Leaving UK broadband ISP Virgin Media ends in huge bill and debt collectors
Switching broadband provider is normally easy, but in today’s story we cover how one of Virgin Media’s former customers instead ended up spending most of 2026 battling the ISP over an unexpectedly huge bill, after they failed to cancel his old service. As if to make matters worse, the customer then ended up being pursued by debt collectors and suffering damage to his credit file.
Under the regulator’s One Touch Switch (OTS) process, consumers who want to switch ISP typically only need to contact their new (“gaining“) provider to start and manage the process on their behalf. Both the gaining and losing providers then have a clear set of rules to follow. As a reminder, here’s the process that providers should follow:
Outline of the switching process
1. When the customer’s new service is installed, the gaining provider must send confirmation to the customer and also send a trigger message via the OTS Hub (managed by TOTSCo) to the losing provider telling them to cease the customer’s service and complete the switch order.
2. The losing provider should then send appropriate confirmation to the customer, such as a ‘final bill’, notifying them that services have been ceased.
3. The losing provider must then notify the gaining provider confirming receipt of the trigger message, also through the OTS Hub.
4. The gaining provider should monitor for any lack of receipt of confirmation from the losing provider.
However, some switches don’t always go quite so smoothly, which is sadly what happened to Vasily Shilimov back in December 2025 when he asked his new ISP, Rise Fibre, to switch his broadband service away from Virgin Media. The switch itself appeared to go through and he began using his new connection from 2nd January 2026, while at the same time stopping his use of Virgin’s connection.
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During this process the customer received email confirmation of the switch from Virgin, who also notified him of a small Early Termination Charge (ETC), which was expected. The problem is that Virgin Media then continued to bill Vasily for months afterwards and only later confirmed that the switch request had somehow not completed (this wasn’t clear to Vasily as, from his perspective, the switch had gone through).
Vasily told ISPreview:
“I called Virgin in January [2026] concerning the switch and final bill, and again on 20th April because charges were still continuing. Virgin acknowledged the switching failure in its written response of 27th July. The problem was not resolved through those contacts.”
According to Virgin Media’s response in July, the original switch request had actually “expired” on 22nd January 2026. In the course of investigating this case, a spokesperson for Virgin Media informed us that the provider never received the subsequent notification from Rise Fibre confirming that the switch had completed. As a result, the account remained active on their systems and Vasily continued to be billed for his services.
Confusingly Rise Fibre later appeared to suggest to the customer that they did not initiate the OTS request, which appears inconsistent with Virgin’s original notification and how the OTS process actually works. At this point Vasily had now been incorrectly billed to the tune of c.£300 for a service that Virgin had long been made aware should have been cancelled many months ago.
Sadly, the situation got worse after Virgin Media, despite having an active dispute, issued a formal default notice and referred the matter for debt collection. Vasily ended up with missed-payment markers for July, August and September 2026 on his credit file, thus damaging his credit history – seemingly through no fault of his own. Vasily has since had to challenge this by notifying the debt collectors that the case was still in dispute.
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ISPreview recently raised this issue with the provider, which a few days later finally agreed to close his account, refund all payments made towards his Virgin Media services since January 2026 and also provided him with a further gesture of goodwill (c.£300) to apologise for the delay in resolving his complaint. Just prior to this Vasily had also opened a complaint through Virgin’s independent complaints handler (ombudsman), CISAS (CEDR).
A Virgin Media spokesperson told ISPreview:
“We apologise to Mr Shilimov for the delay in resolving his complaint. While we received the initial notification that he intended to switch providers, we did not receive a subsequent notification from the gaining provider confirming the switch had completed. We have now closed his account, refunded the erroneous bills and have offered a goodwill payment in recognition of his experience.”
The development is most welcome, although it raises plenty of questions over the fallibility of the OTS process, how customers are protected when this goes wrong and Virgin’s inability to rectify the issue in a correct and timely fashion. Vasily also remains unclear on what impact this episode might have on his future credit rating.
The situation follows only a few months after Ofcom announced their decision to fine Virgin Media £28m after they made it difficult for customers to cancel their contracts (here), which only covered a limited period – before OTS was introduced in September 2024. In this case the customer was not at fault and both ISPs appear to have made mistakes in their handling of the switch.
Ofcom told ISPreview it is the “responsibility of both the losing and gaining provider to ensure the process is followed correctly, and they should take all reasonable steps to ensure that switching customers are adequately informed before and during the switching process.” The regulator added that all providers are expected to act in the “best interests of the customer and work to resolve complaints quickly“.
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A spokesperson for Ofcom said:
“Companies must provide compensation to customers in the case of failure to comply with our switching rules. As you have outlined, if customer is not satisfied with the outcome of their complaint, they can take it to ADR for independent decision.
Evidence does suggest that the One Touch Switch Process is working well, with more than 3.5 million switches completed in the last two years.
Ofcom does not have the powers to handle or resolve individual complaints. However, we closely monitor complaints we receive from consumers and where we see themes emerging or evidence of widespread harm, we have shown we will take action. We recently fined Virgin Media £28 million for repeatedly preventing customers from cancelling contracts.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Moral of the story, stay away from Virgin Media at all costs.
what about Rise Fibre? I would stay away from both.
£300m as in Million or Month
>> Companies must provide compensation to customers in the case of failure to comply with our switching rules.
Sounds like Rise Fibre should also be on the hook if it is true they didn’t complete the switch properly.
Virgin Media should be compensating for not fixing it on the first phone call and all else that followed from that. Rise Fibre should be compensating the customer for having to deal with the mess in the first place.
I had a mate with Virgin Internet. When the service failed to work, he asked to cancel. He wasn’t in contract. It took them 4 months before they closed the account.
It gets worse and will get even worse when customer service is moved to A.I. It is happening countrywide and in all companies and corporations,
I’m not surprised by this story. Working for a small service provider I know that OTS is totally broken. I’ve never had a successful match when gaining a customer from any other provider. Yet I’ve seen customers successfully migrated away.
Had a very similar situation when switching from Vodafone to Hyperoptic. Hyperoptic started the switch request but then never followed up to confirm that they have started the service, so Vodafone never ended theirs. What was different to the story above, Vodafone were actually quite keen to help, but insisted that under OTS, they can’t end their services until the gaining provider notifies them that they have activated the new services on their end. Giving them a 28 day notice and cancelling didn’t work either, because they can’t cancel while OTS is pending. And when I talked to Hyperoptic, they were like, have we installed your new broadband? Yes. Does it work? Yes. Then the switch is complete, there’s nothing for us to do here. I’m guessing, in your story Rise Fibre were just as careless, so maybe we shouldn’t blame Virgin for causing any of this. OTS guarantees that the consumer won’t be left without a working broadband if the switch hits a snag, so Virgin weren’t allowed to end their services until Rise told them they’re good to go. This was always my worry about gaining provider-led switch, that because the gaining provider’s only financial incentive is to activate their new services so they can start billing you for it, and as for the rest of the switch process, there’s no financial gain for them so they’re not interested to do these other steps.
When I decided to leave VM, I rang them at least 1 week before as to inform them and my contract would end in 3 weeks with VM. They said to ring them again 2 weeks before end of contact, I knew VM would automatically renew within this period so I confirmed I would be leaving them in 3 weeks. The “customer services” rep was furious why I terminated within 3 weeks. They agreed to terminate everything and sent me a pre paid cardboard box for my router. I made sure that I got a receipt from the drop off place. VM said I had not sent over my router, I replied I have proof of this and now it is their problem. They admitted that thy had got the pre paid return with all their router and power supply. Their indian based “customer services” is beyond worthless and scam calls kept on coming even after I had left VM.
Absolutely disgusting
They can’t automatically lock you into a new fixed-term contract without your consent. Under Ofcom’s rules, you must agree to a new minimum term.
When your existing contract ends, it simply moves onto a rolling monthly contract, so you can leave with 30 days’ notice.
I was recently with Virgin Media and deliberately let my contract expire. I stayed on the rolling monthly contract so I could give 30 days’ notice when I was ready to leave. You don’t have to renew just because your minimum term has ended.
But it clearly states 30 days minimum? You can cancel up to 60 days, been confirmed a few times on the forums, but that’s dead now, issue with virgin is there is to many departments.
Virgin media support is absolutely abysmal. I remember 11 years ago when I had a horror story with them. Called up to switch my TV and Broadband to our new address, the problem was we then became aware at the last minute the new address, that I was moving to did not have virgin media at all like the whole street has never had it and still to this day 11 years later virgin has never been installed. Anyway obviously not my fault that their services are not available at our new address. They persisted to say pay a termination fee and cancel. I said, I’m not paying anything. It’s not my problem. Your services are not available at my new house after much back-and-forth, finally they agreed to cancel it free of charge. Or so they said they’ve cancelled only to find out three months down the line since moving out my account was actually still active. I started getting threatening messages and emails saying your bill is way overdue months worth of bills and the people that moved in our old address must have plugged in their kit and started using the services under my name because they was using the Broadband and spending things on the virgin Store right left in centre resulting in a massive bill that was pinned on me and said it was me because there’s still a traffic at that address. I said I told them look up on your records and I said to you I’m not at that address and I cancelled so it isn’t me go to that address and pass the bill cause I ain’t paying it. LOL the eventually bugged off then. Was an absolute headache…
Ok, Virginmedia are terrible, they almost universally treat customer’s really badly. I would never defend them.
But this article describes a problem that seems to be caused by a failure on the part of the gaining provider and the lack of a backstop being built into OTS when a gaining provider fails to confirm completion.
Seems like a fix needs to be addressed by OTS.
Also, I have been led to believe by commentors on this website that it is not necessary to use the OTS, so a non-OTS order with the gaining provider and a manual cancellation with the losing provider is a possible workaround for anyone wanting to avoid issues with Virginmedia.
Agree with you on this we all know VM are terrible and with that I’d never use one of these services with any business least of all with a small altnet and VM. It had disaster written all over it. However I completely understand why people will use it especially someone who isn’t necessarily tech savvy or able to deal with the hassle with speaking to VM lol.
When I left VM, I documented everything date and time I called and screenshots of emails. Hands down to this day they are the most difficult business I have ever dealt with cancelling a service. I’d go without broadband to avoid using VM
Yup! Exactly this, some sort of notice needs to po up for them to confirm the switch had finally happened, even if it’s next day or so (incase of issues) 100% result of the new provider, but can the TOTSCo ultimately confirm if anything was or wasn’t sent/confirmed since everything is down to their hub, we should be able to log into TOTSCo to confirm a switch over, like some domains, you have to login to confirm the transfer quicker, it should be easily managed, but it sounds like a nightmare tbh.
what a total mess.
It’s clear that OFCOM never made provision in their process for the consumer to have visibility in the process or to have any ability to nudge either end or leave a comment as to issues or concerns.
This leads to gaps in process that the consumer then has to navigate blind.
Some form of fine that the at fault end needs to send to the consumer in the event of issues that could have been easily rectified should be levied to sharpen the processes of ISP’s & let consumers have faith in the process.
both ends should issue TOTSCo freferfences that consumers can use to verify things are as they should be.
Hmm so the providers who answer to OfCon, and
“Ofcom told ISPreview it is the “responsibility of both the losing and gaining provider to ensure the process is followed correctly, and they should take all reasonable steps to ensure that switching customers are adequately informed before and during the switching process.” The regulator added that all providers are expected to act in the “best interests of the customer and work to resolve complaints quickly“.”
Reminding ones self that OfCon are supposed to be there for consumers, and the contractee of TOTSCo (although one wonders why it’s outsourced (apart from to smoke and mirror accountability) but then the book should stop very quickly with the contractee and not the contractor.
Another case of OfCon not really stepping up to consumer protections but just divesting to providors, and does anyone really think that fines do not end up being paid for by the consumers that are supposed to be being ‘protected’ by OfCon (and as of course OfCon are by whome, not rolled up into consumer prices) ?