Slightly off topic, I will give a very serious word of warning to anybody who thinks Sky is an improvement over Virgin. Wait until you get a problem with Sky, or indeed try to leave them.

Cheers for the advice Mrstella these lot are making me need a few stellas!

I wont be waiting 4 months that's for sure. I'll have to look into trying to open a line of communication with the director of customer relations. Wish me luck though getting in touch with anyone that has a clue here seems to be mission impossible.

Good luck to you! It took me months, 4 letters of complaint and hours of telephone conversations and why??????????????? TO GET THE DATE OF MY DIRECT DEBIT CHANGED! - The most disgraceful company I have ever witnessed - I am now a very happy customer of SKY.

Hi there, When they say three days or seven days they actually mean 3 working days or 7 working days.

Best thing to do is contact the Director of Customer Service, no one lower, if they don't resolve then you can tell OFCOM that you've exhausted every avenue and they can take it from there.

Just to follow up on my original post here's where I am at the moment. After logging my complaint to Virgin via the online form on their website I received an email from them on the 29/10/08 stating my case was being dealt with and it would normally be resolved within 3 days. It is now 4/11/08 and still no response!

Again I have made the effort to try and chase this up and was advised by a memeber of the Virgin team that the only way I could contact the people dealing with my complaint would to be to reply to the confirmation email that I received. I done exactly as advised only to have the email returned as undelivered because emails cannot be re-sent to that address!!

Previously I was infromed by the manager of the Virgin sales team that my complaint would be resolved "within 7 days" If I have not received contact by tomorrow the 7th day I will be onto OFCOM and trading standards.

By the way today is the third consecutive day this week whereby I have almost no broadband at times. I just done speed checks at 3 independent websites and the highest download speed I was getting was 0.6MB out of the 20MB I am paying for. This is THE MOTHER OF ALL BROADBAND apparently! Bring back dial up I say!

I have never complained about anything in my life like this before but these lot are seriously winding me up at the moment.

First thing you need to do is write to the Director of Customer Service, do not write to anyone lower than that, use recorded mail and state that if you do not receive a reply within the stated complaints procedure time limit that you will be contacting OfCom.

Request a transcript of the call where you were unwittingly signed up to the contract, state that you did not request a contract and you want to make a complaint as they have violated the Direct Selling code of conduct.

Tell them that THEY have to prove to YOU that you requested the contract.

BT tried the same thing with me but i managed to get out of it by stating that I never requested a contract and that i'd take it to the regulators, they soon changed their tune.

Another familiar story here it would seem.

I have been with Virgin since the day of the NTL switchover and recently tried to leave. Here's where my problems started, I noticed upon receiving my most recent bill my monthly charge had increased by £5. I was subscribed to the basic phone and TV package and XL broadband and was originally paying £32 per month. My bill had increased to £37 so I gave them a call and the man that answered simply replied that he would change it back to £32 and credit my account with £13 to cover the extra I had being paying.

Very decent of them you may well be thinking. Well no actually, 8 days after that phone call I again contacted them to enquire how much it would be to add on just sky sports one to my package. I was quoted a further £24 just for that one channel. Obviously I declined to pay that much extra for just one channel as that is a ridiculous charge.

After discussing various other packages with the Virgin sales man it became apparent that they could not (or would not) match or get anywhere near similar packages offered on sky, even if I dropped my broadband down to 10MB to put it at a similar level to skys 8MB they could do nothing. I decided that enough was enough and I would hand in my months notice and leave. Upon requesting to do this I was informed my original phonecall (where I questioned the extra £5 charge) I had unwillingly been entered into another 12 month contract! At no point was this mentioned to me by anybody. Obviously by now I was getting pretty annoyed and requested to speak to whoever was in charge. A lady who was manager came on the line and I explained all of the above and to cut a long story short she would do nothing except tell me to follow Virgins complaint process on their website.

I have emailed my complaint through and are awaiting their response. I'm guessing ffrm other similar stories on here they will be requesting I pay a £250 fine for leaving a contract I never actually agreed to! I will not be paying this I will be onto trading standards and OFCOM and I will point out how many others have been put through the same hassle.

Anybody out there reading this and considering joining Virgin give it a miss until they can find some staff that dont volunteer you into expensive packages probably just to get their commission!