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We contacted Virgin 02 and it said:

In short, we have listened back to our phone calls with Ms Emerton and Mr McGuinness and it’s important to note that in both cases they were clearly told about the inclusion of the SIM card in their deal before accepting. We would therefore strongly challenge many of the points your expert makes which appear to be based on the incorrect idea that they only “found out” about the SIM after renewing their TV package.

Joan Emerton

Our records show that Ms Emerton called to renew her package and was offered a new deal that included TV, broadband and a SIM card. This package represented the best overall value for Ms Emerton and she agreed to it. We do however acknowledge that in this instance our agent fell short of the standards we expect as they failed to contact her the following day as had been agreed, and we apologise for this.

It's also worth adding that when Ms Emerton then attempted to contact us, she was unable to pass security on her account, or access the email account that the verification emails were being sent to. As I’m sure you can appreciate, we can’t tell a customer, who hasn’t passed security, the email associated with an account due to data protection and security. This unfortunately contributed to the delay in resolving her complaint.

We have now spoken with Ms Emerton to apologise and have reached a resolution she is happy with. We have cancelled the SIM, waived all associated fees, refunded the payments she made towards the SIM and provided her with £100 as a gesture of goodwill.

A Virgin Media O2 spokesperson said: “We’ve spoken with Ms Emerton directly to apologise for the experience she had when renewing her package with us. We have now refunded the payments she made towards the SIM card, waived all associated fees and provided her with £100 as a gesture of goodwill. Ms Emerton is happy the matter has been resolved.”

Paul McGuinness

We listened back to the call with Mr McGuinness and he clearly agrees to proceed with the deal which included a SIM. He did initially tell us he didn’t need the SIM (not “repeatedly”) but once our agent explained the benefits of the Volt bundle (for example, broadband speed boosts and more mobile data for eligible O2 plans in his household), the customer agreed and was happy to proceed.

There was also a clear agreement between the customer and our agent regarding the total amount he would be paying (£46 for broadband and £10 for the SIM), and it was made clear that these costs would be billed separately via two direct debits. We also have records of contracts and other communications sent to Mr McGuinness via email and SMS, detailing these points.

As with any contract, if a customer decides to cancel a direct debit, their account will then fall into arrears and we will contact them asking to clear the outstanding amount owed. As explained above, Mr McGuinness agreed to this contract, had both elements clearly explained and received information on the set up of both accounts.

We have spoken with Mr McGuinness and have decided on this occasion to cancel the SIM card as a gesture of goodwill. We have also refunded the payments he made towards it, waived any late payment fees provided him with a month’s worth of free services.

We followed up with questions around the contract issue highlighted in the film and the cooling off period, to which Virgin 02 responded:

Our records show Ms Emerton called us to renew her contract on the 5th January, when she agreed to the deal.

The next contact we had with her was on the following Monday (8th January), when our agent called her as agreed. Unfortunately, our records show the call was then disconnected. It sounds like it was Ms Emerton who disconnected the call as she had to pick up her grandchildren. Had the call stayed connected we would have been able to process the cancellation within the cooling off period.

The next recorded interaction we had with Ms Emerton was when she visited the store in Dewsbury on the 9th Feb, which was outside of the cooling off period.

Regarding your second question, the contracts you are referring to are their Virgin Media contracts, which detail the cable services they are taking from Virgin Media. They also received O2 contracts detailing their mobile service.