Virgin Media should pay up and shut up in wake of Ofcom fine for overcharging customers

CEO Tom Mockridge says £7m penalty is "not justified, proportionate or reasonable"

Virgin Media is squaring up for a fight with OfCom (Reuters)

Oh dear. Virgin Media has been slapped with a £7m fine by its regulator for over charging customers and it isn’t at all happy.

The company isn’t denying Ofcom’s findings that some 82,000 cable customers - equivalent to the entire population of Harlow - paid £2.8m over the odds for quitting their residential contracts early.

It just thinks the watchdog is being jolly mean for rapping it over the knuckles to the extent that it has. After all, the foul up affected “only 1.5 per cent of our 5.5m cable customers”. For the record they paid an average of £34 over what they should have. Nearly 7,000 of them, however, were charged more than £100 extra.

“We profoundly disagree with Ofcom’s ruling,” said a self righteous Tom Mockridge, the company’s CEO. In a statement he called the penalty “not justified, proportionate or reasonable”.

It was just an honest mistake!

Thing is you can make an honest mistake when you park your car but you’ll still get a ticket. You can make an honest mistake about the speed limit. You’ll still get points on your licence. You can make an honest mistake with your tax return. You’ll still likely get fined.

What’s more, Virgin Media is a big company, not some poor rube confronted with a blizzard of HM Revenue & Customs forms. It is paid good money to provide a service and has the resources to ensure it complies with the rules when so doing, and to seek assistance if it needs it.

Virgin says it acted quickly to put things right and co-operated with the regulator. That’s not quite what Ofcom says. It topped up with fine with an additional £25,000 because the company failed “to provide full information when we asked”.

It also criticises Virgin for the failure “to publish clear and up-to-date information on its website to help customers understand early-exit charges”.

The situation that’s developed between Virgin and the watchdog is markedly different to what’s happened with rival EE. It was, on the same day, hit with a £6.3m penalty for over charging even more customers, but got a 30 per cent reduction for holding up its hands and saying ‘fair cop’ while getting on with the job of sorting it out.

Having been on the receiving end of what Mr Mockridge’s company describes as customer service I’m inclined to take the regulator’s side here.

Sure mistakes happen. But I’m told Ofcom regularly hears the excuse of “systems errors” when cock ups occur and it is starting to lose patience. So are customers. Ofcom’s job is to protect them. This explains the two fines’ record size for this type of issue.

Companies only rarely take on their regulators. They sensibly like to cultivate a good relationship with them, which a dog fight inevitably sours. More to the point is the fact that it’s usually quicker and cheaper to pay up and move on when penalties are imposed, not least because the regulators are usually right.

Virgin really would be best advised to pay up and shut up.

But at least it’s giving us all something fun to watch. It could serve as a nice diversion from Brexit related misery.

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