The phone cost £10 - it's for my mum, and a smartphone would freak her out (!) so it's a basic text only phone.

EEEEK! I'd totally be up for going after them but the idea of legal action TERRIFIES me! I wouldn't know where to start with putting a £ on it - and as part of the action I would need them to correct it as they've previously promised to do. How do you quantify it?

Aaaaahhhhh! Gotcha! Pretty close! It was about £50 under my calcs if I remember rightly, so I was happy with that. They did their calcs on a slightly different basis , but we came out close enough for me to agree. I'm still looking for clarification on the Ts&C's for an Income Replacement plan I had with LLoyds but they are taking a_g_e_s to look into it, and were trying to deal with it for some time as a PPI complaint. That's another story though, which may be continued at a later date - I'm too busy taking on Virgin Mobile bunch of to chase that one up atm!

Thanks! SOC's?

Yes - well, November 2011. My point exactly! They should have the call recordings as that's their confirmation that a contract was entered into. I think they don't have it because it shows I did not agree to a contract. However I guess if their staff know the calls aren't being recorded then they can say one thing on the call and note another thing on the file. It explains why all the staff don't give a hoot - it doesn't look like they have to adhere to any call scoring as part of their performance management - it must all just be down to number of sales. This has been a thoroughly exhausting experience - no-one takes ownership at Virgin, and looking at the Virgin Forum it's a common complaint. Customer Service are reluctant to provide a service and everything you ask anyone to do there, they will 'send a message' to the dept who deals to action it. You get no-where! The whole time, my credit file looks rubbish with these 3 missed payments. It just makes me

They don't have it Stu, or any of the recordings after that- with the guy who cancelled the contract and said there'd be no ramifications on my credit file, or with any of the people I spoke with thereafter who confirmed they'd follow up on it and chase up the correction on my credit file. I'll get the letter tomorrow or next week, but their evidence is that I did not invoke the cooling off period following receipt of my Ts&Cs by email. I've told them repeatedly I did not get those emails, that they went into junk and were only located later at the time of my complaint. I'm sending off a SAR request to include transcripts of the calls they do have on file, but the longer they faff with it the longer I have to put up with my crap credit record. Virgin Mobile have no sense of urgency on this. Their attitude stinks.

Oh, I have also posted on the Virgin forum, where one of there tech team looked into it for me. She emailed me today to say Complaints say a letter is on it's way to me. No further help at all.

Thanks Citizen B... I have been right round the houses - literally BEGGING staff to take ownership. I started with Collections who put the 3 missed payments on my Credit File (my thinking if they can put it on they can take it off). A manager there is the one who said she'd do it in 3 months. I then went through Retentions, and have had so many call back promises / I'll refer it for you promises etc which have led nowhere. Early in Dec I spoke with someone whom I refused to get off the phone from, and insisted she dealt with it there and then. She finally asked for a complaint in writing (I had been trying to do this in urgency, without writing as I don't want a letter disappearing into the ether). We agreed on an email which went to Underwriting, and the girl I spoke with. I gave underwriting an ultimatum of Christmas to deal, but they refused to do anything as I was sent Ts&Cs (as outlined above and that meant I accepted the contract). I then emailed the CEO (Oxenby) and had an email back from Sophie Boshell who said she was referring it through the CEO's office complaints service for urgent attention. I then had a call from Lisa who said she was from the CEO's complaints office (but when I checked with her colleague she advised lisa was from Mobile Complaints dept) - she also said they emailed me T's & C's and DD due letters so although they cancelled the contract AND outstanding monies they wouldn't correct my credit file. She says that is their final stance. I doubt she even read my complaint. I have advised them I will be going to Cisas, Ofcom, the FO and BBC's watchdog. I also thought I'd speak with you guys cos you knows-your-stuffs.

I just wanted to follow this up - sorry it's take me so long. I finally got a PPI settlement on all of the above of just shy of £1k in September. Thanks for all your advice, and your patience in coming back to my numerous daft questions. Oh, and Happy New Year!

Hiya, This is a long story, so I'll cut and paste the important bits from my complaint emails to Virgin. They are utter *********. I'm keen for your feedback on this, as Customer Service, and Complaints are useless. Ok, here goes... I have been a customer of Virgin since it's takeover of Telewest in 2006 - we get all our broadband, tv, landline and (until recently) mobile services from you. Last Christmas I called your sales number to purchase a pay as you go mobile for my elderly mother. I spoke to one of your employees in India who set me up with the mobile I wanted and gave me two options to pay - one with me paying for my mum by Direct Debit, and the other with my mum paying for the sim as she goes. As this was a gift I initially set this up with a Direct Debit payment and was advised that to stop this all I had to do was cancel the Direct Debit with my bank. This was not a contract, I did not want a contract, I wanted pay as you go - this was clear during the conversation. After the first month my mum wanted to pay it herself, I cancelled the DDI, and didn't think anything else of it. Later while looking into billing of my own mobile phone (on a Virgin contract), I spotted that I had money outstanding on my mum's number. I called Customer Service who advised me her phone was a contract and I had been missing payments. This was news to me, I advised your Customer Service I expressly requested PAYG, not a contract, I hadn't signed anything, hadn't received contract paperwork, and hadn't received any emails. At the time your adviser agreed there had been some kind of miscommunication and mis-selling on the part of the first Virgin employee I spoke with and agreed to cancel the contract, remove the outstanding amount and he assured me there would be no impact on my credit file. My credit file for the last 12 months has shown 3 missed payments. Since that conversation I have spent the remainder of the year getting the run-around by Virgin Customer Service on getting my credit file corrected. I have had members of your Collections call centre cut me off in mid conversation to transfer me back into the same call centre (so that the call went to one of their colleagues to deal with to save them the bother), I've been promised call backs which haven't come, I've requested to be put on hold to speak to a manager to be told a flat out 'no'... literally, just a 'no'. When I have actually managed to get to speak with managers, I have had it acknowledged that this has been mis-sold, and I've had commitments from them to get this rectified. Virgin have confirmed this is the case on several occasions over the phone. One manager in Collections when I spoke with her in July said she would rectify this for me and to allow 3 months for my Credit File to be fixed. I am still waiting. In the 6+ years I've been with Virgin, my bills have been paid on time. I would not elect to pay our £70+ per month bill on time plus my £13 mobile bill on time, but fail to pay a tiny £5 mobile on time if I knew it was on Contract and would impact my credit. Complaints say they have evidence that I knew there was a contract because they emailed me Ts&C's - I have said on numerous occasions any emails sent to me (including the T's&C's) were not received by me - it appears at the time they were filtered into junk mail, and it was only at the point of my first call to you with my complaint last spring that they were located. If that is your sole means of proving that I agreed to a contract by not invoking my cooling off period, then you should be ensuring that I received the T's & C's and click/return something to agree to them. If you wish for access to my credit file to set up a new credit agreement and to set me up with a contract I would require you to have my authorisation to do so. Sending me an email does not give you that authorisation and as repeatedly stated you did not get my verbal authorisation. Complaints last week said they could not discuss this case with me over the phone, as they needed something in writing from me to enable them to access my credit file - if that is the case, I would like you to provide me with a copy of my initial instruction when this new credit agreement was set up, giving you the access to my credit file? You did that without my authorisation in writing or verbally then? Virgin accepted at the time you removed the contract and cancelled any outstanding monies that this contract was mis-sold. If you disagreed then you would not have cancelled the contract and wiped the charges. Verbally I have had it confirmed to me on SEVERAL occasions that my credit file would be corrected. Now you refuse to do so because you have not recorded those calls? How utterly appalling - what sort of justification is that? I'm penalised because your call recording facilities are not good enough? Surely you should not be selling contacts verbally if you cannot record confirmation that your customer agrees to a contract? That's the basis of it! So sorry this is so long - if you're reading now thanks for your efforts! Apparently there is a letter on the way to me from Complaints saying they will not correct my credit file. To me, this is a clear case of Slamming and I do intend to escalate this to the regulators. Any suggestions/ideas? Thanks, SWMBO

1 month on... no further forward. I've called 3 times to chase up - firstly I was told that I would hear back within 5 working days and that the caseworker who was previously notified was on holiday. She was going to flag this for me and make sure I heard back. Nothing 7wds later so I chased up again - 'oh yes, I can see all the emails relating to this' he says, he apologises for no-one getting back to me, and for the fact it's taking so long and he assures me that he will "PERSONALLY TAKE OWNERSHIP. ANYTIME YOU CALL ASK FOR ME. I'LL MAKE SURE THIS IS PICKED UP AND CALL YOU TOMORROW TO CONFIRM" 2 days later I've heard nothing so I call back and ask to speak to him and he's 'not available'! I speak to the rudest person of all who actually has the nerve to say 'time is money - the longer we take the more money you get!' (I kid you not) He can give me no guarantees about when they'll get back to me (for my sake - he doesn't want me to feel let down again - how kind), and he actually made a point of saying 'this call has carried on after 6, (6.04pm) when technically the lines are closed, but i'm here trying to resolve this for you. Er... no you're not. that was Friday night. No further offers as yet... it's currently with the review panel I'm told, but god knows how long this will take. UTTERLY useless. So much for a contrite bank looking to make amends for selling us cr*p we didn't need! Give me strength.

hello hello! well, I called the bank and he confirmed the offer just related to the first loan, and that he would raise with his caseworker that the other's haven't been done. At first he said because they were older than 10 years, to which I pointed out the one I'd had the letter on was the oldest, then he said that there wasn't insurance on the others to which I asked him to refer to my correspondence and he would clearly see there was insurance. 'oh, er, yeah - i see your evidence'. He assures me he will have his caseworker review the other 2 plans and they will write out to me by 2-3 weeks. I have asked for this asap, as I won't make a decision without having everything in front of me. As an aside, he couldn't break things down for me in any more basic a format than they posted through. I'm ok with that though for the time being and then we'll see how it looks when I get my other letters through. Why they can't just make life easy on themselves and send out all the info together I do not know!

^makes perfect sense. i will do tomorrow.

p.s. IMS- thank you. you are always quick to respond and knowledgeable with it. MUCH appreciated.

This is has much info as their breakdown includes: Although, interestingly there is no reference in the letter to the actual loan number it's applicable to, on the Acceptance Form with the letter it states the SC and AC numbers for LOAN 1 in my figures prev quoted... which... on the basis of my calcs above would appear quite generous if it *is* purely loan 1 alone. To 19th Mar I had calc'd Loan 1 at £433.03 due plus £100.50 on Loan 3 rollover loan. Had anyone else an offer letter from lloyds who has claimed for several loans - do they lump them all in or send over separately? I'm stuck!