Virgin Media - great service but they really do test my patience at times. (renewal costs)

Tone1979

Tone1979

Tone1979

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5 Mar 2012
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So, get an email yesterday telling me that at the end of Jan, my broadband only cost will be going from £52 per month (500meg) to £72.25, and bizarrely, it would stay at that cost until 2029.

Usual call, call in and spend 30 mins talking to a gentleman somewhere in the world. End of the call and I am paying the same £52 for 1Gb for the next 18 months. It didn't take any "I am leaving or else" tactics, he simply spoke to his manager and that's where we ended.

I guess I am just throwing this out there, if anyone here has had the same email with a huge increase, call them and have it out. They are relying on everyone just going "well that's the cost of living crisis for you" and paying up. Challenge them, their business is worth something to them and will try and keep you. Now I have to have the same conversations with the pet insurers (they want £489 per year to insure my cat!), the car and the house insurance.

Gotta love this time of year...

Hopefully, this is useful to at least 1 person here.

(Please don't post how bad Virgin are, never had a problem with the service but I appreciate some do)
 
imtoooldforthis said:
You should have done the leaving tactics, they automatically put you through to the 'please don't leave kind sir' hotline where they can magically offer you decent reductions on everything that the previous plebs weren't allowed to.
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I was already in the retention department, so I guess they knew it was on the cards. I had mentioned I could get 1Gb for less but don't want the hassle.
 
With virgin media if you just hang tough till the end of your contract, they offer you the same deal you had been on or an increased speed for cheaper. Just need to rebuff their offers a couple of times. Not failed me in 3 renewals.
 
Have to go through that process every renewal with virgin to get the price down to a reasonable level... Really annoying. Never sure what the best actual price they can do is. I think last time I asked for the new customer deal price, and said I'd move to a 5G Hotspot otherwise (which I would not actually have wanted to do) but then they gave me a price slightly lower than that anyway!

I'm hoping I won't have to do it again, as fibre should be available any moment now based on what Openreach told me last year, so won't be stuck with virgin if I want decent speeds.
 
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When our current contract finishes I will be moving to one of the cable operators who offer gigabit for about £25 around me. Currently paying £36 for 250mb/30mb and I hate the fact that every time I come up for renewal its a battle to get anything approaching as good a deal as new customers. I will be more than happy to bin them off for another company as they treat you like crap if you show any loyalty to them.
 
They are sneaky with their contracts because they'll say the price is fixed till a certain year but then they can increase the price during that term. I queried it when I renewed in June and got it on writing on WhatsApp that if they do that this time, I can call and renegotiate the price. (Previously they'd said I couldn't)

I spent 4 hours trying to negotiate a better deal for my mum a few months ago and they kept saying no they cant price match £24 a month, the lowest was £32 for 100 mbps or 150 (cant remember which) and then putting me through to the next team re leaving. When we proceeded to end her contract they still didn't offer a good deal. Wasn't until the switchover process started that they called her and offered £17 a month but by that point she'd had enough and told him to speak to me as i help her with all that stuff. They'd not been the best when she first got it installed for her so she was happy to try elsewhere.

My sister complained the Internet isn't as good when she stays there to work but I told my mum she shouldn't be paying a higher amount just to get faster speeds to suit my sister and if sis is that bothered she can sort herself a dongle :D
 
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Virgin is one company where I record my renewal phone calls with them. Shouldn't have to do it but they have a habit of saying one thing on the phone and then sending something else through on the contract.

Would leave if we had any decent alternatives but instead have to do this nonsense each time.
 
I moved home and they didn't supply my new flat. I phoned them to close my account and they told me there would be a £25 "disconnection fee". I said it wasn't my fault that they didn't supply my new property and I wasn't paying it. Never heard from them again.
 
I wouldn't have accepted the same cost.
Its quite simple to get them to lower costs and upgrade your plan by going through to the retentions team.
 
imtoooldforthis said:
You should have done the leaving tactics, they automatically put you through to the 'please don't leave kind sir' hotline where they can magically offer you decent reductions on everything that the previous plebs weren't allowed to.
Click to expand...

That use to do my nut in. I was convinced they use to put the price up every few months :D

It was them or nothing else and while they’ve been awesome for decades and the best supplier with cityfibre on the go and wanting to build their customer base it was a no brainer for me to move.
 
I am finding that the leaving threat isn't working with house insurance, the last 2 years they just can't match (comparison sites) so I've ditched them
The phone I just did uSwitch 30gig £8.going through o2 directly was much more at the time
 
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When renewed with talk talk I threatened them with going to virgin (didn't want to as heard huge renewal cost)

Got talk talk 65 for 16 a month.
Bizarre. I've been with talk talk 7 years now as they always offer such a good retention deal.
 
I bought gig 1 from Virgin and they had engineer availablity 3 days after I booked according to their schedule. That date soon got postponed to 20 days later. When the engineer finally turned up, he said they received a directive the previous day not to give out any more Superhub 5 because of a national shortage, so I got a Superhub 4, which looks and behaves like a small dustbin. There's a good chance that it won't connect properly when you switch it on (no matter whether modem mode or not), and you get an extremely sporadic connection for as long as you leave the Superhub on. I have to keep restarting until I get what I paid for.
 
Undesirable said:
I bought gig 1 from Virgin and they had engineer availablity 3 days after I booked according to their schedule. That date soon got postponed to 20 days later. When the engineer finally turned up, he said they received a directive the previous day not to give out any more Superhub 5 because of a national shortage, so I got a Superhub 4, which looks and behaves like a small dustbin. There's a good chance that it won't connect properly when you switch it on (no matter whether modem mode or not), and you get an extremely sporadic connection for as long as you leave the Superhub on. I have to keep restarting until I get what I paid for.
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Sucks. I've had a Superhub 4 in modem mode for a year with no perceivable downtime.
I'm paying £62 for 1 gig, sounds like I could be doing better.
 
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