Virgin Media fined by Ofcom for blocking customer cancellations

Virgin Media hit with record Ofcom fine, watchdog says customers were blocked from cancelling contracts, retention bonuses turned switching into a call-centre obstacle course

Virgin Media has been fined £28 million by the UK regulator Ofcom after an investigation found the company repeatedly made it difficult for customers to cancel contracts and switch providers. According to the BBC, the watchdog concluded that millions of calls were likely mishandled over nearly three years, with customers delayed or prevented from moving to better deals.

Ofcom said it found evidence of deliberate call-dropping, along with customers being left on hold “for no reason” and passed through excessive transfers. The regulator traced the behaviour to the mechanics of Virgin Media’s retention operation: a two-tier system where only a second group of agents could process cancellations, forcing more than a million callers to repeat their request to at least one additional person. The Independent reports Ofcom also said cancellations were sometimes not processed in the system at all.

The episode sits in a familiar corner of regulated markets: switching is advertised as the discipline that keeps prices honest, but it only works when exit is cheap. Here, Ofcom described a commission scheme that financially rewarded call-centre agents for keeping customers from leaving, turning the “right to cancel” into a sales contest. It also left the regulator arguing not just about outcomes but about process: Ofcom said Virgin Media did not fully cooperate with the investigation and repeatedly failed to comply with information-gathering requests.

The fine is the largest ever issued under Ofcom’s consumer protection rules and, the BBC notes, the third largest Ofcom fine overall. It was reduced by 30% because Virgin Media admitted failings and agreed to settle. The investigation covered calls between 1 January 2022 and 11 September 2024, and Ofcom said it received 1,881 complaints from customers reporting difficulties cancelling.

The case arrives as the UK tries to make switching less dependent on patience and persistence. Ofcom points to “One Touch Switch”, introduced in 2024, which is meant to let customers change broadband or landline providers without negotiating with the company they are leaving. That shift reduces the value of retention scripts and the internal incentives that come with them—while also moving more of the competitive battleground into pricing and service quality rather than queue time.

Ofcom’s report is built on phone calls, hold music and dropped lines, but the number that will stick is £28 million. Virgin Media’s retention agents were paid to keep cancellations away from the people authorised to approve them.