Summary: My dad found himself signed up to a mobile phone contract that he didn’t ask for or need. I helped him try to cancel it and make a complaint, and when that didn’t work I helped him refer the case to the Communications Ombudsman. 

The case was resolved in our favour (with nothing owed and no contract), but only after 165 days of frustration and anxiety, caused by often incoherent, sometimes threatening communications from Virgin Media, O2, and their appointed debt collectors.

I’m recording the story here, because I think it needs to be written down somewhere. Maybe a user researcher or service designer working for Virgin Media will make use of it. I hope so.

Here’s what happened:

On 15 September 2023 my dad took a phone call from a Virgin Media salesperson. During that call, my dad agreed to renew his existing contract for his broadband and television. He remembers a conversation about adding Netflix to his TV package, but he remembers no mention of a mobile phone contract, or O2. This is important, because that’s what the rest of this story (over the next 6 months) is all about.

It seems (although I don’t know for sure) that during that phone call, the salesperson signed my dad up to a 2 year mobile phone contract with O2, and an associated direct debit. 

I don’t know exactly what was said on that phone call. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding. Maybe something more nefarious was going on. Either way, the result was that my dad’s details (including his bank details) were passed from Virgin Media to O2, and he was signed up to a contract that he didn’t ask for or need. 

Two weeks after that phone call my dad showed me some text messages he had received from O2, and a sim card that had arrived in the post. He had initially disregarded the text messages as spam, because he had never had any dealings with O2 (and had no idea that O2 was in fact part of Virgin Media).

He called Virgin Media, who advised him to go into an O2 store, which he did, travelling to Nottingham with the sim card in his pocket to ask a salesperson to make calls on his behalf to cancel any unwanted contracts.

When he told me about this I was baffled. My dad is 81 years old. He didn’t request or need a mobile phone contract. And it seemed weird that he had been told to travel to a shop as the only way to sort it out. So I wrote to Virgin Media on his behalf to point out what I described at the time as “thoughtlessly inconsiderate” treatment of an ageing customer.

I thought that would be the end of the matter. But then money started to be taken from my dad’s bank account.

He tried to pursue this via customer service channels, without success. And then when he had exhausted those routes, we started the first of several exchanges with the Virgin Media and O2 complaints processes. 

I helped my dad fill in web forms, and write emails. I now have a folder full of the messages we sent, charting each new development. It’s a dissertation worth of attempts to explain the sequence of events, setting out:

• The original mis-selling
• The weird advice to resolve it by going into an O2 shop
• Setting up a new direct debit without permission
• The transfer of bank details between Virgin Media and O2
• The time it was taking to resolve
• The inadequate, confusing responses to our complaints
• A request for reimbursement for money taken
• A request to cancel any unwanted ongoing contract

My dad received some automated replies, and some longer (barely coherent) replies to our complaints that looked like they had been pieced together from a generic complaint response generator. He did not (and still has not) received a reply that addressed the substance of his complaint. 

Based on all the replies I’ve seen, I’m not convinced that anyone at Virgin Media or O2 has actually read any of the complaints we made.

At one point, Virgin Media responded saying that they “cannot check information on your O2 account because of the Data Protection Act”, which was particularly infuriating given that our complaint was actually about the passing of my dad’s bank details from Virgin Media to O2 without consent.

None of this prevented money being taken from my dad’s bank account. So my dad asked his bank to cancel any further payments, which they did.

The exchanges continued between September and December, with each of our complaints, followed by more demands for payment of increasing amounts.

After 8 weeks, we were eligible to register the case as a dispute with the Communications Ombudsman, which I did on my dad’s behalf. 

By contrast with the Virgin Media and O2 process, dealing with the Ombudsman was a delight. They had a process for verifying that I could act as a proxy. They assigned a case officer who phoned me to talk through the process. And they had a case management system which I used to upload the folder full of communications and complaints as evidence. 

While I was doing this, O2 were escalating their threats, sending my dad daily messages demanding increasing payments, and punishments for non-payment. They threatened:

• Fines for non-payment, to add to the amount owed
• Reports to credit reference agencies
• Referral to a debt collection agency
• Bills for increasing amounts (for hundreds of pounds, covering the 2 year contract)

I think it was when my dad was contacted by the debt collectors that he was most distressed. He knew that we were following the Ombudsman process, but the thought of bailiffs knocking on his door really spooked him.  

On 27 January 2024, O2 accepted our case and offered a resolution (to cancel the contract and all billing, and withdraw credit rating reporting). I’m not convinced that anyone at O2 engaged with the substance of the complaint even at this point. It seems more likely that they offered a resolution to avoid the Ombudsman making a ruling. 

My dad accepted the resolution, via the Ombudsman. This gave O2 a further month to implement the resolution, during which time my dad continued to receive new bills from O2, and letters and phone calls from the appointed debt collection agency.  

On 27 February (165 days after the first phone call), the Ombudsman informed me that O2 had implemented the resolution, at which point the bills and debt collection letters stopped. 

It doesn’t feel much like justice, given all the anxiety and efforts involved, but it’s a massive relief that it seems to be over. 

My dad is 81 years old. I think that Virgin Media and O2 have cruelly caused him almost 6 months of unnecessary anxiety. Their service design is certainly negligent, and I suspect that their actions were at times nefarious, and not legal. 

My dad’s experience seems to be an inevitability of deliberate service design. I suspect that many others will have similar stories. And I imagine that others may not have had the will, capacity or persistence to pursue this as we did. 

The Ombudsman process seems to work and I am very grateful for that, but it really shouldn’t have been needed.