Virgin Media - Retention Deals?

[cobra kid]

outnumbered said:

When they call back on the 0800 number, is that usually during the daytime ?

Mine was at 13.50 yesterday. 0800 408 9340

[hyphen]

Ok, so got another call earlier today.

Offered 12 months contract, 50mbps + their latest modem to replace my dodgy Superhub 2 for £19 ish a month . Few pennies less and slightly more speed than Vodafone so ended up saying yes, Openreach will have to wait a year more for my custom.

Deal constructed as a higher monthly with a few months worth of cashback taking down to real cost.

[outnumbered]

I finally got round to ringing them today to politely moan about the increase. I told them I could get a similar package from BT for £20 less. In the past I've not succeeded in getting anything from the first line "cancellation" team, but this time they pretty much volunteered to knock off £12 per month and throw in a free V6 box upgrade for one of our two Tivos. That's on the same package as before but a new 12 month contract.

I'm now thinking I should have pushed a bit harder to see if I could have got 2 boxes or a bit more off ! But generally happy with saving £144 with very little effort.

Edited by outnumbered on Sunday 22 October 15:59

[Phooey]

Guys, I haven't read through the whole thread but could someone please advise me if what we pay is about right or could we beat it by ringing up Virgin..

Talk Unlimited
Free Voicemail (we don't use this)
VIVID 150 Optical Fibre (broadband - no idea if this is overkill?)

Bundle Charges Total = £35.31

Line Rental £19.00

YOUR PACKAGE TOTAL = £54.31

Just noticed also paying £1.75 for paper billing.

We've been with Virgin since 2007. Never queried price before. Don't need TV - just broadband and calls

Thanks

[anonymous-user]

Phooey said:

Line Rental £19.00


Just noticed also paying £1.75 for paper billing.

We've been with Virgin since 2007. Never queried price before. Don't need TV - just broadband and calls

Thanks

First up they can kill the phone line rental by applying a 12 month upfront payment credit that would lose you the £19
If you don't want paper billing, are happy enough with it on line cancel it saving you £21 a year.

[deckster]

Phooey said:

Guys, I haven't read through the whole thread but could someone please advise me if what we pay is about right or could we beat it by ringing up Virgin..

Talk Unlimited
Free Voicemail (we don't use this)
VIVID 150 Optical Fibre (broadband - no idea if this is overkill?)

Bundle Charges Total = £35.31

Line Rental £19.00

YOUR PACKAGE TOTAL = £54.31

Just noticed also paying £1.75 for paper billing.

We've been with Virgin since 2007. Never queried price before. Don't need TV - just broadband and calls

Thanks

Current base offer for phone & broadband is £29/month for 50Mbps & weekend calls. Unlimited anytime calls is an extra £8/month. Assuming that 50Mbps is enough for you, which I would suggest it is if you don't know, then the absolute maximum that you should be paying is £37/month.

Note that the £29/month is a 12-month deal so you'll have to ring them up in a year's time and re-negotiate, but that appears to be par for the course these days

Of course £37 is a standard package and you shouldn't need to speak to retentions or get any special deals. If you want to play hardball then of course you can aim lower, and given that you're a long-time customer I would suggest that they will be willing to either drop the price (harder to achieve, but certainly possible) or add in additional services for free (easier for them to do as it's lower cost for them to give you more rather than take less from you).

[Phooey]

Thanks guys. Well I rang them up and apparently we are averaging 350-400gb of data / month (family of 5 - lots of tech / tv's etc). She didn't suggest going below 100mbps, and if we did drop down to the 100mbps package it would be £51.00. Hardly a saving. We could save a bit more by going weekend calls only but can't remember how much it was - certainly didn't make my ears prick up.

I tried the hard ball approach by asking what I need to do to cancel because I'm going to go with BT. Didn't help - she was adamant that was the cheapest they could go too. Oh well, worth a try

Thanks again

[deckster]

Phooey said:

Thanks guys. Well I rang them up and apparently we are averaging 350-400gb of data / month (family of 5 - lots of tech / tv's etc). She didn't suggest going below 100mbps, and if we did drop down to the 100mbps package it would be £51.00. Hardly a saving. We could save a bit more by going weekend calls only but can't remember how much it was - certainly didn't make my ears prick up.

I tried the hard ball approach by asking what I need to do to cancel because I'm going to go with BT. Didn't help - she was adamant that was the cheapest they could go too. Oh well, worth a try

Thanks again

Try again, possibly during the week. You may need to speak to somebody with more authority than the front-line agent - retentions, certainly, would have a lot more leeway. As an ice-breaker, ask them why you're paying more than their advertised rates http://www.virginmedia.com/shop/broadband/compare.... For comparison I'm paying £32 for 100Mbps, weekend calls, and basic TV.

She's talking bobbins on the internet speed BTW (but then, keeping you on a higher package than you need is part of her job to be fair). The amount you download each month bears little relation to your download speed, and 50Mbps is enough for 10 simultaneous Netflix HD streams so unless you are regularly downloading multi-gigabyte games or suchlike, the actual download speed is largely irrelevant.

[anonymous-user]

You will never get the reductions on that type of call.
You only get them when they know you are cancelling. Thing is it's up to you. IMHO they are hardly being loyal top you and you must realise from all the other posts that you can indeed get cheaper so in that instance she is lying

[hyphen]

Phooey said:

Thanks guys. Well I rang them up and apparently we are averaging 350-400gb of data / month (family of 5 - lots of tech / tv's etc).

[Phooey]

Thanks again guys. To be honest she was getting my back up - very pushy and absolutely adamant that BT's 50-60mbps (she did a postcode search on what we would get) wouldn't be enough to run Netflix and a couple of kids Ipads etc etc. To be fair she was a typical salesperson - full of st and jargon I didn't understand.

We currently have 150mpbs (Broadband Speed Checker shows approx 120mpbs) but I'd say every other day at least when we are watching Netflix (via Apple TV) it pauses, drops into a lower quality mode, and then once it sorts itself out it'll be back to HD quality. I appreciate this might be down to my wifi connection although Apple TV showing signal strength as 4 out of 5, so would of thought that's sufficient. Modem/router is upstairs in a spare room and tv/Apple-tv downstairs in living room.

I'll give them another call but to be honest I'm tempted to go BT and eff Virgin off!

Ta

[outnumbered]

techiedave said:

You will never get the reductions on that type of call.
You only get them when they know you are cancelling. Thing is it's up to you. IMHO they are hardly being loyal top you and you must realise from all the other posts that you can indeed get cheaper so in that instance she is lying

I thought the same - but as I wrote just up there, I got £12 off & a box upgrade without even trying on the first call, and without having to threaten to cancel. There's maybe some other factor that we don't know about, like a weekly target for retentions, or they can give you a special offer once every N years, or it's up to how the agent feels on the day, or...

[hyphen]

outnumbered said:

techiedave said:

You will never get the reductions on that type of call.
You only get them when they know you are cancelling. Thing is it's up to you. IMHO they are hardly being loyal top you and you must realise from all the other posts that you can indeed get cheaper so in that instance she is lying

I thought the same - but as I wrote just up there, I got £12 off & a box upgrade without even trying on the first call, and without having to threaten to cancel. There's maybe some other factor that we don't know about, like a weekly target for retentions, or they can give you a special offer once every N years, or it's up to how the agent feels on the day, or...

how much the profit margin currently is.

Also known as "Oh crap, this customer has realised we are screwing him over, better calm him down!"

[nmd87]

Phooey said:

Thanks again guys. To be honest she was getting my back up - very pushy and absolutely adamant that BT's 50-60mbps (she did a postcode search on what we would get) wouldn't be enough to run Netflix and a couple of kids Ipads etc etc. To be fair she was a typical salesperson - full of st and jargon I didn't understand.

We currently have 150mpbs (Broadband Speed Checker shows approx 120mpbs) but I'd say every other day at least when we are watching Netflix (via Apple TV) it pauses, drops into a lower quality mode, and then once it sorts itself out it'll be back to HD quality. I appreciate this might be down to my wifi connection although Apple TV showing signal strength as 4 out of 5, so would of thought that's sufficient. Modem/router is upstairs in a spare room and tv/Apple-tv downstairs in living room.

I'll give them another call but to be honest I'm tempted to go BT and eff Virgin off!

Ta

If it helps, we have 100mb broadband and phone (weekend calls only) and pay £30.00 per month. You can do better than what you were quoted, I think.

I've found the virgin hub pretty poor for Wifi speed at longer ranges. We have a new build house, so walls are thin, yet the signal at the top of the house is a lot slower than near the router. I "only" get 60mb connection speed in our master bedroom, for example. Having 150mb broadband is only useful if the wireless connection is good enough!

[nmd87]

BTW, a heads up for anyone on Virgin media, as seen on HotUKdeals Virgin Mobile are currently offering cut price SIM only deals for Virgin media customers.

I rang yesterday and got 1500 mins and 4GB 4G data for £4. According to HotUKdeals, there is a deal for £8 for 9GB data and £10 for 40GB data too. These are 30-day rolling contracts.

Worth a mention in case anyone is looking.

[hyphen]

nmd87 said:

BTW, a heads up for anyone on Virgin media, as seen on HotUKdeals Virgin Mobile are currently offering cut price SIM only deals for Virgin media customers.

I rang yesterday and got 1500 mins and 4GB 4G data for £4. According to HotUKdeals, there is a deal for £8 for 9GB data and £10 for 40GB data too. These are 30-day rolling contracts.

Worth a mention in case anyone is looking.

Thanks for that, called and it is on its way.

[King Herald]

I had a survey from Virgin last night, asking how satisfied I was etc. Told them all was okay, apart from the appalling WiFi strength.

Ten minutes after sending it off I got another asking loads of details about our WiFi use. I sent that off, adding that it was probably the only reason I would consider going to another provider.

Interesting to see if they get back to me.

I actually plan to drop our contract down to BB only when renewal time is due in January.

[HRL]

hyphen said:

Phooey said:

Thanks guys. Well I rang them up and apparently we are averaging 350-400gb of data / month (family of 5 - lots of tech / tv's etc).

Averaging about 30Gb per day at mine on Virgin.

[Zoon]

HRL said:

Averaging about 30Gb per day at mine on Virgin.

That's a good amount of porn.

[Patrick Bateman]

I've been with Virgin since I got the house 5 years ago. Had never given any thought about moving until now.

With the price increase just there I'm now £48 a month for Vivid 100 and the basic phone package, no TV.

Reading some of these posts shows I need to get on the blower to them.