Reply With QuoteIs your wife within the 14 day contract cooling off period? If so, she can cancel.
If not, what makes you think you can terminate a legally binding contract early?
I'm tryng to workout if it's feasible cancel my wife's VM contract and start a new one in my name the day after it's cancelled.
There are conflicting views online.
Anyone have a real-life experience of this?
Is your wife within the 14 day contract cooling off period? If so, she can cancel.
If not, what makes you think you can terminate a legally binding contract early?
If you mean in order for you to get the new customer discount then yes, I used to do this every year, one year in my wife’s name and one year in mine swapping back and forth which is ridiculous to be honest, they have to send out boxes for you to send all your kit back, then schedule an engineer to come out and install all new kit etc. it ends up costing them way way more than just giving you the discount
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I have no dog in this fight, but in many areas of commerce the power of human inertia is a major factor in calculating likely profit or loss.Originally Posted by toastie
Sorry, I haven't been clear. We are now out of contract.
Thanks. That's what I wanted to hear.
Do you set the start date of the new contract to commence the day after the 30 day notice period has ended?
Do you use a referral code for a discount?
Then do as you please.
I have the right to leave VM with 30 days' notice.
I don't have a right to begin a new contract the day after that, and there is information on the internet that suggests it's VM policy to not allow that.
My question is about whether VM will block it, and whether I will be able to use my wife's referral code.
I'm specifically interested in real-world experience though. There's no shortage of opinion around.
Last edited by Tony; 26th December 2023 at 12:59.
Thanks for the further context. Your original post was a little clandestine hence the confusion on my part. And by no means have I any speciality in the area, so wish you good luck.
Seems like there are many more games to be played than just undertaking the merry dance every 18 months.
They refuse to dance.
I've just cancelled. I plan to start a new contract the day after disconnection.
I haven’t done it for a couple of years as no longer have a wife but to be honest I haven’t needed to, this year I called and cancelled and 2 weeks later they called me and offered the deal I wanted at £5 less than a new customer, I think it’s because in my area we have just had city fibre installed so they are competing for customers, before this they had the monopoly on it but I may have just been lucky. Either way good luck and I hope you get it sorted.
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Thanks. I've had decent outcomes previously but they've left me no option this time.
Every year for the last 6 years, I have called and threatened to cancel and been offered the same price as new customers. Sometimes, it has taken 2-3 calls rather than one but each time it has been the same outcome. OP - be patient and hold your nerve. You shouldn't have to get a new account in your wife's name.
^^^This^^^
Once I took it all the way to cancelling, which was a bit squeaky bum time but 2 weeks before it was due to be cut off, the phoned and offered a silly cheap deal.
Hold your nerve, or just sign up with someone else.
I cancelled VM this year as I moved to a new area where VM wasn’t fast enough for my purposes and I’d gone with a different supplier .
I was constantly harassed by VM customer care representatives from retention . I explained to them my reasons for cancelling and that there was nothing they could do to make me stay . Had no effect , I think they called me at least once a day , I would tell them I wasn’t interested , they would make me jump through the security confirmation anyway before telling me why they were calling . Then they’d ignore what I was saying to them and try to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse .
I had to block them finally , they never bothered to retrieve the fibre router either.
I’d be surprised if they don’t just offer you what you want if you call them.
I cancelled and left in November and only ever had 1 call within a few days of giving the notice and even that was a guy who clearly didn’t want to be working that day and offered me a less for more. Told him that was way too much and thereafter I never got another call even though I had text messages stating that they had tried to contact me.
I eventually signed up with Community Fiber with 2 weeks left before the end date, so be warned, make sure you have a contingency plan in place as there’s no guarantee that they will call.
I’m now going through the final bill nightmare, my end date was supposed to be the 8th November but when I called on the 12th my service still hadn’t ended but the guy assured me he had now ended it and would get it backdated to the 8th. Then at the start of December I realised that they had taken another months payment, called them and my end date was now the 30th, no real explanation except that it had something to do with my landline. After many calls they agreed to apply a part credit and with yet more discussion they then agreed to apply all of the monthly charge as a credit but I won’t get that back until 16th Jan.
So even though I’ve now left the Virgin fiasco merry go round continues. You really couldn’t make this up. On the flip side Community Fiber have so far been fantastic.
The contingency plan is that I start a new contract the day after I'm disconnected in another name.
VM have already started to call the landline.
I'm not there for another three weeks, and I've told my wife to tell them to email.
I'll speak to them when I get back if they're still trying.
Haha - I did the same. My wife was working from home and threatened divorce if the wifi was disconnected, so with 2 weeks until cut-off and still no calls from Virgin I phoned them sheepishly asking to rescind my cancellation. To their credit, they even gave me a deal I would have been happy to accept in the first instance.
Another Virgin Media story :
About 2015 I cancelled virgin media as I would be abroad for about 2 years . Around 2017 I realised I had been charged for two years . About £1500.
I called them up to complain , at first they trued to fob me off but when they checked lo and behold they had a record of me cancelling in black and white.
Explanaitions were vague but refunds were slow to appear until I complained directly to the UK CEO of virgin media because I was fed up repeating the same story to some kid on the phone in the Philipines .
Funnily enough i got refunded immediately .. They sent me a paper cheque … the phone drines ckaimed there was no other way to refund me despite me being half way round the wirld so another complaint hit the CEO’s desk . I think I used the word “theft” in it .
I was paid the full amount via bank transfer the next day .
They're a truly horrible company. They've certainly tried to defraud me before.
I don't have any dealings with them unless it's by email, an online chat that I can copy, or a telephone conversation on my mobile that I can record myself.
I hate all these rigmarole of haggling and cancelling and waiting for their call back to get the retention package that is reasonable. As if life is not busy enough.
Still a loyal plusnet customer (full fibre now, being with them since the early 2000s)
To update, having cancelled my wife's contract I've got a new contract lined up to start the day after that one ends.
New name, new bank account, same address. I'll lose my landline number.
I signed up using my wife's referral code.
If it works, I'll be saving myself a significant amount of cash.
Big update: During my 30-day notoce period my wife took a phone call on the landline (she asked them to email her) and I had a text asking me to call them (er, no thanks).
We woke up this morning to no internet. By 10 the new equipment has arrived, and in 15 minutes I was back up and running.
Updated 360 box, and with my Volt add-on from a new 02 sim contract I was going to take anyway, I'm back where I started with minimal fuss.
On the 'new customer' rate I'm £48 a month better off than the figure they wanted to charge me. We're waiting to see if the referral from one contract to another will work (which will be another £100 our way if it does).
Great that you've got a better deal!
Within the last month I needed to renew my VM deal.
They wanted way too more than my current contract! So I threatened to leave which had worked before.
Not this time. I said I'd get other quotes.
I got a better wuote from Sky for an equivalent package & called VM back.
They refused to better their deal so I cancelled them there & then.
A day or two later, (still in contract) I got a call with an offer I could not refuse. No horses heads, just a way better deal that was cheaper than Sky.
Just shows, we've got to take whoever we're with to the wire and only when they 100% know we're leaving will they give us the "new customer" deal.
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Final update: My wife and I both received our referral £50s today.
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