Telecoms regulator Ofcom has fined Virgin Media a record £28 million after customer support representatives were given incentives to block customers from ending their contracts by hanging up on them, among other tactics, over a period of nearly three years.
Virgin Media “likely mishandled” millions of phone calls from January 2022 to September 2024 with deliberate dropped calls, unnecessary call transfers and putting customers on hold for “no reason”, Ofcom said.
Millions of calls were probably mishandled by call centre operators “in order to delay or prevent customers from cancelling and switching to a competitor”, Ofcom said.
Financial rewards
It found evidence that retention-team agents who deliberately mishandled calls had a commission scheme that “effectively encouraged” and financially rewarded them for “behaving in this way”.
