Industry watchdog Ofcom has fined EE and Virgin Media for overcharging customers.
The regulator fined EE and Virgin Media £13.3 million for charging 500,000 customers who wanted to leave contracts early.
EE faced a £6.3 million fine for overcharging 400,000 customers and Virgin media faced a £7 million fine for overcharging 82,000 people.
“EE and Virgin Media broke our rules by overcharging people who ended their contracts early. Those people were left out pocket and the charges amounted to millions of pounds,” said Gaucho Rasmussen, who is the director of investigations and enforcement at Ofcom.
EE racked up a total of £4.3 million from overcharging customers.
Virgin Media hs not taken the fine lightly and said that it plans to appeal the decision made by the watchdog.
“We profoundly disagree with Ofcom’s ruling. This decision and fine is not justified, proportionate or reasonable,” said the chief executive of Virgin Media, Tom Mockridge.
“A small percentage of customers were charged an incorrect amount when they ended one or more of their services early and for that we are very sorry.”
“As soon as we became aware of the mistake we apologised and took swift action to put it right by paying refunds, with interest, to everyone affected.”
“For those few people we could not locate, we have made an equivalent donation to charity,” he added.
A spokesperson from EE said that recognised the mistake and apologised.
“We accept Ofcom’s findings and recognise that we have made a mistake,” said the spokesperson.
“We apologise to customers with discounted tariffs who paid more than they should have when cancelling their contracts early.”
“We’ve already refunded customers and changed the way we calculate early termination charges, and we will continue to focus on ensuring our policies are clear and fair for all customers.”
