Bloody Virgin Media, putting up my costs again!

[megaphone]

outnumbered said:

megaphone said:

Anyone having a better luck getting a deal? I've just called retentions and they're offering me more or less what I'm paying now if I take 12months line rental. So

Big Kahuna (152mb BB, XL TV and phone) £43 for 6 months then £46/m. Advance line rental £164.

So works out at £58.16 a month.

Anyone getting a better deal for similar, if so how?

I'm about to be in the same position, and was planning to point out that it'd be a fair bit cheaper for me to use BT for phone/BB/TV, given the TV channels that I need. Did you do something similar, or just ask for a discount ?

Go through to the retentions/customer care, can't remember which button presses, but it will be "if you're thinking of leaving us press x". This will get you to a UK call centre.

They more or less gave me a better price straight away, I tried to push them but they stood their ground, I've said I'll get back to them once I've looked elsewhere. The line rental goes up at the end of Jan, so I have until then.

[Hoofy]

If you leave Virgin, what other options do you have if you stick to using the fibre line?

[Oakey]

Hoofy said:

If you leave Virgin, what other options do you have if you stick to using the fibre line?

None, it's their line.

[Hoofy]

Oakey said:

Hoofy said:

If you leave Virgin, what other options do you have if you stick to using the fibre line?

None, it's their line.

That's what I wondered.

[krunchkin]

Lol. Girlfriend just called them. Bloke said "oh did you get sent a letter about a price rise?" Reduced from 48 to 33 in less than 5 mins (cancelled free evening calls)

[Wombat3]

Just had the conversation with them earlier this evening.

What was 1300 quid (over the next year) has gone down to under £800 (for BB + phone + TVXL + Skysports + Tivo + an extra box)

Have given up anytime calls & converted to E & W only but my BB is also going up from 70 to 100Meg.

One other gem that came out of the conversation was that on VM the evening call period starts after 7pm & ends at 7am , not 6pm & 8am as it has been for all UK telcos since anyone can remember

[Hoofy]

Wombat3 said:

Have given up anytime calls & converted to E & W only but my BB is also going up from 70 to 100Meg.

Am tempted to ditch this as I have unlimited on mobile.

[Who me ?]

Typical Virgin policy. lots of years ago ,(some where like 10/15), I had Virgin with no call charges and ( at that time) ,the magnificent speed of 2 MB. Then VIRGIN said we'd get 10 MB, JUST APPLY. I did, to find it meant a new contact for a tear, and a few months later, my BB price had risen by a few £ per month , but I'd AGREED to a new contract ,so I was done up like a Turkey at Xmas(i'e stuffed) .But then Ofcom saw the light ,and roll on contracts were banned.

[Oakey]

Speaking of costs, my last two months of VirginMedia bills have had phone bills of £25+, £5 of which is itemised and some £15+ of non-itemised calls totalling 60+calls and a total duration of 60minutes.

I'm livid, we rarely use the landline. I've checked the handset and there's only four numbers in the redial list yet apparently we've racked up some 60+ non-itemised calls. I work from home as well so it's not like the other half is up to no good and deleting the numbers. What I suspect is our two year old getting his hands on the handset and mashing the numbers.

That or we're just being ripped off, kind of hard to figure out what some 60+ of non-itemised calls are!

[megaphone]

Just a bit of an update. Virgin would not play ball, gave them another call over the weekend and they said I was on the best deal and they could not do better, so I have left! Cancelled with 30 days notice, fella on the line did not appear bothered, said they would send a bag out for all the equipment, my line goes dead on Feb 9th.

So I now need to make a decision, do I move elsewhere or wait to see if Virgin call me back with a better deal. Any one had any experience?

There are some really good BB deals around from BT and Talk Talk etc, with potential cash back from Quidco. BT are offering some reasonable TV deals, but to be honest I'd be happy with Freeview and a PVR.

[All that jazz]

megaphone said:

Just a bit of an update. Virgin would not play ball, gave them another call over the weekend and they said I was on the best deal and they could not do better, so I have left! Cancelled with 30 days notice, fella on the line did not appear bothered, said they would send a bag out for all the equipment, my line goes dead on Feb 9th.

So I now need to make a decision, do I move elsewhere or wait to see if Virgin call me back with a better deal. Any one had any experience?

There are some really good BB deals around from BT and Talk Talk etc, with potential cash back from Quidco. BT are offering some reasonable TV deals, but to be honest I'd be happy with Freeview and a PVR.

Just take out a fresh contract with them on whatever their current introductory offer is .

[gpb1]

megaphone said:

Just a bit of an update. Virgin would not play ball, gave them another call over the weekend and they said I was on the best deal and they could not do better, so I have left! Cancelled with 30 days notice, fella on the line did not appear bothered, said they would send a bag out for all the equipment, my line goes dead on Feb 9th.

So I now need to make a decision, do I move elsewhere or wait to see if Virgin call me back with a better deal. Any one had any experience?

There are some really good BB deals around from BT and Talk Talk etc, with potential cash back from Quidco. BT are offering some reasonable TV deals, but to be honest I'd be happy with Freeview and a PVR.

You'll get a call within 3 days offering you a much better deal than the people you cancelled with could offer.

[MikeGoodwin]

Mine was £35 for tv and a 60mbit internet package only 2 years back. now paying nearly £50 for it. Going to cancel and get a new package through uswitch or something.

[megaphone]

gpb1 said:

megaphone said:

Just a bit of an update. Virgin would not play ball, gave them another call over the weekend and they said I was on the best deal and they could not do better, so I have left! Cancelled with 30 days notice, fella on the line did not appear bothered, said they would send a bag out for all the equipment, my line goes dead on Feb 9th.

So I now need to make a decision, do I move elsewhere or wait to see if Virgin call me back with a better deal. Any one had any experience?

There are some really good BB deals around from BT and Talk Talk etc, with potential cash back from Quidco. BT are offering some reasonable TV deals, but to be honest I'd be happy with Freeview and a PVR.

You'll get a call within 3 days offering you a much better deal than the people you cancelled with could offer.

Had a missed call, 0800xxx , when I called back it was Virgin, message said they would call back. Let's see what happens, would rather not switch, just need to stand my ground, fed up with companies taking good customers for granted.

[TX1]

megaphone said:

gpb1 said:

megaphone said:

Just a bit of an update. Virgin would not play ball, gave them another call over the weekend and they said I was on the best deal and they could not do better, so I have left! Cancelled with 30 days notice, fella on the line did not appear bothered, said they would send a bag out for all the equipment, my line goes dead on Feb 9th.

So I now need to make a decision, do I move elsewhere or wait to see if Virgin call me back with a better deal. Any one had any experience?

There are some really good BB deals around from BT and Talk Talk etc, with potential cash back from Quidco. BT are offering some reasonable TV deals, but to be honest I'd be happy with Freeview and a PVR.

You'll get a call within 3 days offering you a much better deal than the people you cancelled with could offer.

Had a missed call, 0800xxx , when I called back it was Virgin, message said they would call back. Let's see what happens, would rather not switch, just need to stand my ground, fed up with companies taking good customers for granted.

Totally agree with you, they give you a so called free upgrade and a month later they put the bill up, very annoying and an insult to ones intelligence.
Have had this twice with them in the past, about a week before I was going to get disconnected they phoned and renegotiated a new deal, wait as they will ring back.

[Speed 3]

The price hiking on the back of freebies/upgrade is pretty annoying. We switched to VM about 3 years ago after hopeless service outs with TalkTalk (down to the BT infrastructure in the street so no point changing to BT or anyone else) and Sky doing similar price gouging. Their robust service has been stellar compared to the previous so we're kinda stuck. I was facing £90/month for XL/BB/Phone but having realised how little we used the landline these days I spoke to them about cancelling all the phone service thinking that was going to save £25 upwards. Typical mental pricing structure meant that our BB/TV would go up if we dropped the phone so the net saving would be single figures. They suggested keeping the phone but downgrading to E&W and that's knocked £18 off. I didn't get any further joy with negotiating or threatening to leave. They may have come back if we did the brinkmanship but I really don't want to change back to BT based service so I'm reasonably happy.

[Wombat3]

Speed 3 said:

The price hiking on the back of freebies/upgrade is pretty annoying. We switched to VM about 3 years ago after hopeless service outs with TalkTalk (down to the BT infrastructure in the street so no point changing to BT or anyone else) and Sky doing similar price gouging. Their robust service has been stellar compared to the previous so we're kinda stuck. I was facing £90/month for XL/BB/Phone but having realised how little we used the landline these days I spoke to them about cancelling all the phone service thinking that was going to save £25 upwards. Typical mental pricing structure meant that our BB/TV would go up if we dropped the phone so the net saving would be single figures. They suggested keeping the phone but downgrading to E&W and that's knocked £18 off. I didn't get any further joy with negotiating or threatening to leave. They may have come back if we did the brinkmanship but I really don't want to change back to BT based service so I'm reasonably happy.

See above, they will take big lumps out if you ask. I didn't have to try very hard (but maybe I was lucky),.

[megaphone]

Just another update for those interested.

Got a call back from Virgin yesterday. Their 'offer' is to give me my line rental FOC for a year, so saving me over £200. I said I could not make a decision there and then as I needed to check what other providers can do. I'm going see if I can get a little more before I agree.

Even with line rental FOC it will still cost me £46/m for their Big Kahuna bundle, 152Mb (200) BB, XL TV and phone.

And what happens next year, go through the same bloody process!

[condor]

I wasn't happy with this months £9/month price increase - seems I'd been on a £5/month loyalty discount which ended in January.
I spoke to their retentions dept. and it has been reduced to £42 from £68. I wanted to ditch the landline but that doesn't appear to make it cheaper. I've dropped down to 130 channels (from TVXL) which includes Eurosport and have 6 months BTsport free.
The package is called 'the big easy' - will have a look and see what I'm left with

[outnumbered]

Resurrecting this thread...

I didn't manage to get any deal out of VM a few months ago when I pointed out that I could get BT for a few quid less. The retentions team were adamant that because I was on a "mates rates" deal anyway, they couldn't improve on this at all. I couldn't be arsed to go as far as cancelling and seeing what they came back with, so left it at that.

Anyway, we have a Tivo box and a V+ box. I've just called them to get the V+ upgraded to a Tivo, which is costing an extra £5 a month (it was £7.50 if I did it through the website, so if they're trying to drive people to do stuff via web rather than calling them, that is an odd pricing strategy!). They also threw in, without asking, free calls to mobiles from our landline, which seemed a nice gesture.

So I think in total I'm paying VM £100 a month now, which is quite a lot of money... but that includes 200Mb broadband, unlimited landline (apart from international calls), 2 Tivo boxes on the top TV package, and 4 mobiles on SIM-only deals.