Pricewatch queries: A bill of €1,800 for a supposedly free TV package

Marianne Lambert has been run ragged by Virgin Media in recent months. In November 2012 the company, which was then trading as UPC, agreed to give her Sky Movies and Sky Sports free for a period of six months in a bid to retain her business, as Sky was offering her a deal and UPC did not want to lose the business.

Lambert says she was offered the premium channels if she renewed her standard existing contract for a period of 12 months. She writes that she was told she would receive Sky Movies and Sky Sports free for a “period of six months only, and once the six months had lapsed the Sky packages would automatically be removed from our package and our existing package would remain”.

“Around two months after the free Sky package was applied,” she says, “the Sky channels became unavailable, so I called UPC, and they advised that this was an automatic setting whereby free services automatically cease after a two-month period. They apologised and reapplied the channels, but they advised it might happen again throughout the six months.

“It did, of course, happen again, but each time they reapplied the channels and advised that this was to be our last two months free, after which the Sky channels would become unavailable and the regular service we had signed up to would recommence.”

The bill was about €99 every two months. “Due to the fact that UPC/Virgin Media do not issue bills, we only realised this month that actually they have been charging us €99 every month since February 2013. I concede that this oversight on our behalf was foolish, but as my husband was not receiving monthly notifications, he never noticed the frequency of the €99 monthly deductions.”

Marianne contacted Virgin Media and was told she was being charged €99 per month for the Sky packages mentioned above.

“They maintain that the charges are legit and correct, and they are unwilling to refund or credit our account in any way. They have offered us a discount of around €15 per month for 12 months if we were to renew with them, but clearly this is not acceptable as the amount we have been overcharged now stands at about €1,800.”

She says that it is important to note “that we cannot access, and do not have any Sky Sports or Sky Movie channels on our digital boxes currently . . . however, we are still being charged in full for same.”

She “never ever agreed to a paid upgrade of our package, nor did I ever give permission to charge for same. This was neither a misunderstanding nor misinterpretation of the situation on my part.

“And this fact both UPC and I agree on: the Sky package was offered as a stand-alone goodwill gesture for six months free of charge. The agreement in 2013 was that the Sky package would be for a limited time only, that it would be removed without our intervention after six months and that our regular charges would apply thereafter.”

She was told recently that “we do have access to the channels, and so even though I have sent them photos of the screen with the time and date, showing that we do not have these channels, they advise it is my word against theirs. I have asked them to send out a technician to verify that what I am saying is true, but they have advised today that ‘that won’t really solve anything’.”

The only reason she has “not cancelled our contract immediately is because I feel if I leave them I will never stand a chance of recouping our loss. I have requested that they review the calls that were recorded back in 2013, which they themselves said they were going to do last week when this issue first got escalated. However, that call has now become unavailable, which is a shame as that, too, will verify all that I am saying to be true.”

Marianne goes on to say that she “finally convinced Virgin Media to come out to the house to verify everything I have said to be correct. They were scheduled to come out to the house [last Monday] but they never showed.”

We contacted Virgin. A spokeswoman said there “may possibly be a mutual misunderstanding of the circumstances relating to this matter on the part of the customer and also on our part.” She accepted that there had been “delays in addressing this for the customer and we’re really very sorry about that. However, it’s not possible for us to address specific details of this query with the media without potentially breaching customer confidentiality, which we cannot do. This inquiry has been passed to a senior manager, so we are fully committed to dealing directly with the customer to resolve matters.”