Virgin Media has been fined £28m by the UK telecoms watchdog for repeatedly preventing customers from cancelling their contracts over a near three-year period.

Ofcom discovered that Virgin Media “likely mishandled” millions of phone calls between the start of 2022 and autumn 2024, with deliberate call-dropping tactics, unnecessary call transfers and putting customers on hold for “no reason”.

The watchdog investigated the company after it received almost 2,000 complaints from Virgin Media broadband, landline and pay TV customers who struggled to cancel their contracts.

The £28m fine, which was reduced by 30% as Virgin Media admitted to its failing and agreed to settle the case, is Ofcom’s biggest ever under the regulator’s consumer protection rules.

The Ofcom investigation found that millions of calls made by customers between January 2022 and September 2024 were probably mishandled by call agents “in order to delay or prevent customers from cancelling and switching to a competitor”. Customers can save hundreds of pounds by switching to a new deal.

It also uncovered evidence of “deliberate mishandling of calls by retention team agents”, with a commission scheme that “effectively encouraged” and financially rewarded agents for “behaving in this way”.

It said Virgin Media – fined in 2018 for breaching the same rule – also repeatedly failed to comply with Ofcom’s information-gathering process.

Natalie Black, a director at Ofcom, said “The facts are clear. Virgin Media made it harder for customers to cancel their contracts and then did not fully cooperate with our investigation.”

She added: “Today, we are sending a clear message that any provider who wilfully acts against the interests of their customers will pay a heavy price.”

The regulator said Virgin Media had since made a number of important changes, including improvements in its commission scheme, training and quality assurance, and monitoring.

Ofcom has ordered Virgin Media to check that every affected customer who complained had received the compensation or other remedies to which they may be entitled within the next six months.

The regulator found Virgin Media – which merged with the mobile giant O2 in 2021 to form Virgin Media O2 – split its retention team into two “tiers” of agents, with only those in the second tier able to process cancellations. This meant customers had to repeat their request to at least one further agent.

Some frustrated customers resorted to cancelling their direct debits, affecting their credit score.

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Which? called Virgin Media’s behaviour “shocking”, especially given it took place at the peak of the cost-of-living crisis. Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy at the consumer group, said: “It’s shocking that Virgin Media was deliberately making it harder for customers to leave for a better deal.

“This was a deeply cynical tactic at a time when so many households were struggling with cost-of-living pressures.”

A spokesperson for Virgin Media said: “We’re committed to giving all our customers great service and apologise to the small proportion who experienced an issue when contacting us to agree a new deal or cancel their service in the past.

“We have completely redesigned our customer services in recent years, addressing the historic shortfalls identified by Ofcom through a number of improvements, and have resolved all formal customer complaints from this period providing redress where appropriate.”

The company said Ofcom’s latest data showed Virgin Media now had the fewest complaints among broadband providers.

The penalty announced on Wednesday followed a separate £23.8m fine Ofcom issued last December after it found the company had put thousands of vulnerable people “at risk of harm” when switching them from an analogue to a digital landline.