London: Britain’s communications regulator on Wednesday fined British telecoms and television group Virgin Media O2 a record £28 million ($37 million) for deliberately stopping or delaying customers from cancelling contracts.
Ofcom found that millions of customer calls between 2022 and 2024 were “likely mishandled” by Virgin Media to delay or prevent customers from switching to a competitor.
Tactics uncovered by the investigation included excessive transfers of calls to other departments, repeatedly keeping customers on hold and deliberately dropping calls.
“Virgin Media made it harder for customers to cancel their contracts and then did not fully cooperate with our investigation,” said Natalie Black, Ofcom’s infrastructure and connectivity director.
“As a result, we are levelling our largest ever fine under our consumer protection rules for direct harm to consumers,” she added.
The regulator opened the investigation after receiving 1,881 complaints from customers who reported difficulties cancelling their broadband, landline or pay-TV services.
“We have completely redesigned our customer services in recent years, addressing the historic shortfalls identified by Ofcom through a number of improvements,” a Virgin Media spokesperson said.
They added that “all formal customer complaints from the period have been resolved” and apologised “to the small proportion who experienced an issue when contacting us”.
