My wife died but Virgin Media seems unable to transfer account to my name | Virgin Media
My wife died suddenly 18 weeks ago. I contacted Virgin Media to have our phone and broadband account transferred from their name to mine. Its website said I could make changes to the plan at the same time, so I asked for a half-price deal.
I was told I would have to cancel the existing contract and wait 14 days before signing up for a new contract. This would leave me without an internet connection and unable to work from home. The other option was to transfer the existing plan to my name and change it after 30 days. I chose the latter.
Thirty days later, I logged into the app, only to be greeted by my late wife’s name, which was upsetting. An online discussion referred me to the bereavement line. I had to explain once again that my wife had died. I was told I couldn’t be transferred to the cheaper plan because the system hadn’t updated my name yet. I was promised a call back in three days. It never came.
Three weeks later, the online chat sent me back to the bereavement line to repeat the entire process. Again I was told the system had not been updated. It’s now been three months since I first contacted Virgin and I are paying twice as much as we need to. I can’t face a call his mourning line and having to explain once again that my wife has died.
general practitioner, Ély
Incompetence or insensitivity of companies? Both amount to pretty much the same thing when you’ve been chained as long and painfully as you have been.
Quite apart from the agony of having to repeatedly tell strangers that your wife has died, you had to pay £69.21 for your old, now unwanted contract, instead of £33.99 per month for the package you requested.
Virgin called you a few hours after my contact and blamed the new staff for giving you incorrect information. It turns out you should have been able to close the old account and start a new transaction with a potential service interruption of 1 hour, not 14 days.
A spokesperson said: “We apologize for the delay in resolving his query. We have now agreed a new plan at a lower monthly cost.”
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