Virgin Media fined for blocking cancellations

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Illustration: Eva Bee theguardian.com

Jason Okundaye theguardian.com

A crowd outside Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff in September 2022 during a service of thanksgiving for the life of Queen Elizabeth II. Photograph: Dimitris Legakis/The Guardian theguardian.com

Will Hayward theguardian.com

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Virgin Media’s record £28 million fine for obstructing cancellations landed last week as a clean headline and a familiar outcome. According to the Guardian, the company repeatedly made it hard for customers to leave by dropping calls, transferring them between departments and keeping them on hold. The regulator’s sanction is large enough to be quoted in every story, but it is not designed to make the customer whole.

Jason Okundaye uses the case to frame a broader complaint about “rip-off Britain”: subscription traps, drip pricing, hidden charges and consumer scams that are now routine features of everyday commerce. Parliament has already been busy. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans subscription traps, fake reviews and drip pricing, and gives the Competition and Markets Authority power to fine companies directly. The Guardian notes that StubHub UK was fined and ordered to refund tens of thousands of customers over drip pricing, while Labour has announced further reforms to make cancellations and refunds easier, due to take effect in spring 2027.

The machinery, however, is built for enforcement rather than repayment. In the Virgin Media case, the fine goes to HM Treasury, and affected customers are left compiling evidence and filing complaints one by one. That gap matters because subscription businesses make money precisely by turning individual losses into something too small to pursue. Britain has an estimated 155 million active subscriptions, with around 10 million thought to be unwanted, the Guardian reports. When a regulator punishes a firm but does not automatically compensate customers, the company learns that the cost of misconduct is a predictable line item, while the consumer learns that escape is paperwork.

Will Hayward’s separate Guardian column about Andy Burnham’s devolution pitch adds a second layer: who is supposed to fix these problems, and with what tools. Hayward writes that the UK is the most fiscally centralised country in the G7, with more than 90% of tax revenue collected and controlled by Westminster. Wales has had its own parliament for more than 25 years, but Hayward argues that responsibilities were devolved without the levers needed to deliver—limited borrowing powers, key infrastructure such as rail not devolved, and a share of R&D funding that lags its population share. In practice, he says, the Welsh government has sometimes relied on local authorities to borrow on its behalf for capital projects.

Put together, the two pieces describe a country where consumer harm is national in scale but personal in remedy, and where political promises to “crack down” often run through institutions that keep both money and authority concentrated at the centre. Burnham can pledge to tackle rip-offs and to devolve power, but the customer stuck on hold and the devolved government stuck without borrowing capacity face the same constraint: decisions are made elsewhere, and the bill arrives anyway.

Virgin Media’s fine was paid to the Treasury. The customers who could not cancel were told to keep their own records.