Hi, I have a question.. WE where long time customers with Empire Stores Catalogue (10 years +), the agent was my Brother in law. last year he gave up the catalogue when Empire stores where taken over by another company, this meant he had to send the bills off to the catalogue. We where contacted eventualy by the catalogue for payment, our supposed bill was just around £1500. (don't forget we have been buying stuff regularly for around 10 years) and they wanted a few quid more than we had been paying the agent (because not everything was supposed to be going on the bill right away, some stuff was only due to start being paid for several months down the line & by that time we would have paid of other items). ok so we where paying them £180 a month (on £1500 !!!) but we had a change in circumstance and could no longer afford to maintain this amount, we contacted them and explained, we asked for a new payment plan because we didn't want to simply fall into arrears! The people we spoke with where stubborn and very unhelpful, refusing to admit that this could be done, eventualy we got an offer of payments of £130 a month till the account was cleared... sorted! 2 months later we get a call from NDR who say the account has come to them because we have defaulted?? I tell them we have an agreement for £130 per month (which we where keeping to) and the lady told me that there was no such agreement? I tell her i have it in black and white, in my hand and read it to her word for word... she tells me it is a mistake, a typo!! By this time i am furious, I contacted Empire Stores again by phone who mysteriously have no record of this new payment plan... i am so annoyed now that i start to be awkward and i tell them that i am unsure of the amounts they say i owe them, i ask them to send me some sort of invoice, bill or agreement that lists what items i have purchased from Empire Stores Catalogue and how much i owe for said items. I was surprised to hear them tell me that they have no idea, all they know is what the catalogue agent submitted to them when he quit running the catalogue?!?! I tell them he is an idiot (he's my brother in law lol) and i don't trust his reckoning as he has in the past made mistakes... i tell them i don't want to be paying for someone else's items ordered from their catalogue via this agent. She tells me that i should have payment books from the agent listing all that stuff (i don't, never did) and i know my brother in law no longer has anything pertaining to the catalogue. So... as far as i know i could be over paying what i owe, originally i was quite happy to pay each month but since they keep trying underhanded tactics i no longer feel like being pushed around and i am wondering if i should be contacting them to ask for my credit agreement ... i know for a fact i have never ever signed anything or any agreement with Empire Stores. I have taken to recording their calls, the last one was on speaker phone and i recorded it with a voice recorder. Sick of them changing the rules and lying. Should i be seeking clarification on the amounts owed by me? Don't forget that each item ordered from a catalogue usualy has it's own account or at least i think it works like that lol Shouldn't they know what items i have purchased from them on HP and how much i owe on these items? If they don't know this information then how can they be sure what in fact i DO owe? and if there is doubt over what i have purchased and how much i owe then how can they function as a business, i find it all unbelievable and am wondering if when Empire Stores was bought and taken over by the current owners, they have lost some of their customers credit agreements/account files ? i just find the whole thing worrying indeed! should i be pushing them for clarification on my account with them, should i be concerned or just keep my head down and keep making the payments each month? I shudder at the thought of outstanding debt but i have never before dealt with a company that seems so chaotic before lol sorry for the looong post lol

i just went in and had a chat with curry's, they have offered to loan me a suitable enough TV for the duration that Martin Dawes have my TV for Repair but have also stated that if the repair takes longer than 28 days they will replace my TV with a new set. i dont know the in's and out's of all this but i have to say that this sounds like a good arrangement to me and i wont suffer any undue inconvenience by being without a TV for a few weeks LOL Thank you ForestChav for your prompt reply and advice, i will keep my fingers crossed that there are no bumps in the road ahead Mike.

Hi, i wonder if i can just get some clarification from the knowledgeable people here? On April 30th this year i bought a Samsung LCD TV (LE40A456C) from Curry's, the cash price was £749.99 ( which dropped by £200 a few weeks later ). We took it on HP and we tookthe TV home that day. The TV is wall mounted in my living room on a proper bracket that i bought elsewhere and has been fine for the past 5 months. However 4 days ago we noticed a vertical line on the right side of the screen, it apears for about 20 minutes in a morning when the TV is first turned on and it gradualy fades. we dont see it again unless the TV has been on standby for about 15-20 minutes. A friend has advised that he suspects a dodgy pixel driver. I phoned the Tech Guys at Curry's who told me i needed to phone Samsung directly, which i then did. Samsung said they would find an authorised repairer close to me, he said they would use "Martin dawes" in Warrington and that they would phone me in 4-5 working days to arrange a date to collect my TV and take it away for repair. This all seems wrong to me, the TV is only 5 months old and so i presume that curry's have a legal obligation to replace the set for me if i so wish, and i do want a replacement (the same model, i just want what i paid for in good working order). In the long run i will be paying over £1,000 for this TV so i think it only fair that they should replace it. Am i within my legal rights to demand a replacement rather than a repair job which will leave me without a TV for god only knows how long ? Thanks in advance for any help, Mike Speakman.

when i called the 2nd time i touched on the subject of these charges being penalties and the guy simply said that i should write a letter of complaint and that i still owed them a £10 late payment charge lol i have just phoned VM a 3rd time and pressed the options on the phone to disconnect, the guy i got through to was eager to listen and very apologetic but once he had heard all i had to tell him he told me that he was actualy from the billing dept and would have to transfer me the guy i finaly spoke to asked why i wanted to disconnect my TV. I told him i was fed up with the way i had been treated by thier customer services and he imediatly replied "ok then, is it just the TV or all of the services you want to cancel?" lmfao it's just a good job i wasnt trying to bluff him aint it. TV is cancelled and they pick up thier TV equipment on the 16th nov at which time i will phone SKY and ask them to ZAP! my Sky Digital box with a long over due dose of SKy One i think my next course of action is to start with these rather handy letters regarding penalty charges, thanks

after giving myself most of the day to think about the situation and calm down a bit (i didnt shout at them when i phoned but she could probably tell i wasnt happy) i phoned VM Customer services again, the guy i spoke with (lee) was very polite and chirpy but after he brought up my account details his attitude changed and he became "all buisness" which is the best way i can describe it. i guess there was a note on my account from the woman i spoke to this morning, i explained the situation and he adminted the person who suposedly cleared my Sept bill should have informed me of the late payment charge but still he insisted that the charge will remain and he was powerless to squash it (yeah right) i even explained to him that there is no due date on the bill so how am i suposed to know when it needs paying by and he explained to me (as if i was stupid) that it had to be paid 30 days after the date the bill was printed, i asked him where does it say that and he couldnt tell me. to cut a long story short he was unhelpfull and bloody minded and just kept repeating the same thing "you have a late payment charge" over and over, despite me doing everything short of pleading for a bit of leeway lol so i kept him on the phone for almost a half hour when Sky TV took Sky1 away from VM the VM customer support gave us loads of stuff which we thought was great, free upgrade to 10mb BB, reduced bill, free TV upgrade, free movies etc etc they even gave my friend a free V box, i would probably have been content if they had treated me decently, explained things and told me i had to pay the $10. as it was they admited a cock up but where not going to give a single ounce of leeway. i almost didnt phone the 2nd time because i still felt anxious over the way i was treated 1st time around. i understand that customer support is a difficult job but it wasnt as if i ranted or insulted the woman, i wasnt even rude although you can always tell when someone is upset or annoyed from thier voice i have just gotten of the phone with Sky TV who are very eager to provide me with digital TV (i already have the equipment instaled) all thats left to do is cancel my TV package with Virgin. i only wish i could find an internet service that rivaled Virgin's broadband then i could get rid of VM altogether incidently, this is not the first experiance of grouchy customer service people i have had with VM, but it is the straw that broke the camels back.

I have been a cable customer with Telewest and now Virgin Media who took over for as long as they have been in buisness more or less and i have always been an advocate of thiers until recently. i dont pay by DD because my wife is on disability and ime her carer, her income support, disability, Family Allowance and my carers allowance all go into our bank on different dates and so it's easier to make card payments to VM over the phone. we cannot afford to pay the bill in full so we pay it in portions over the period of the month, but we do ALWAYS pay even if sometimes we are a day or two late. on these occasions we pay the £10 late payment charge without question. last saturday (13th Oct 07) i phoned VM customer services to clear the outstanding amount on my bill which was £20.76, it was right at the end of the time we had to pay before incurring penalties so i asked the CS guy if that was everything cleared for the Sept 07 bill and he said yes it was paid in full and our Oct bill had to be paid in full by early Nov (cant remember the exact date he gave). today (17th Oct 07) i got a letter and my new bill from VM, the letter dated 12th October said that we had £20.76 Outstanding and they had added a late payment charge of £10 onto it. i open'd the bill which was dated the 9th Oct 07 and it had a balance of £30.76 brought forward. when i phoned VM to clear my Sept bill on the 13th i was told that bill had been paid in full and at no point was i told there was a late payment charge added, even though my bill dated the 9th which was 4 days prior states they had added a late payment charge ? to say i was confused would be an understatement, i phoned VM CS and spoke to a woman named Jenny who told me i had to pay the £10 charge, i explained i had already cleared Septembers bill on the 13th by debit card and at no point was there any request to pay a late payment charge, she tried to make me believe that even though the charge had been added to my account 4 days prior the person taking payment from me wouldnt of been able to see it on his screen where he was looking at my account info and payments. at this time i could feel the anger building because jenny was very unhelpfull and just kept telling me the charge stands, i asked for her name, told her i wasnt going to pay it, said thank you jenny and hung up. now i have calmed down and had a chance to reflect i intend to phone them again and see what can be done, i do not want to pay this on principal as i believe it wasnt on my account when i cleared my Sept bill even though the paper bill i recieved dated Oct 9th says otherwise lol i have broadband, large TV, phone and mobile sim card from Virgin and do not want to leave them but i feel realy frustrated with all these late payment charges which they apply if you go 1 day over the bill due date. incidently i can not find anywhere on my bill where it tells what date the bill has to be paid by ? if you can offer any advice, ime all ears. Thanks, Mike.

hi, I'me Mike (excuse the username, it's my online game name lol) and i found this wonderfull forum accidently while trying to find out as much information as i could regarding Virgin Media's late payment charges hopefully i can be a bit more educated on the issue after reading the reams of information from other users on this forum the next time i phone VM regarding these ludicras charges. ok, i have introduced myself and now ime off to scour this forum and gain as much knowledge as i can so i dont end up looking daft or get fobbed of by VM customer services Mike.