My Rant From 2013: How Virgin Media Treat the Widowed
The problems I had, trying to take over my late wife’s account
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| Image created by the author. |
Several years ago, not long after my wife died, I posted a few articles on one of my old websites. A few years later, I closed the site, and I feel like it’s time to make those articles available once more.
This one is from October 2013, and it’s about the trouble I had with Virgin Media. I hope that they treat widowed customers better nowadays, than they did back then.
[Note: For privacy, I’ve changed my wife’s name to Jane.]
We’d lived at the same address for nearly 20 years. Some bills were in joint names, and others were in just one name. For those that were in Jane’s name, in general, it’s not been too much trouble to get things changed over to me. But in one particular case, things have been especially difficult.
Virgin Media.
They provide our phone, TV and internet services. This is a long story, but there is a good outcome – eventually!
Going back a year or so, to when Jane’s health started getting worse again, I asked them to put the account in joint names, so I could deal with all the general problems and queries that arise from time to time. But they said it was not possible to do that. All they could do was to include me on the account, so I could ring them to discuss things.
After Jane passed away in June, I gave them a call. It didn’t take long before things started to get a bit silly. Other utility companies simply changed the name on the account. You’d think it would be easy wouldn’t you?
Not with Virgin Media.
WTF? Can’t they just change the name and leave it all switched on?
Why do the services actually have to be stopped briefly then restarted?
They also asked me to make a payment for July, as Jane’s bank account had been closed. So I paid by debit card. Anyway, they said they’d arrange everything, so I thought that would be the end of it.
After a few days, some paperwork came through. I set up a new direct debit and created a new password for myself.
A few weeks later, my phone line and internet connection went down, and all I could get was a Virgin Media configuration screen. I realised that it must be the day of the change-over that they’d warned me about.
A little later, all the services just started working again on their own. (I actually wasted time fiddling about with the broadband configuration screen, which didn’t seem to play nicely with the latest Firefox or Chrome browsers. In the end, none of that was necessary…)
A quick check revealed that our previous contract’s promotional period had just ended, which accounted for £8 of the increase. But the other £3? That was because they’d dropped a loyalty discount we’d been receiving!
It felt like they were taking advantage of the situation – that they were using it as an opportunity to increase the price. So I rang up to find out why. Eventually I was told:
‘When we transferred the account to you, the £3 loyalty credit was not transferred.’
They went on to say:
’We gave a credit to your wife because she was a loyal customer of ours. If you take over the account it means that your account is a new customer and you are unable to get the loyalty credit.’
Then they tried to transfer me to the customer loyalty department, but the call got cut off. So I rang back, and explained everything all over again to another member of staff.
This one is from October 2013, and it’s about the trouble I had with Virgin Media. I hope that they treat widowed customers better nowadays, than they did back then.
[Note: For privacy, I’ve changed my wife’s name to Jane.]
Transferring Utility Accounts
After Jane passed away, I had to contact quite a number of utility companies and financial institutions.We’d lived at the same address for nearly 20 years. Some bills were in joint names, and others were in just one name. For those that were in Jane’s name, in general, it’s not been too much trouble to get things changed over to me. But in one particular case, things have been especially difficult.
Virgin Media.
They provide our phone, TV and internet services. This is a long story, but there is a good outcome – eventually!
Going back a year or so, to when Jane’s health started getting worse again, I asked them to put the account in joint names, so I could deal with all the general problems and queries that arise from time to time. But they said it was not possible to do that. All they could do was to include me on the account, so I could ring them to discuss things.
After Jane passed away in June, I gave them a call. It didn’t take long before things started to get a bit silly. Other utility companies simply changed the name on the account. You’d think it would be easy wouldn’t you?
Not with Virgin Media.
Overly Complicated
They said they’d have to transfer the account to me, and it would take about 6 weeks. Furthermore, at the time of the transfer, the services would be cut off for about half an hour.WTF? Can’t they just change the name and leave it all switched on?
Why do the services actually have to be stopped briefly then restarted?
They also asked me to make a payment for July, as Jane’s bank account had been closed. So I paid by debit card. Anyway, they said they’d arrange everything, so I thought that would be the end of it.
After a few days, some paperwork came through. I set up a new direct debit and created a new password for myself.
A few weeks later, my phone line and internet connection went down, and all I could get was a Virgin Media configuration screen. I realised that it must be the day of the change-over that they’d warned me about.
A little later, all the services just started working again on their own. (I actually wasted time fiddling about with the broadband configuration screen, which didn’t seem to play nicely with the latest Firefox or Chrome browsers. In the end, none of that was necessary…)
Higher Prices
It didn’t take much longer for my new contract to arrive through the post. But imagine my surprise, when I noticed that the price had gone up by about £11 per month (from £30.90 to £41.99).A quick check revealed that our previous contract’s promotional period had just ended, which accounted for £8 of the increase. But the other £3? That was because they’d dropped a loyalty discount we’d been receiving!
It felt like they were taking advantage of the situation – that they were using it as an opportunity to increase the price. So I rang up to find out why. Eventually I was told:
‘When we transferred the account to you, the £3 loyalty credit was not transferred.’
They went on to say:
’We gave a credit to your wife because she was a loyal customer of ours. If you take over the account it means that your account is a new customer and you are unable to get the loyalty credit.’
Then they tried to transfer me to the customer loyalty department, but the call got cut off. So I rang back, and explained everything all over again to another member of staff.
Getting The Worst Deal
I asked why I could not have one of the deals advertised on their website, such as £22.24 per month for the first 6 months, then £29.49 after that. They said:‘That only applies to new customers.’
I thought to myself, if I’m not a new customer, surely I must be an old, loyal, customer? So I asked:
‘Can I have the loyalty discount that my wife received?’
They replied:
’No, that can’t be transferred.’
So it’s the worst of both worlds. Sometimes I’m treated like a new customer, and sometimes I’m treated like an old customer. Whatever is necessary to give me the worst deal.
I complained some more, and got transferred to a third member of staff – this time in customer relations. They apologised and said:
’It is a system error at our end which I apologise profusely for and we can resolve’.
They ended up reducing the cost to £36.99 per month, with a further £5 discount to £31.99 for the first 6 months. They also arranged to upgrade the set-top box from V+ to TiVo. Despite this offer still not being quite as good as what they give to new customers, I decided that it was good enough.
So that’s the end of the story, right? Surely?
No.
More Problems
The next thing I got from them was my first bill. There were two problems:- Quite some time ago, we switched to paperless billing. But they decided to give me to paper bills again, and charge £1.75 per month for doing it!
- They carried over an amount of £49.80 from a ‘previous bill’.
But I didn’t have any previous bills! So I tried logging in using my new password, which didn’t work.
Next I tried logging in using Jane’s old login – and that worked!
(It still showed her user name and details, which was upsetting.)
Paperless Billing
You might expect all the old bills to be available to view online, right?Wrong.
The only bill I could view online was the one I was already holding in my hand! All the older bills from when Jane managed the account were nowhere to be found. This is when paperless billing falls down. If we’d used paper billing, I’d still have access to everything.
So I tried to get hold of the missing bills. (I’m quite happy to pay for services that I’ve used, I just think it’s reasonable to have a full breakdown of what I’m being asked to pay for.)
I decided to send my query online, as my phone calls to their customer service number seemed quite costly. (Only later did I find I could ring them free by dialling 150 from my landline, rather than using the 0845 454 1111 number that they put on the front of their letters…)
To send the query online required me to enter my password. Simple enough, right? My message bounced back a day later, as I had apparently used an ‘invalid password’.
It took a few more tries before I got through. And it took more messages and more phone calls to get to the bottom of things. But I finally got my hands on the missing bills.
Handling Charge
I discovered that the original (missing) July bill came to £69, and they had included a £5 ‘payment handling charge’ – whatever that is.(Presumably it’s to punish me for not paying on time, despite me setting up the new direct debit as soon as possible, and them never sending me a bill before.)
Anyway, on the August bill, they’d split the period covered by the July bill into two parts – presumably due to the service being changed with the TiVo upgrade etc.
And guess what – when I added together the two amounts that previously came to £69, it now totalled £75. (How they worked that out, I don’t know!)
Happy Ending
Despite all the hassle and problems, I was amazed that I managed to get this final problem resolved with just one more phone call!Yes!
Rant over!
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