel any time so you're not being defrauded when small utilities, kids games etc discretely charge $500/year with Apple's approval. It's your fault for not canceling the subscription that costs 200x more than the app did last year. https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/07/12/predatory-ios-app-subscriptions/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/07/12/predatory-ios-app-subscri...

FartyMcFarter 6y ago

In the UK, use this: https://www.aa.net.uk/ https://www.aa.net.uk/ I'm not affiliated with them in any way. They just have a great reputation for good technical knowledge, privacy, and support.

ngcazz 6y ago
Can vouch, they've the most competent customer support I've ever dealt with and especially they respect technical customers.
mhandley 6y ago
I've been a happy A&A customer for 15 years now. They're not the cheapest, but you get what you pay for. Excellent tech support, no nonsense attitude. Edit: as an example, a bunch of years back I detected a routing loop. Emailed them the traceroute. Got a response back in a few minutes saying they were looking into it, and it was fixed shortly afterwards. So nice to be able to communicate with someone who can actually fix problems. The only other times I've had to contact them have been related to diagnosing problems in the underlying BT copper (not really their problem), and they were super helpful there too.
Silhouette 6y ago
AA have a good reputation. Zen do too. I'm not sure why anyone who'd done market research would go with one of the bigger name ISPs these days. Well, OK, I am sure: AA and Zen both tend to be a bit more expensive. But this is one of those areas where you get what you pay for, I guess. Ironically, the one major exception to this is Virgin, because they do offer an alternative product with technical advantages, whereas almost every other landline ISP is ultimately just backed by the same physical BT infrastructure. But given the speeds you can get in most parts of the country from that BT infrastructure now, the difference isn't going to be as important for most people as it used to be a few years ago.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  We had a Zen account for a while. They were terrible - absolutely hilariously incompetent at getting us connected, expensive, and minimal bandwidth at busy periods. I'd used Zen about ten years earlier and they'd been much better, so I was very disappointed. My experience with Virgin was fine. The product was fast, there were a couple of short outages but no serious technical issues, and I had no problem cancelling when I moved a few years ago.

paultopia 6y ago

Nothing is harder than cancelling internet service, with the possible exception of cancelling a gym membership. In order to cancel Mediacom's 'service,' I had to send a letter[1] to them, with copies to their general counsel, threatening 99 kinds of lawsuit. I made the letter intentionally deranged, complete with footnotes about financial BDSM, to give them the impression that I would actually do it. They cancelled the account. It was pretty fun to ignore the panicked calls from their lawyers for a bit too. Once I had to cancel an entire credit card to get out from under a gym membership. [1] https://gowder.io/pgmediacom.pdf https://gowder.io/pgmediacom.pdf

pteraspidomorph 6y ago
The last time I changed my mobile phone number I did it to get away from the incessant harrassment from a gym after I canceled my membership (canceling was itself extremely difficult).
- ianai 6y ago
  This sort of stuff should be regulated and outlawed out of existence.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    It's already illegal, potentially for multiple reasons, at least here in England.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      Laws only work if they're enforced. It can be illegal but how much effort does it take to actually get the problem investigated by the relevant authorities?
      - Silhouette 6y ago
        Well, harassment can be a criminal offence here, and depending on the circumstances actual police officers will turn up to formally notify someone that a complaint of harassment has been made against them. I imagine uniformed police officers turning up at your corporate HQ would be enough to get most businesses' attention.

laurent123456 6y ago

We've tried to downgrade our Virgin Broadband but never managed to succeed no matter how many times we tried to call. They ask for some passwords, which they are suppose to send by mail but never send it; they ask to verify our identity but always find some reason why they couldn't verify (despite having full access to our account). Every time it's 15-20 min wait in the phone, every time different new BS from a different operator, it's quite infuriating. Eventually, our contract expired and got auto-renewed to a more expensive one (because the one we were on didn't exist anymore). So every month we're paying for something we don't need, like TV etc, and we don't have a choice because there's only Virgin where we are.

sipos 6y ago

When I cancelled my home braodband contract a while ago (because I was moving), I eventually ended up with a debt collector after me because they had kept billing me. They had also disconnected me, connected someone else at the same property with the same cable, billed them and been paid by them, so they were not only billing me after I had cancelled, they were billing twice for the same connection. I tried csalling their customer services to sort it, they were no help. Eventually one of their agents admitted there was nothing they, or anyone else I could call with a publicly available number, could do. (Edit: I forgot, I had also sent recorded delivery mail about it, but got no response). I eventually got it resolved by finding the number for the CEO's secretary or someone, and harassing them about it until they got it sorted. Now, the same thing has happened with Virgin Media Business at work (I cancelled because it was always going down, including the PSTN phones, the service was awful and we no longer need it - we had it before I joined, they have been billing us for months after we cancelled). Worst ISP ever.

Asooka 6y ago
> I eventually got it resolved by finding the number for the CEO's secretary or someone, and harassing them about it until they got it sorted. You should post said number publicly so others can cancel more easily.

imheretolearn 6y ago

Would consumer protection help with this situation?

artistsvoid 6y ago

I remember once seeing a commercial for an 'online virtual credit card' website/company? Quick online search tells me there are many providers out there. As far as I know you can create virtual credit cards on the fly and use them to pay. So you could have one with which you pay your Streaming Subscription, one with which you pay for Cable, et cetera and their pitch was exactly this: You can destroy the virtual credit card and there is no fear of any fees whatsoever, so when you cancel some subscription or something... I didn't follow up at that time, but made a mental note. Has anyone any experience with such services? It's funny that the 'fear' of cancellations not working and being charged 'unlawfully' was the main pitch in the commercial I've seen. Also funny: Cable and Mobile Phone providers are the same devils in the US than in Europe it seems ...

jrockway 6y ago
Typically (in the US) the company that set up the recurring subscription that you pulled out from under them just sends your account to a collections agency. My credit card number changed and the New York Times did that to me.
- artistsvoid 6y ago
  So they can't charge you but will still try to 'collect' and ruin your credit rating I suppose? Well, doesn't solve a lot then.
  - willcipriano 6y ago
    Yes, with a service like internet you are paying for the previous months service, not the next month so the money is owed even if you cancel the credit card. Netflix bills you for the month upfront, so when you don't pay them simply remove access to the service and you owe nothing.
    - syshum 6y ago
      I wish my ISP they would give me the option to prepay... I would

Scarnface 6y ago

I've not had working broadband for six months since moving house and signing up with Virgin. After explaining the issue to the fith rep for the third time one day I was told my 600m/s latency and packet loss was because I had a monthly usage of 500GB on a 100mb/s connection which was therefore five times as much as I'd paid for and that I needed to upgrade my package. There's a reason these lot link your account to your credit rating and good luck escaping them even with a regulator judgement in your favour, because they'll just ignore that too.

Nextgrid 6y ago
You can't expect anything other than that response when it comes from a monkey getting paid less than a quid an hour and that can barely understand logic, let alone the technical implications of what they're selling. I don't know what it is with customer service, whether it's just the low pay or if there's something else at play that explicitly selects for the dumbest idiots on the planet or is it the working conditions that cause their mental abilities to deteriorate so much?
Ballas 6y ago
Meters per second as a unit for measuring latency? Although, it does fit in with the unit mangling done by the rep...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Havoc 6y ago

Looking for fiber in London next month. I guess VM won't be it. Reddit seems to think Hyperoptic is where it's at. With VM as second. That's on raw speed front. So if VM can't be trusted I guess I need to apartment hunt by Hyper...sigh.

dogma1138 6y ago
HyperOptic or G.Network I’ve used both currently on the latter. However you have little to no choice in the UK. FTTP is only absolve in specific buildings if your building isn’t connected it’s virgin or xDSL via Openreach (pick your ISP at that point however they are pretty much all the same unless you pick Tesco Broadband or some other small scale crap like that so for DSL I would got with Zen or well BT). The other alternative is a leased FTTP line but you’ll be looking at high 4 to low to mid 5 figures for connecting you plus a hefty monthly fee. So if you want good fiber for cheap you need to look for properties which are already connected to HO or GN.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  I have an FTTP line because there's no other choice. The connection fees were covered by the Gigabit Voucher Scheme which I believe is still around. It's only for businesses, however there is no requirement to actually be trading so you can very well set up a one-man company (12£ fee to companies' house) and then do it. The voucher scheme covered it for 2,5k which is a bit steep but also not that expensive in the grand scheme of things if you own your property. The monthly fee is around 400/month (unlike consumer plans, those are negotiable, I negotiated mine down to 384/month including VAT).
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    Yes but this is extremely expensive even with the cheats. G.Network costs me £22 a month for 1gig no caps, there is another small fee for a real IP address since pretty much all FTTP providers use CGNAT.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago

baby 6y ago

I’m not sure what that fuss is about. I just stop paying whenever I run into these kind of issues. It’s easier than what people think. I wanted to cancel my gym membership and they wouldn’t let me before I finished my year membership. So I just stopped paying. Some numbers were calling me but I never answer unknown numbers.

cortesoft 6y ago
Have you checked your credit rating recently?
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  To be fair, the credit score is the only leverage these nasty companies have and why they get away with being so scummy and get the customer to bend over for them. Not giving a shit about your credit score and not living off credit (which is a problem for a ton of other reasons) is the only way to thwart that and personally it's been a highly successful strategy for me.
  - lightgreen 6y ago
    Credit score matters for the mortgage which is a very good reason to have a good credit score.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    Not having access to credit is really hindering to a modern life. No mortgages, can't rent from a lot of landlords, can't ever borrow money at decent rates if you need to. Some employers even check your credit. Even if you don't think you will ever want any of those things, you might change your mind in the future.
- baby 6y ago
  yeah and it's fine, honestly I don't care if it takes a bit of a dip, don't want to be a slave of that credit score and I'm not planning to get a mortgage.
deleted 6y ago

cumcastsucks 6y ago

i called and cancelled a "no contract" comcast plan one day. it took an absurd amount of time to cancel, and i finally had to yell at someone after being handed off 3-4 times to reps that each tried different tactics to get me to stay. i was able to cancel at some point and received confirmation. then - no joke - a few days later i get an email that my comcast starter kit would be coming in the mail. THEY signed me back up! i called and it was explained to me as "oh, it looked like someone cancelled your plan in error". i was astounded. they then sent me to a comcast store that had been closed for years to return the modem, which i couldn't ship. i was about ready to throw the modem through the storefront at this point when i finally drove 30 minutes to an open location. i will _never_ use anything comcast again. i feel so sorry for any poor souls that have no other option. i would not live anywhere it was my only option, that's how much i loathe them.

bfirsh 6y ago

I had the opposite experience with BE when I left the UK. I found out there the account wasn’t cancelled properly and there was an outstanding debt on the account. I emailed, then they replied and admitted fault, apologised, and refunded me. No sitting in phone queues, no treating me like a criminal. Unfortunately looks like they got bought and shut down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Un_Limited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Un_Limited Seems like the good guys lose in this business.

Latty 6y ago

They told me I couldn't cancel in advance, I had to ring the month before I wanted the service cut, otherwise I'd cancel and it would end at the end of the month. When I rang during that month, they then told me I had to give a month's notice and would be charged for an extra month. Took me a few hours of phone calls to eventually get that dropped. A good consumer protection law would be some requirement that cancelling a service is similar in friction to signing up for that service (obviously vague, but you get my point). You shouldn't be allowed to require a phone call to cancel a service. Oh, this was also while I was in Cambridge and I was getting dial-up speeds regularly on my fibre line because they were so oversubscribed, while I was still getting leaflets through the door telling me to sign up for their service. It shouldn't be legal to advertise a service you don't have the capacity to actually provide, and still take people's money for it. I remember one time I rang about it, explained and the guy went "I'll just look up and see if we have any congestion issues". After a few seconds, I heard him go "holy shit" away from the receiver, then come back to me and just start apologising and saying he could see why I'd have a problem.

Nextgrid 6y ago
When it comes to marketing there's also the issue of ISPs being allowed to advertise copper cable (whether coax or DSL) as "fibre".
- Lio 6y ago
  My father in law is very proud of his Virgin Fibre (“they’re the only ones doing fibre to the home!”) Doesn’t matter how many times I point out to him he has fibre to the cabinet not the home. I think both BT and Virgin should have been reined in years ago on their outlandish claims.

preinheimer 6y ago

The thing that kills me with these stories (and if you read the comments there's plenty more) is that customers _remember_. I'll never use Videotron again after the crap they put me through when I cancelled. I'd love to blame monopolies (sure, pick the other guys, but you'll be back in a few years when they piss you off) but the other big offender here is gym memberships, and there's no shortage of choice there. I think there's at least 4 different brands within a 5 minute drive of my house. Consumer protection laws should be: You can cancel anywhere you can sign up. You allow new signups online, over the phone, and mall kiosks? Great, you also allow cancellations online, over the phone, and mall kiosks. When adding a customer exit survey to our cancellation workflow the hard and fast requirements were "you cancel first, you need to understand that the cancellation has been completed. Then we can show you the survey". Don't be jerks, then hopefully people will remember you fondly if they need you later.

Nextgrid 6y ago
> I think there's at least 4 different brands within a 5 minute drive of my house. And just like with ISPs, all of them are equally scummy, so it is indeed a monopoly/oligopoly of scumminess. UK has fairly good consumer protection laws, in fact if you express your intent to cancel, they refuse for an invalid reason or ignore it and you cancel the payment and let the "debt" accumulate there isn't anything else they can do besides threatening letters, a black mark on your credit report (which can be removed with enough effort) or debt collectors (who are actually reasonable and will drop the matter once you explain the situation). They could go to court, but they won't because 1) they know they are in the wrong and 2) it's not worth their time anyway. The mark on the credit report is pretty much the only leverage they have, and unfortunately it works due to most people either being afraid of it or actually relying on easy access to credit.
- Lio 6y ago
  Is there any recourse to small claims court for the “ex-customer”? ie once you’ve stated you want cancel and they’ve ignored it could you bill them for your time?

kwijibob 6y ago

It is not clear what country this page is addressing... I can guess the UK but you should be explicit or use a country domain name.

lightgreen 6y ago
Yes, it's the UK. I picked that domain because Virgin Media domain is .com: virginmedia.com (Virgin Media provides internet only in the UK).

bnastic 6y ago

It's not that easy to get a contract either... First they said "health and safety", they can't get a man to bring the cable up to 2nd floor. I said fine, how about I buy that cable, I drill my own walls, and bring you the cable down to the ground, can you connect that? "Sure, let's set up a date for engineer visit". All is ready, engineer comes carrying a modem... wtf... you are supposed to connect this to your box outside the property. He goes back, they cancel my request for service outright. I call them, and an utterly rude person tells me that the cancellation is final, there is no one to complain to, I can't talk to his manager, goodbye. The UK broadband is in such an appalling state, that if you want better than ADSL you have to subject yourself to humiliation by Virgin Media who hold near monopoly over fast (for UK, anyway) lines as BT/Openreach are utterly disinterested in being part of the 21st century. The day this ridiculous duopoly is broken up will be the day to rejoice! But I'm not holding my breath, this is a 3rd world country is so many ways that matter. (Actually, that's an insult to "3rd world" - there I got an actual 100/100Mbit ethernet connection installed in a matter of days for half the money Virgin is asking for their slowest service).

Nextgrid 6y ago
> The UK broadband is in such an appalling state, that if you want better than ADSL you have to subject yourself to humiliation Agreed, it is terrible. I ended up going with an enterprise-grade leased line that costs ~400£/month because that was the only choice besides Virgin, but honestly I'd rather be paying that much and know it pays fair wages to honest people then pay less but having it go in scammers' pockets. Thankfully in London there is Hyperoptic and G.Network who offer real fibre (none of this fake fibre DSL or cable bullshit) at an affordable price (~50/month) so I'll switch to them as soon as they become available.
- bnastic 6y ago
  Paying the equivalent of someone’s mortgage just to be able to get a decent internet connection in 2020 is infuriating. I would switch to Hyperoptic in a heartbeat but they are not rolling out to north London any time soon. Funny how in Scotland even Vodafone is rolling out a gig network, while in bloody London I still can’t get better than adsl speeds.

bzb3 6y ago

Can't you just stop paying the bill until they pull the plug?

MrSaints 6y ago
> after several attempts to cancel the contract, I cancelled the direct debit. They did do that. But, the issue is if it accumulates without a resolution, it'll reflect badly on your credit score.

Nextgrid 6y ago

I had an equally terrible experience with this nasty company. Been a mostly happy customer for over a year, contract has ran out so I was just paying month to month and didn't "upgrade" to another contract as I knew I was going to switch providers (already signed the contract with the new provider but it would've taken 6 month to actually install it). Finally new provider gives me an install date so I call Virgin to cancel. First off, despite telling me that the cancellation will take 30 days (as mentioned in every document), I come home to find the broadband disconnected already. Fine, it's only a couple days until the new provider is up and running. The new provider has an issue and it's going to take another few months to install, so I call back Virgin and ask if they can reinstate the previous connection. They say no so I ask them if they can give me the same plan on a 30-day rolling contract, explaining my situation and that I only intend to use it for a few months until the new provider is up and running (so even if they somehow missed the "30-day rolling contract" part, they would still realize it doesn't make sense to sign me up for a yearly contract given I intend to cancel in a few months). We confirm everything over the phone, the engineer comes in and gives me the new modem (why they couldn't just mail me the modem or let me reuse the old one is beyond me) and all is fine. New provider is set up 2 months later so I give Virgin a call to cancel. Turns out, not only is my new contract a yearly contract but apparently they've sent me an e-mail stating the new contract and terms and that I opened it, despite the fact that my e-mail client doesn't load remote content so even if I did receive it there would be no way for them to know that I opened it, so they're either lying or they sent it to someone else. I argue with the customer support monkey for an hour and we get nowhere, so I ask them to review the call recordings from the call where I initially set up the contract and tell them to call me back the next day. They say they can't promise that and sure enough, no call back. I end up writing a complaint letter by post explaining the situation and asking for a call back to sort out the situation, and cancel the direct debit on my bank's side. The letter also states that I will hold the equipment (modem) for a month and if I don't receive a shipping label by then I will discard it. No response despite the letter having been delivered and signed for. Account goes to collections so I explain the situation to them and they are being very reasonable (you know it's a problem when your collections agency has better customer service than your own one) and drop the matter. 6 months later I get a prepaid shipping label in the mail to return the equipment... well it's a bit too late now though as the equipment is well on its way to the landfill. No news since then and I'm quite happy to never have to deal with that disgusting company again. There's probably a black mark on my credit report because of this, but thankfully I don't need credit anytime soon so their only leverage didn't work out either. If the mark ends up being a problem I'll get a lawyer to send them a nastygram to get it removed.

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lor3nzo 6y ago

#LOL I'm loving it. #BRILLIANT

stephenbez 6y ago

I heard that you should write them an email saying that you want service cancelled and if they won't do it, that you will do a charge back on your credit card. Does anyone have experience with this method?

bastawhiz 6y ago

File a dispute with your credit card issuer. Chargebacks are a perfectly valid and accepted way to cancel recurring subscriptions (albeit perhaps a forceful option).

scarlac 6y ago
They also have the benefit of putting the merchant in a bad standing. Chargebacks usually incur a fee as well as credit card companies monitoring the chargebacks per 1k transactions. If the number gets too high you (the merchant) will be sanctioned or cancelled. So please use chargebacks. I speak as a former merchant: We hate chargebacks - they are an effective deterrent.

pseudobry 6y ago

I recently had fun cancelling my Comcast internet after switching to fiber. When asked why, I said "4x the download speed and 20x the upload speed for half the price". The tech just said "can't argue with that..."

Nextgrid 6y ago
Yep, with all the horror stories around retentions and upselling I personally never had any issues in that front. I honestly tell the rep that I have a better deal on the technical level elsewhere (that their offering can’t match) and it was always easy.

BrandoElFollito 6y ago

I do not really understand. Why not sending a cancellation letter (recommended - not sure what the US word for this is, the kind of letter the other party signs when receiving it and which is a legal way to provide letters) and blocking the payments?

DanBC 6y ago
> the kind of letter the other party signs when receiving it In England this isn't the recommended way to serve legal documents, because the person receiving can just refuse to sign and refuse to accept the letter. You can send letters and get proof of posting without signed for delivery, and that's seen by the courts as good enough.
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  Interesting, to me not accepting would be even worse : you actively avoid the information. In any case an attempt was done. We have both kind of letters in France (with sig and without). I just checked (https://blog.bureaudeposte.net/quelle-difference-entre-un-envoi-recommande-avec-accuse-reception-et-sans-accuse-reception/ https://blog.bureaudeposte.net/quelle-difference-entre-un-en...) and they have the same value. In some cases the "with sig" is recommended