Company breached EU Universal Service Regulation obligations but succeeds in defending right to impose 30-day notice of termination
The High Court has ordered Virgin Media to amend its training manuals to ensure that financial incentives to its agents for successfully dissuading customers from switching to another TV, internet and phone service provider do not breach an EU regulation.
The judge also rejected Comreg’s argument that customers who phone up Virgin to cancel should be dealt with through a “two step approach”. This would involve the customer being first offered a choice to consent to listen to the agent’s “save activity” or go directly to cancellation without having to listen to it.
In his judgment last month, the judge said that while Virgin argued the financial incentives to agents were for resolving customer issues, it was clear the event which triggered the payment of the incentive was the retention of the customer. He said it would require that Virgin’s conditions and procedures for contract termination do not act as a disincentive to changing service providers. This will be done by amending its training manuals and associated documents to include, where relevant, materials in relation to financial incentives available to agents, he said.
He said the order does not prevent a financial incentive for an agent for resolving an issue if that is the reason the customer phoned up. This preserved the ability of Virgin to provide such incentives to agents in those circumstances, he said.
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