Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I tried to cancel Virgin Media broadband contract

virginmedia-is-evil.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 153 posts

Re: I tried to cancel Virgin Media broadband contract

#111

Post by dijksterhuis »

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #93
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #18

In the UK, use this: 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.

AAISP have been sponsoring our Hackspace's internet for a number of years now and we find them fantastic, friendly and knowledgeable - and they even implement xkcd#801 compliance. Further more, their stance on internet censorship is laudable ("The Government says we have to offer customers a choice of censored internet. So here's your choice, if you want censorship pick another ISP.")

For people who don't know what the xkcd compliance is:

> The company's owner, Adrian Kennard (RevK), stated in a blog post that as of October 2010 the company is "xkcd/806" compliant, referring to xkcd comic number 806. This means that technical support callers who say the code word "shibboleet" will be transferred to a technical support representative who knows at least two programming languages, and presumably can offer more useful advice than a standard tech support script.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrews_%26_Arnold

Re: I tried to cancel Virgin Media broadband contract

#112

Post by Nextgrid »

Silhouette wrote: post #12

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…

Virgin completely ignored my complaint letter despite being delivered via recorded delivery, so even that isn't enough in certain cases.

Cancelling the payment and explaining the situation to the subsequent debt collector (who was very reasonable and understood the situation) was the only thing that worked.

Re: I tried to cancel Virgin Media broadband contract

#113

Post by Silhouette »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #73
Silhouette wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 w…

I'm sorry to hear that. We've been with Zen for many years and through multiple addresses, and the only technical issues I can recall originated with Openreach rather than Zen and got escalated promptly by the Zen support people. Never had a bandwidth problem, and right now we're routinely getting close to the top speeds available with FTTC, even at "busy" times and with the coronavirus disruption. We did have a bit of hassle getting connected the last time we moved, but again I'm not sure whether that was really Zen's fault, because we ended up getting a BT engineer sent out to install some new hardware as well.

It's true that Zen are relatively expensive, though, and their lack of 24/7 support is still well below par. A&A would be the obvious alternative to consider if we were moving again or decided to change ISP for some reason.

Re: I tried to cancel Virgin Media broadband contract

#114

Post by Nextgrid »

artistsvoid wrote: post #48
lightgreen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK you can simply cancel the direct debit (most regular payments in the UK happen using direct debit, not by credit card). But as far as I understand not paying for a contract may result in damaged credit history, so the mortgage can become more expensive for example; or they may sell your "debt" to some collector company, who may start bothering you (I heard these stories from friends). So because of these re…

Makes sense ; where I come from direct debit is also widely used for such matters. Wouldn't it be awesome if when you stop paying it would simply automatically cancel the contracts within a given time period, no questions asked, no need for any 'credit rating' et cetera ... it sounds like something akin to this would be 'doable' in law? Especially with subscriptions regarding 'digital' services that are renewed on a…

> Wouldn't it be awesome if when you stop paying it would simply automatically cancel the contracts within a given time period

It would be awesome, but the very business model of these companies relies on things not being awesome. I can imagine that a significant chunk of their revenue comes from disgruntled customers that have no choice but to pay even if they've been wronged because they don't want the hit on their credit report (even though it can be removed with enough effort).

I actually think that overall the companies probably do lose more money (in both PR/customer goodwill as well as support & debt collection costs) due to these scummy practices but too many people within the company rely on things being the way they are to get paid, so they have no incentive by themselves to improve things.

For example, allowing easy subscriptions/cancellations online would remove the need for a sales and "retentions" team as well as the multiple layers of management above them. Making contracts cancel automatically removes the need for debt collection and all the management around that and so on.

Re: I tried to cancel Virgin Media broadband contract

#115

Post by Silhouette »

Nextgrid wrote: post #110
Silhouette wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please be really careful doing this. Cancelling a payment authority is not the same as cancelling a contract, even if you have a right to do the latter under your terms. If you just stop making payments for something you do owe, you are the one in the wrong, and you can end up with a bad credit history, legal action taken against you, specialists chasing you for the debt in increasingly scary ways, etc.

Credit history and debt collection is fair, but I wonder, how does "legal action" happens considering the customer has already attempted to cancel in good faith? How do they defend the lawsuit when the customer provides proof that they did a reasonable attempt at canceling within the rules and were stonewalled?

As long as you really have already attempted to cancel in good faith, you should be fine on all counts. The problem is a lot of people will cancel a Direct Debit or use one of these disposable card services and cancel that, and not understand that just revoking payment authority doesn't necessarily end any legal agreement they have. They will still owe the money (and potentially penalties associated with collecting it) if they don't then make some other arrangement to pay rather than terminating the legal contract properly.

Re: I tried to cancel Virgin Media broadband contract

#117

Post by Silhouette »

Nextgrid wrote: post #112
Silhouette wrote: post #12

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…

Virgin completely ignored my complaint letter despite being delivered via recorded delivery, so even that isn't enough in certain cases. Cancelling the payment and explaining the situation to the subsequent debt collector (who was very reasonable and understood the situation) was the only thing that worked.

It might not be enough to get them to stop immediately, but it's also useful for several other reasons. It is usually a necessary first step in a real small claims action against them. It's also evidence if you're dealing with a more serious case and want to take formal action over harassment, file for an injunction, demonstrate that the amount is in dispute to make debt collectors go away, etc. Basically, not acting properly on mail sent to your registered address will likely count against you in any sort of subsequent legal dispute.

One thing that I've known several people to do (with considerable success in practice) is include a statement in that letter to the effect that sending that letter is free of charge, but any subsequent actions you reasonably take due to the company's incompetence will incur a clearly stated and proportionate administration fee and/or require compensation for any expenses incurred and other consequential losses. As I understand it, as long as you're reasonable in what you say you'll claim from them, this can be legally enforceable, particularly if the business imposes similar conditions itself as part of its contractual terms, which many do. Certainly I've seen several major businesses end up paying out a small amount of compensation in these situations when the matter was finally settled. This can also be helpful for getting a problem escalated to someone who can deal with it sensibly, because random front-line customer relations staff probably don't have the authority to incur expenses on behalf of the business.

Re: I tried to cancel Virgin Media broadband contract

#118

Post by cortesoft »

Nextgrid wrote: post #104
cortesoft wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you checked your credit rating recently?

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.

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.

Re: I tried to cancel Virgin Media broadband contract

#119

Post by cortesoft »

Nextgrid wrote: post #114
artistsvoid wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense ; where I come from direct debit is also widely used for such matters. Wouldn't it be awesome if when you stop paying it would simply automatically cancel the contracts within a given time period, no questions asked, no need for any 'credit rating' et cetera ... it sounds like something akin to this would be 'doable' in law? Especially with subscriptions regarding 'digital' services that are renewed on a…

> Wouldn't it be awesome if when you stop paying it would simply automatically cancel the contracts within a given time period It would be awesome, but the very business model of these companies relies on things not being awesome. I can imagine that a significant chunk of their revenue comes from disgruntled customers that have no choice but to pay even if they've been wronged because they don't want the hit on their…

California actually has a law about this now... if you are able to sign up online, you have to be able to cancel online. I know some people who will set their locations to California, and the website will suddenly give them the option to cancel.
Post reply on HN