The NEN – North Edinburgh News

• Millions of calls were likely mishandled over nearly a three-year period, preventing or delaying customers from switching away to a better deal.
• Investigation uncovers deliberate call-dropping tactics, excessive and unnecessary call transfers and putting customers repeatedly on hold for no reason.
• Commission scheme effectively encouraged and financially rewarded call centre agents for behaving in this way.

Ofcom has today fined Virgin Media £28 million for putting customers on millions of calls through unreasonable effort, hassle and difficulty when trying to switch to another provider. 

In the UK’s competitive market, telecoms customers can choose from a wide range of providers, services and packages – often saving hundreds of pounds by switching to a new deal. The ability for customers to shop around, switch and save is particularly important given the current cost-of-living crisis facing UK households.

Our rules – known as General Conditions – are clear that the conditions or procedures telecoms providers have in place must not act as a disincentive for customers who wish to cancel their contract.

Having received significant volumes of complaints from Virgin Media customers reporting difficulties in cancelling their contracts – and following unsuccessful engagement with the company to address this issue – Ofcom launched an investigation to establish whether the company had complied with its duties.  

What our investigation found

Our investigation uncovered systemic and repeated failings in Virgin Media’s contract termination procedures. Millions of calls made by customers between 1 January 2022 to 11 September 2024 were likely to have been mishandled by call agents in order to delay or prevent customers from cancelling and switching to a competitor. 

In summary:

• Virgin Media split its retention team into two ‘tiers’ of agents. Only agents in the second tier were able to process cancellations. This resulted in over a million callers being made to repeat their request to at least one further agent to stand any chance of having their cancellation processed.
• Customers reported making multiple attempts to cancel through repeated calls to the retention team and through other contact channels, and in some cases resorted to cancelling their direct debits, which led to further difficulties such as missed payments impacting their credit score.
• We uncovered widespread and, in many cases, deliberate mishandling of calls by retention team agents. Behaviours and tactics included: repeated attempts to pressure customers to stay, even when they had made it clear they wanted to cancel; unnecessary or excessive call transfers to other departments; excessively, unnecessarily and repeatedly keeping customers on hold; deliberately dropping calls; and failing to process cancellations on the system.
• Virgin Media effectively encouraged the use of these behaviours to deter customers from cancelling by financially rewarding them through its commission scheme. Its training and guidance for agents also failed to prevent these behaviours while inadequate quality assurance and monitoring meant they were often overlooked. Additionally, the company did not have proper oversight of its third-party call centres or quality monitoring. 

As a result, we have concluded that Virgin Media’s two-tier cancellation process and agent behaviours caused customers on millions of calls unreasonable effort, hassle or undue difficulty when trying to cancel. 

These failings likely acted as a disincentive to switch for customers across millions of calls – delaying or preventing them from taking advantage of a competitor’s offer, against Ofcom’s consumer protection rules. 

Financial penalty

As a result of Virgin Media’s serious failures, Ofcom has fined the company £28 million, which will be passed on to HM Treasury.

In setting the penalty amount we took into consideration, among other things:

• the significant harm experienced by those customers affected;
• Virgin Media’s repeated failures to act to identify and prevent the harm;
• the financial gain the company is likely to have made;
• Virgin Media’s repeated failure to comply with our information gathering process during our investigation; and
• the fact the company has been fined previously for a breach of the same rule in 2018. 

The penalty includes a 30% reduction on what it otherwise would have been, given Virgin Media admitted its failing and agreed to settle the case.

Natalie Black, Ofcom’s Group Director, Infrastructure and Connectivity, said: “The facts are clear. Virgin Media made it harder for customers to cancel their contracts and then did not fully cooperate with our investigation. As a result, we are levelling our largest ever fine under our consumer protection rules for direct harm to consumers.

“Today, we are sending a clear message that any provider who wilfully acts against the interests of their customers will pay a heavy price. And by introducing the One Touch Switch Process, we‘ve put in place further safeguards to prevent this from happening again.”

Virgin Media has made a number of important changes, including to improve its commission scheme, training and quality assurance and monitoring.

As part of our decision, we are requiring Virgin Media to check that every affected customer who complained has received the compensation or other remedies they were entitled to. The company must complete this in six months.