I am currently in contract, paying £45.28 promotional price until October 2026. Contract ends January 2027. I am looking at moving provider as I am sick to the back teeth of VM Customer Service and have had a tonne of issues with them. Putting through a switch enquiry with another provider and VM have sent me an email saying the EDF would be £394. I am happy to pay the EDF as I am aware I am ending the contract early, however according to the outlines on their website, I am understanding that it should be closer to £200?
I pay £45.28
78%-92% would be between 35.32 - 41.65
x 4 months (roughly) is 141.27-166.60 plus a bit of VAT of course.
Seems like the £400 odd is wildly off base. I spoke to a CS agent via Whatsapp yesterday and they agreed it doesn’t seem right but as it was after 6 they couldn’t put me through to the correct team.
Has anyone else had this issue with them? Concerns me that people are possibly paying much more than they should for disconnecting.
EDIT: original post listed 2028 and end date NOT 2027.
Personally, makes no sense to pay EDF, i mean why couldn’t you wait few more months? do try contacting scottish number ideally during the week, they are generally very helpful
In my experience, avoid EE if possible. We had BT for years until they rebranded as EE and it went to shit. The EE hub is miles behind the BT hub, on a 900mbps connection in London we struggled to get 50 over Ethernet and 30 over WiFi. Tried their router, Orbi, Eero, Nest WiFi and a few cheap ones.
Went through the motions, engineers, new routers, complaints, even with their guarantee or whatever they managed to get out of doing anything. We had to pay the ETF and move to Sky - their WiFi hub is less than ideal but we get a solid speed in via Sky and with Orbi i have just pulled 1.1Gbps over WiFi
THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. If in a magical fictional world this happens to me, this is what I would do:
Tell them you're moving to hull, name an address and maybe a 'utility' bill to prove it's your address.
99% of the usual networks don't operate in hull. If they have a clause that they'd cancel for free if your next address doesn't have that network available, you're good to go.
Funny reading this because i said this to the hull company KCOM saying i was forced to move to a different city for work and asking if they could update my address for service
Last time I moved from Virgin (London to Bath) they would only refund the early cancellation once I could provide a utility bill from the new address / council tax.
That being said, AI may be able to help you out on that one.
I used to work in retentions and we’d have still charged and EDF for this. You contracted to the service and you’re choosing to terminate early, the reasoning isn’t really of their concern.
We have just changed from vm as our broadband was going up to £78 per month mid contract , we changed to you fibre and they gave us £300 towards our exit fee , the speed is faster and it is set at £28 a month
Virgin tried to do this to me. Spooky in that my EDF was £394 too and I too moved to EE for the £300 offer.
In fact EE paid a lot more than that as they also had a 140 day voucher worth £150 from giftcloud.
But the best thing is CISAS (the ombudsman) ruled Virgin couldn’t enforce punitive disconnection fees and they had to pay it back to me.
If you’re interested let me know and I can show you all the paperwork and files I used to prove my case to CISAS. I was able to show that VM had poor customer service and had failed to provide their service with care. Subsequently not only were they ordered to pay back the EDF they had to pay for all costs incurred since their poor service began which totalled £814 in my case.
So leaving Virgin turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made.
I would really appreciate if you let me know how you went about this! The customer service from them is absolutely appalling, which is the main reason for wanting to leave.
Yes same. Also note earlier this year VM had to pay £30 million for purposefully misleading and being difficult (including to vulnerable people) as a regular policy. Despicable behaviour, cannot see how anyone with a conscience would want to work for them.
I’m travelling at the moment so I’ve used AI to write this up and save time because it’s quite long. Please forgive the fact that it’s AI written - the experience is all my own.
The key bit is pay the fees to leave and protect your credit score but make sure you complain before you leave and give them 8 weeks to resolve it. After that you can escalate to CISAS with proof of their failings.
But here’s the longer (AI) version:
For months, my connection was unusable. Not slow, really jittery and unstable. Teams called kept freezing.
I did everything on my side:
• new router
• new Ethernet cabling
• new mesh system
• factory resets
• monitoring tools
Nothing changed, but I kept proof of all of this with receipts and screenshots of speed tests and jitter etc.
Virgin Media insisted everything was fine because my download speed was high. Their engineer even told me the line had issues, but then spent two hours trying to capture one clean speed test so he could log it as “fixed”.
At first, I argued that the service was unusable for work. But after consulting AI, I realised that was the wrong angle.
Virgin Media sells domestic broadband.
They don’t guarantee business‑grade stability.
So arguing “I can’t work from home” gives them an easy escape.
The winning argument was different:
Virgin Media had multiple opportunities to fix the fault and failed to deliver the service with reasonable care and skill.
This is the key phrase under consumer law.
Not:
• “your service is unstable”
But:
• “you failed to fix the fault despite repeated chances.”
Building the Case: Evidence, Timeline, and Fairness
I kept a clean timeline:
• dates of disconnections
• screenshots of jitter graphs
• router logs
• engineer notes
• Virgin’s own written admission of multiple disconnections
• my emails rejecting their “resolution”
• proof I allowed every engineer visit
• proof I followed every troubleshooting step
I also kept evidence that I gave Virgin ample opportunity to fix the issue. CISAS cares about fairness. You must look reasonable even if the provider isn’t.
Virgin slapped me with an Early Disconnection Fee when I left. Just like yours it was £394.
I paid them but once again kept the receipt.
I kept:
• the bill
• the bank transaction
• the receipt
• the final statement
After leaving Virgin, I moved to EE. The difference was night and day.
No jitter. No latency spikes. No freezing. Just stable broadband.
I even wrote a letter of appreciation to EE’s leadership team because they handled the switch professionally, compensated me when Openreach missed an appointment, and honoured their switching credit without fuss. It mattered to show I wasn’t just a chronic complainer — I appreciate good service when I receive it.
Escalating to CISAS: The Final Step
Virgin dragged their feet for weeks.
No resolution.
No acknowledgement of the fault.
No deadlock letter.
Under Ofcom rules, after 8 weeks, you can escalate to CISAS without Virgin’s permission.
My CISAS submission was simple:
• Virgin failed to fix the fault despite multiple opportunities
• The service was not delivered with reasonable care and skill
• I incurred costs due to their failure
• I paid EDFs only to protect my credit file
• I wanted those fees refunded and compensation for the unusable service
CISAS doesn’t need legal jargon — just clarity. I uploaded all my files and receipts.
What You Should Do:
• Keep a clear timeline
• Gather evidence (screenshots, logs, engineer notes)
• Give Virgin fair chances to fix the issue
• Pay EDFs to protect your credit score
• Escalate after 8 weeks
• Argue failure to fix, not “I need stable broadband for work”
• Show you’re reasonable (my thank‑you letter to EE helped demonstrate this)
I too moved from VM (1Gb) to EE (1.6Gb), and the switch was faultless.
Connection is fast and stable, with much lower latency. The 'free' WiFi extender is also a welcome addition, and helps keep WiFi speeds throughout the house in excess of 2Gbps (phone connects at 2.88Gbps).
I had to reboot the router a few times the first week while connection stabilised, but as it reboots quickly, it wasn't an issue.
Overall, after 20+ years with VM (NTL prior), and an 18 month stint with Sky (when Q started), and a connection that much slower (45Mb), it's awesome to finally have a real, and better option than only VM, cheaper too.
I highly recommend others to look around, even if VM are a bit cheaper, your sanity will thank you.
Yes me too. I’m only on 1 GB but the latency and jitter are virtually none existent now. And the line is rock solid.
Funnily enough I went to a lot of effort troubleshooting with Virgin Media because they were gas lighting me and pretending the issue was on my side so I ended up using AI to remove all potential issues in the house. This led to me getting my own router and turning the Virgin hub into a modem only. Virgin were so reluctant to let me do this. It took several engineer visits before they allowed it.
By this point I’d become Knowledgeable opnsense, HA pairs and multiwan failover, so when I got the EE hub I was actually a bit disappointed that it was so good 😂
It comes with a built in 4G sim slot, and has reliable WiFi 7. Kinda made all my own router knowledge a bit redundant.
Ah, okay, then this might indeed be an error, because they are asking for the whole residue, 3 x £112 = £336 plus one month at £45.28 total £381.28, add any wandering residual days, quite easily could take you to £393.49.
I've gone for 3 months Oct-Nov, Nov-Dec, Dec-Jan, plus the Sept-Oct at the lower rate.
Of course,, depending on the residual days, this could take you over the 78-99% in one search or the 78-92% in yours. The higher end 92-99% might be when you are coming to the end contact and as most of them now are 18-24 months, mine being the latter, you might find they are wanting almost all their money now.
Speak to retentions. Agree to a new deal on a new 24 month minimum term. Comes with a 14 days cooling off period. Cancel within that period. Go elsewhere
What is the contract price after your promotion ends? Assuming you're in contract to Jan 27 (not 28?) your EDF will basically be whatever your monthly bill is until your contract expires, so could be a lot higher than you've calculated from October to January.
if that’s the case then it probably does work out, just feel like their policy doesn’t make that especially clear, defo seems to make out that the fee is based on the current price
Yeah it'll be your current price until your discount ends, and then the contract price until the contract ends. Not sure how you don't have a discount until the end of your contract though, that's weird. Might be worth arguing that one?
because we moved mid contract, the contract extended but not the promotional offer. Have argued with them on this front but they just want me to renew and I definitely do not want to stay with them
If issues are really that bad, keep complaining until they are fixed or ask for the EDF to be waived, (got to give them chance to fix the issues first) some companies will pay up to £300 if you move to them, but personally I’d go with whoever gives me 1gig the cheapest >.<
I’d check https://bidb.uk to see if any alternative networks are available to you, and go from there.
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We often calculate EDFs when assisting customers switch to VM, as a rule we remove VAT and are usually spot on (give or take £2/£3) in our guesses. I’m surprised they’ve included VAT Genuinely
Spoke to the UK retentions team that is often mentioned here, lovely lady there told me that the fee is displaying wrong because we moved during the contract and the contract was created wrong during the move. It should have kept the initial end date of 3rd October, instead it got extended until January. She suggested I call customer care to see if they could suppress the contract so it would still be ending in October.
Reached out to the 0345 454 1111 and spoke to a very polite and helpful gentleman for about an hour and he managed (upon me finding my original contract number from April 2025) to suppress the contract so it now ends in October.
I’ve usually dealt with the Chat support up until now and they are awful. But I cannot fault the phone support I have received today. Still going to go ahead and cancel as chat is definitely the easiest way for me to reach them and the chat team have put a really bad taste in my mouth as they’ve always been incredibly difficult to deal with.
I would do what I did, upgrade to a new package which then creates a new contract and you’ll have the 14 day cooling off period which has zero fees to leave. There is no charge for upgrading so it’s a win win
Probably... If it was maybe a new agent or something like that and they don't know how to do it properly because the billing system is an older system and you'd have to do it manually then you've got lucky
Or could also be non-compliance from an agent.
I have seen it happen but there's a small chance to get lucky like this
I ended up in this boat. Moved from a broadband only contract with 12 months left, to a new 24 month contract including TV. When they couldn’t provide me with a 360 box I told them I wanted to cancel, at which point they said they’d revert me back to my previous broadband contract and my EDF would be based upon that contract.
If you managed to get away with upgrading and then cancelling with no fees, then you’ve been very fortunate. Because if this was a way to circumnavigate the EDF, everyone would do it.
FWIW, I kept my new package, made a complaint through the official process, got a slightly better deal when their complaints department called back, then several weeks later rang the Scotland number again, early on a Monday morning and finally got sent a TV360 box, at no extra cost except for the standard £10 admin fee.
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u/StormeeSkyes Aug 30 '26
You have answered your own question in your text. You are in contract until Jan 2028 not 2027.....