Milo19 -Vs- Virgin Media

[Milo19]

Hello all, after a spell away from the scene, I've decided to tackle my last company, that being VM for late payments fees and non-DD fees.

I could find a template for this, so I cut and pasted from various other peoples that I found when reading through many threads.

What do you think of the below??

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to request repayment of charges that you have applied to my account since November 2003 by the way of “Non Direct Debit Fee’s” and “Late Payment Fees”.

I fail to see how this can be a fair charge and, as you are aware, unfair charges are prohibited under UK contract law. Given that your penalty charge is unlikely to be a true reflection of the cost of processing my payment, it must be deemed to be unfair.

As a customer, I pay via your epayments system, which I imagine will not incur any manual intervention. Please correct me if I am wrong!

In relation to the unfair late payment charge, I have tried several times to arrange payment by direct debit, however I require the payment to be taken on the first day of each month, which coincidentally is my date of salary payment, however, I have been told by your staff, that because of my billing date, the latest date in the month the payment can be taken is around the 25th, which is absolutely no use to me whatsoever.

So by your system fault, I get illegally penalised by way of a penalty charge.

I would expect Virgin Media to be able to demonstrate that the charges that have been applied to my account are justified, and I would like you to demonstrate that the charge is a fair and an accurate representation or a pre-estimate of its costs in processing non-direct debit payments.

If you choose to argue that this is a charge for a service and not a penalty, I challenge it to demonstrate how this can suddenly be the case after years of it not being so.

I look forward to reading your explanation. If you are unable or unwilling to provide such or proof of your actual processing cost or a genuine pre-estimate of such, you will no doubt understand my refusal to pay it

The Trading Standards has stated that the charge appears to be unfair and as a customer of Virgin Media for over 5 years, I urge it to reconsider its position on this unreasonable charge, and return the amount of £416.00 that has been applied and paid within 14days of the date of this letter.

If this repayment is not forthcoming, I will instigate proceedings through the county courts to retrieve this monies that have been unlawfully extracted.

Yours

[buzby]

As much as I like the idea, you are incorrect when you state these charges are unfair under 'UK contract law'. I'm unaware of any such law - if the company wishes to draw up a T&C and you agree to it by accepting service from them with those conditions, the are valid and binding.

That said, I've advised them that I am paying these increased amounts under duress, and reserve the right to recall all these amounts including interest as an 'unfair charge'. This lays the formal notification of your dispute and intention to recover the money paid. As OFCOM are due to decide the implications of this type or charging, this will provide the hopefully necessary guidance for a formal resolution and reclaim process.

[Milo19]

Surely then that also applies to the bank charges. When you use it, you are accepting those terms that they have set out in their T & C's.

Wouldn't you class these charges as a penalty charge, which are not allowed and any charges levied to cover costs cannot exceed the true amount.

[buzby]

What I think is irrelevant - a court has already held that for service charges like these, BT is perfectly OK to charge them. I've gone as far as I can with VM and raised it with the MD directly. He doesn't want to know.

Pursing it in a court action may result in a success, but not winning the war. For that you need to have the process outlawed, as they'll pay you back or an out of court settlement, and the computers will continue to charge or cut you off if you don't pay!

Don't forget, you made a claim saying it was 'against UK contract law' but you cannot substantiate this, this it totally different from the Banks, and whilst there are some similarities, this isn;t the real issue we're complaining about. With VM the issue is in they ability to dictate the price based on the method of payment, the banking issue doesn't cater for this.