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Originally Posted by Mr K
I think they will compromise if not totally cave in, given the customer backlash/cancellations.. I suspect a certain head honcho at VM will lose his job too.
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This issue really seems to be gathering momentum more than I thought it would.
This is making the national news, a petition has been created, there are lots of posts about it on social media on people's personal accounts, Martin Lewis of Money Saving Expert has made a statement about it and there have been features about it on daytime programmes e.g. This Morning.
There are a lot of very angry and disgruntled people about and VM are making things worse by telling the majority of customers that they cannot have a discount, that they have to pay early termination of contract fees totalling hundreds of pounds, closing threads about it on their own forums and when any complaints are actually answered, it is with a standard copy/paste answer. Arrogant and defensive call centre staff aren't helping the situation either.
They are also trying to say that their generic "we reserve the right to amend our channel line up" clause in their t&c's means that they are not in breach of contract. However, they did not give customers the required 30 day notice period and legal people are saying that this change is so substantial that this clause cannot be used anyway. There are also Consumer Rights Act 2015 implications.
Sticking a similar number of mainly minority and low value channels on to replace these channels just doesn't cut the mustard. It can be alikened to a vegetarian ordering a vegetable curry in a restaurant, being brought a meat curry because the vegetarian curry is no longer available and being expected to pay for it on the grounds that a curry was ordered and supplied!!
A formal complaint has now been made to Ofcom by Martin Lewis who have been asked to make a ruling on this.
I think that VM took a gamble and lost. As often happens in these cases (if happens in politics too), they are too proud to admit that they misjudged the impact of this and don't want to appear weak. If they stand down, they will be afraid that it will send out the wrong signals to their other channel providers. However, if they don't reverse their decision, the bad publicity, possibility of legal ramifications, massive customer dissatisfaction and resultant disconnections will only worsen.
I believe that they don't now really know what to do, so are currently sticking their head in the sand. If they don't do something with regards to damage limitation soon though, it will seriously damage their reputation long term and popularity as a pay TV supplier. Many people are saying that they no longer trust VM, which is one of the worst things that can happen to a company.
I also seriously think that we may see resignations/replacement of senior staff over this.
---------- Post added at 02:16 ---------- Previous post was at 00:28 ----------
Just received a massive message on the V6 that almost covered the screen. It went on about their wonderful new channel launches and at the bottom said that the UKTV channels were 'no longer available'. Well, you don't say ��
I wonder if this is an attempt to reduce the number of phone calls they're having. I've read of people hanging up after waiting over an hour to get through to cancellations.
As an olive branch, perhaps VM could offer to return the FTA UKTV channels without an EPG fee for now. There again, to be fair, they may not be allowed to do that under the Fair, reasonable and non discriminatory regulations that cover EPG's.