Virgin Media has been fined £28m for repeatedly preventing customers from cancelling contracts, Ofcom said.

The communications regulator said it uncovered tactics including agents deliberately hanging up calls, and customers being put on hold “for no reason”.

It said millions of calls from customers were “likely mishandled” over a three-year period which prevented or delayed them from switching to a better broadband, landline or pay-TV deal.

The penalty was reduced by 30% as Virgin Media admitted its failing and agreed to settle, Ofcom added. Virgin Media apologised to the “small proportion who experienced an issue when contacting us to agree a new deal or cancel their service in the past”.

Ofcom’s investigation uncovered behaviour including: excessive and unnecessary call transfers, deliberately hanging up calls, repeated attempts to pressure customers to stay, and unnecessarily and repeatedly keeping customers on hold.

It said Virgin Media’s commission scheme “effectively encouraged” and financially rewarded call centre agents for “behaving in this way”.

Virgin Media said it had “resolved all formal customer complaints from this period providing redress where appropriate”.

Ofcom said Virgin Media would need to check every affected customer who complained has received compensation or other remedies they were entitled to within six months.

It said its rules “are clear that the conditions or procedures telecoms providers have in place must not act as a disincentive for customers who wish to cancel their contract” – and that Virgin Media’s failings likely acted as a disincentive for customers in million of calls.

The calls investigated were between 1 January 2022 and 11 September 2024 and were found to have likely been mishandled by call agents “in order to delay or prevent customers from cancelling and switching to a competitor”.

Natalie Black, Ofcom’s group director for infrastructure and connectivity, told the BBC’s Today programme that Virgin Media’s actions were “pretty shocking” and showed “poor behaviour”.

“Right at the beginning of this problem, a number of years ago in 2022, we tried to resolve this informally. There wasn’t the will to do that,” she said.

She added in a statement: “The facts are clear. Virgin Media made it harder for customers to cancel their contracts and then did not fully cooperate with our investigation.”

Anthony, from Brighton, tried to cancel his TV package with Virgin last August, just before it was up for renewal.

The 58 year old said he has been a Virgin customer for a decade, but felt the company’s prices “were going up astronomically for the last three or four years”.

When he phoned, he said the call “dropped off” after playing a series of “garbled” automated messages.

“I never got to speak to a person,” he said. “Basically I gave up.”

He said his subscription was renewed without Virgin notifying him, but he is now paying £90 more per month than last year.

“I don’t know why they do it,” he said. “I can get Sky for about £80 a month.”

Ofcom received complaints from 1,881 customers who reported difficulties cancelling.

It added that some customers resorted to having to cancel their direct debits, which led to further difficulties such as missed payments impacting their credit score.

Black said Ofcom had introduced “further safeguards to prevent this from happening again”, including its “One Touch Switch” process launched in 2024, intended to make changing broadband or landline providers hassle-free.

The regulator found that Virgin Media had two-tier system of retention agents, and only agents in the second tier were able to process cancellations.

This resulted in over a million callers being made to repeat their request to at least one further agent, it said.

It said Virgin Media has made some important changes, including to improve its commission scheme, training and quality assurance and monitoring.

A Virgin Media spokesperson said it had “completely redesigned” its customer service in recent years and addressed the “historic shortfalls” through a number of improvements.

“Our customer service turnaround strategy, underpinned by significant investment, has been transformational.

“Ofcom’s latest data shows that Virgin Media is now the least-complained-about broadband provider with complaints at record lows, and complaints specifically relating to ‘difficulties leaving’ were 89% lower last year than in 2023,” the spokesperson added.

Virgin Media must pay the fine within two months and the money will be passed on to the Treasury.

The regulator said its fine was the largest it had issued under its consumer protection rules, and its third largest ever in general.

Its biggest fine of £50m was issued to Royal Mail in 2018 for breaking competition law, and its second biggest fine of £42m was for BT in 2017.

Virgin Media was fined £23.8m by Ofcom in 2025 for leaving thousands of customers without access to lifesaving telecare alarms during the digital switchover.

Additional reporting by Bernadette McCague.