Times (UK) and Sunday Times code thread

A bit off topic, but anyway.

I had murder with Virgin Media a few years ago when I tried to cancel my TV and broadband package by phone. They made it as difficult as they possibly could for me to cancel, including telling me blatant lies.

They would answer the phone alright, but repeatedly insisted that in order to cancel that I must do it on their dedicated line. There was, I was told absolutely no other way of cancelling, and until I canceled this way I was liable for their monthly 100 fee. I was told this blatant lie over and over.

Strangely enough, the cancellation line was unmanned most of the time and only opened up during office hours. I was holding on waiting for someone to answer the phone when they would just cut me off. I spent multiple hours on hold on the phone trying to cancel.

They had all the information and held all the cards. I was relying on memory as to what the contract I had signed a year or two said. Silly me, I believed their deliberate lies about how to cancel.

From a commercial point of view, for every month they succeeded in not allowing a customer to cancel meant another 90 - 100 plus to their profits. Multiply that by literally thousands of customers who couldn't cancel and you're into millions of extra profit for them.

I did an FOI (Freedom of Information request) and asked that every single thing they held regarding me be posted out to me, including a transcript of all conversations.

They said that they would send it out on a disk or an email. I declined and after conferring with the Office of the Data Protection Commisioner, I was told that they had to send the information out to me in the form I requested ie hard copy (paper).

In the telephone book sized papers they posted out was my contract with them. Buried in the middle of the contract was instructions on how to cancel. It said that in order to cancel you had to write in to their office stating that you were cancelling. Nothing more. There was absolutely no mention of having to ring a certain number to cancel your contract. Yey were just making that up in order to boost their profits.

As I said, I kicked up a fair stink about it at the time. I am unaware if they have now made it easier to cancel, but now that I think about it, I haven't heard anyone complaining about how difficult it is to cancel recently.

Still have not been charged anything for my sub, mind you I can only log into my account on my phone. Still saying im not a member if I try from PC or tablet.

I cancelled 5 days before end of the 12months for 5. They were not offering me the same deal over the phone.

I resigned up again today for another 12months for 5euros.

Happy customer

Do they require your registered name to be the same as on your credit card?

For commenting purposes can you be Mick Murphy?

No such offer now, it seems that you cannot even trust them to end their offer on the day they say.

So why couldn't I avail of it yesterday?

I had no intention of ringing anyone. Was that required?

The offer page had a countdown clock running until the offer expired. It ended somtime on the 10th - I dont know/care exactly when either.

There's no shenanigans going on dude.....you were simply too late.

But on the positive, it'll come around again soon enough.

I got the same by email - you must phone. So I replied and said I had zero access to any phone and would be stopping all payments. 5 minutes later they confirmed cancellation by email, so the phone thing is purely to encourage retention. It's a good deal if they offer it again, but like some others, I just forgot it was there.

I would definitely stay with the Sunday Times if they offered a proper E-Paper of the Irish edition on Sunday, but I don't think they do, I could never find it anyway.

Ta. Someone mentioned it was only available on Apple so no good for me thanks.