Virgin Media fined £28 million over 'deliberately dropping calls' and putting people on hold 'for no reason' when they tried to cancel

Between January 2022 and September 2024, millions of customer calls were "likely mishandled", the regulator found. It added that it had received over 1,800 complaints from Virgin Media users who had difficulties cancelling.

Ofcom's investigation looked at calls that took place before the launch of its 'One Touch Switch' process on 12 September 2024. As of that date, in most cases you no longer need to contact your existing provider when switching broadband, as your new firm should sort this for you.

Virgin Media's tactics put customers through "unreasonable effort, hassle and difficulty"

Ofcom's rules say telecoms providers shouldn't make it unreasonably difficult, stressful or off-putting for you to leave. But its investigation into Virgin Media found:

• Widespread – and often deliberate – mishandling of customer calls. This included:
  - Repeated attempts to pressure customers to stay, even when they'd 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.

• Virgin Media "effectively encouraged" the use of these tactics by financially rewarding employees through commissions. The training given to agents "failed to prevent these behaviours" and there wasn't "proper oversight" of third-party call centres, Ofcom added.

• The retention team was split into two 'tiers' – and only agents in the second tier could actually carry out cancellations. This meant customers often had to repeat themselves at least once "to stand any chance of having their cancellation processed".

All of this likely delayed or prevented people from switching and taking advantage of competing offers, Ofcom said. It added that the firm has since "made a number of important changes" to its commission scheme, training and quality control.

The firm WON'T be forced to pay compensation to those affected

Virgin Media hasn't been ordered to dole out automatic compensation to anyone affected, but if you had trouble cancelling or switching away from the firm between 2022 and 2024, it could still be worth putting in a complaint now.

This is most likely to be effective if you can demonstrate that you missed out on savings or were prevented from cancelling, so try to compile any evidence you may have – such as old phone bills showing the calls you made, for example. You can then complain by following the process on Virgin Media's website.

If you're unhappy with how Virgin Media has dealt with your complaint, or if it's taken longer than eight weeks to resolve it, you can escalate it to the free Communications & Internet Services Adjudication Scheme (CISAS).

What does Virgin Media say?

A Virgin Media spokesperson said: "We're committed to giving all our customers great service and apologise to the small proportion who experienced an issue when contacting us to agree a new deal or cancel their service in the past.

"We have completely redesigned our customer services in recent years, addressing the historic shortfalls identified by Ofcom through a number of improvements, and have resolved all formal customer complaints from this period providing redress where appropriate."