I am a carer, and paying the £240 would cripple us financially
I am a low-paid home worker and carer for my seriously ill wife, who can no longer work. Our financial position has recently forced us to downsize, but our longstanding telecoms provider, Virgin Media, does not supply the village we have moved to, so we were forced to move to another provider. Now Virgin insists we pay an “early exit fee” of £240, but it is still taking payments for a service it can’t provide until we can find the fee, yet has removed our online account so we can’t check bills. This will cripple us financially.
JD, Keelby, Lincolnshire
All telecoms companies charge fees if you end a contract before the minimum period; what makes Virgin’s levy so unpalatable is that, unlike other providers, it operates its own infrastructure, which only extends to 75% of the population. I’ve heard from readers who moved to a new address two streets away and found it couldn’t supply them. In 2018 the company was fined £7m by regulator Ofcom for overcharging customers who terminated their contract early, and for failing to make its cancellation charges clear. Virgin’s terms and conditions now state that a contract applies to the address a customer lives in when signing up, and its termination fee is capped at £240.
