Virgin Media in premium rate U-turn

Virgin Media will drop premium rate charges to its technical support line in June, less than a year after they were introduced, the firm has confirmed.

An email doing the rounds inside VM says the move last summer to discourage irrelevant calls to the broadband support line has not gone down well. It confirms that the 25p per minute line will revert to a standard local rate 0845 number, or free by dialling 151 from a cable phone.

"This year, one of our key aims is to delight our customers by improving customer service - and boy are we serious about it," the author gushes.

Customers will be emailed about the changes in April and May.

A Virgin Media spokesman said today: "Whilst calls to the premium rate broadband support line are already refunded when there has been a fault with our network, perhaps that wasn't clear.

"We have been working hard to improve customer service and listening to what our customers say, so will now be removing this charge from the outset."

Last year VM said it was getting too many off-topic calls about general technical problems rather than specific questions about broadband service. It now has a £1 per minute general computer support line. ®