Virgin Media really takes the biscuit

pfxh

We've been with UPC/Virgin Media for 5 or 6 years and have been generally happy with them other than their absolutely lamentable customer service.
But my latest experience with customer service broke all previous lamentability records.
It all started in February (2/02/2016) when I received an email from Virgin informing me that my monthly bill would be rising by €5 from the end of March. So, instead of €80 I'd be paying €85 (for broadband, phone and TV).
As I was in a contract with Virgin until September 2016, I was unhappy about this unilateral price rise.
I spoke to another service provider who offered basically the same service for €77 monthly and was told that I had a 30-day window from receipt of the price rise notification to cancel my contract without penalty.
So, on 11/02/2016, I phoned Virgin and told them I wanted to cancel the contract.
This caused much consternation and a few minutes on-hold while a "supervisor" was consulted on the issue.
Thereafter I was informed that, if I agreed to stay with Virgin for the remainder of the contact period, they would forego the €5 price rise. In other words, I would continue to pay €80 monthly.
So fine, I agreed.
Fine, that is until I received my bill from Virgin yesterday and, guess what, they had already taken €85 from my direct debit account.
Oh well, must be a simple mistake which I can easily clear up by talking to customer service, I thought.
So, back onto customer service where I spent fifty minutes (yes, 50 minutes) discussing the matter with a very polite lady who even commiserated with me over my plight.
She checked the notes made by the other agent of the discussion I had with them on 11/02/2016 and confirmed that I had indeed been told that the €5 price rise would not apply to me until the end of my contract period.
Eventually, she asked me to wait while she discussed the matter with her "supervisor".
She was quite heart-broken when she came back to tell me that her supervisor had said that the €5 price rise was "valid" and I would have to pay it.
At this stage I was dumbstruck and said that I wanted to cancel my contract.
I was then told that "unfortunately" as more than 30 days had elapsed since I had received the price-rise notification, I would have to pay €200 to cancel the contract.
Well, if that doesn't take the biscuit.
Apparently, you simply cannot believe what you hear from customer service.
This sounds to me like an organisation with a very serious management problem.
Guys, any advice on what options are open to me at this stage?
Is there some independent regulatory body who deals with scams and other matter of this nature on behalf of ripped-off customers?
Or do I simply grin and bear it until September when I can finally put some distance between myself and Virgin Media for ever.

ElNino

Comreg is the telecoms (including TV) industry regulator in Ireland. However before you can make a complaint to them you need to have exhausted the internal complaints procedure with Virgin Media.

I would recommend that you firstly start a thread in the Talk to Virgin Media support forum here to see if their reps can help. If you don't get anywhere with them then send a registered letter to The Complaints Officer at Virgin Media.

pfxh

Good advice.
Thank you.

Chaos Marine

Go to the bank and tell them to not pay out any money to Chorus or UPC or Virgin or whatever they're calling themselves?