Virgin Media Contract Cancellation

[TunX]

Hi all,

A friend of mine has Virgin Media and 7 months remaining on his contract. Last week he moved in to a new flat with his girlfriend and wanted to move his Virgin package to his new flat. Virgin then told him they were unable to provide their service in that area and so he has now signed up with BT who will be installing fiber etc. this week. /

However, Virgin are now trying to charge him for the remainder of his contract.... Is this fair / Legal?

They are unable to provide the service in his new area and so he has no choice but to go with another provider. Can they really charge him the remaing 7 months to cancel his subscription considering they can't provide the service?

Thanks in advance.

[R0b]

Re: Virgin Media Contract Cancellation

It's always a sticky point, I would argue that it is an unfair penalty to charge someone when the services cannot be performed by the supplier and then charge the customer for the remainder of the contract. What if (maybe not in your friends case but) the person had a reason for moving due to a change of job? Does that mean he should be penalised for moving into an area not covered by Virgin, certainly sounds unfair to me, but Virgin will argue that their setup costs etc. will need to be recovered. My argument to that is that unless they had to physically installed the cabling for your friend then the have done that themselves for the use of virgin customers whoever that may be and the particular cabling was not brought about just because your friend wanted to take Virgin services - it was already there in the first place.

Anyway, there is a clause in the contract which says that they can charge for the remainder of the contract but as above, I would be disputing this.

When the OFT was about hey provided some guidance on unfair terms. Here is an example which is similar to the Virgin clause albeit worded in a different way. They found that the term was unfair and should be deleted.

RMCL may from time to time and without notice suspend the Services (… and duringany period of suspension the Customer shall remain liable for the Annual MonitoringFee) if the Customer does, or allows to be done, anything which in RMCL's opinionmay have the effect of jeopardising the operation of the Services

As you can see, although Virgin's term is not quite the same, the point being is that if you move to another address then you are liable for the remainder of the contract if they cannot provide the service to your friend. They are effectively recovering monies from the contract without having to supply the service.