Wow what a mess. I am mostly going to side with you here.
The issues I see are.
Misleading on charges whilst you was moving, this I suspect would have been done with fear of losing you when quoting such charges and then hoping afterwards you would accept it after the charges were raised and the house moved carried out.
Was you right to cancel the DD? If I was in your situation facing a bank charge for bounced direct debit and had contacted the isp to tell them that then yes I probably also would have cancelled the DD, I would have informed them as well tho and told them why, I would have offered to manually settle monthly bill due whilst leaving the rest in dispute, I believe you didnt do this following cancelling the DD and waited for them to inform you they noticed it was cancelled?
In regards to them blocking the migration out they are wrong here plain and simple, blocking migration is not the right way to chase payment.
If i was vivaciti given the bad PR already here and faced with that £350 fee for ADR, I would cut my losses short, they should assume this point you are a lost customer and just let you go, their priorty at this stage should be to come to terms with you on an agreement of the outstanding money owed and let the migration go through.
I think but am not sure in the case of such a blatant breach of ofcom rules you could contact ofcom directly and bypass this clear delaying tactic from telling you to wait 8+ weeks for resolution.
Failing that you had some good advice earlier in the thread, order a new line, a new BB service on that line and tell vivaciti you will chase them for the cost of that order as you were forced to do it following them blocking the migration.
As is pointed out as well by someone earlier the amount they chasing is a pittance, the stance I find baffling. If they absolutely will not budge, then order the new service and let it go to the ADR, court etc. if they really wont let that fee go. I think you can argue the moment they blocked the migration there was a breach of contract on their part, although they could argue a blocking of the DD was a breach on your part, I think the wrong way to go about this is trying to get them to turn your service back on, wont happen unless you back down on the payment.
Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 20-Jan-16 23:39:22)