Virgin Media Retention thread

pioneer

peter999 wrote:

Not sure I understand.
You're paying £19.95/month instead of £18/month, but have downgraded to 2Mb Broadband !!?? The discounts to mobile & international calls are useful as long as you use them (but only cost £1.50/month each anyway).

Bandwidth/speed upgrades are great as long as NTL/Virgin network can cope.
My area suffers from SEVERE Congestion at peak times, which you seem to suffer from if your speed is 500Kb/s regardless.

peter999

I get Talk 24 Unlimited, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Overseas for £1.95

As my deal is now a year old/expired/dead parrot and NTL are now VIRGIN I have had to downgrade 4MB to 2MB to get the £18pm price for Broadband.

A backward step, I know hence my comments on phoning in 3 months and things in the pipeline.

However on a positive note I tend to think that Broadband speeds are a bit of a rip off / illusion anyhow. Its a bit like having an expensive ferrari that can do 200mph but you always drive in conjestion along with all the old bangers at 20mph, and for the occasional little blast to 200 you are paying a premium. If you are having to pay a premium for it; why pay each month for all that bandwidth that you might use for 10secs occasionally.

The move to 2mb has made no noticable difference; and believe me I will let you know if it does. They wanted to up the £18 to £25 for 4MB BB so the difference really is in my Bank Account ! I will be watching this thread as usual to see what the others acheive; but remember in your negotiations biggest isn't always best.......Its what you do with it that counts.:rotfl:

Den1se

CharleneUK wrote:

I phoned up today to try and get a better deal for my nan, but the retentions lady was having none of it, repeatedly stating my nan was receiving an amazing discount of £8.50 already!! Well, not that great if you ask me, she has been with telewest for 10 years!!

I agree with a previous reply ring them back. My friend rang after I told her about the deal I got (XL TV, 10 meg BB & L phone = £42) she was basically offered nothing. She rang the next day & got XL TV, 4 meg BB & talk unlimited phone for £41). It does all depend on who you speak to.

Den1se

I must be 1 of the few people who are happy with Virgin/telewest. I have never had any problems with them & my BB speeds are always good (I have cable BB), don't watch Sky 1 etc but would be devestated if they took the discovery channels!!

I did consider changing to sky when the £26 deals came in but I have to say their customer service was appauling. First of all before paying for the BT phone line I wanted to know if I could actually get sky BB & what speed - NO ONE COULD TELL ME!!!!! They basically said I needed the BT line installed before they could actually tell me. I had read somewhere that Sky BB didn't support VPN and as I work from home quite a bit I need this so I emailled them 3 times - never got a reply, asked a guy on a sky stand outside ASDA - he didn't have a clue what I was talking about, rang the sky BB dept and the person I spoke to didn't know as he had never been asked and was very reluctant to find out for me. Considering this was for a potental customer I was less than impressed. I then rang Virgin posing as a potential customer & asked the same BB questions - what a difference. The guy I spoke too didn't know but without me asking he sought advice from a more knowledgable colleague and within 2 mins my questions were answered.

I am sticking with Virgin Media thats for sure

foxyuk

anyone know about this deal???

L BB, XL TV, XL Phone Total £23.25 per month)

To get the best discounts you must go through to the cancellation department. Sales can not price match or offer additional discounts

Once you get through Quote "loss of sky & Vodafone deal (8mb BB, Line rental & Unlimited Talk anytime £25 Month).

C_Ronaldo

CharleneUK wrote:

I phoned up today to try and get a better deal for my nan, but the retentions lady was having none of it, repeatedly stating my nan was receiving an amazing discount of £8.50 already!! Well, not that great if you ask me, she has been with telewest for 10 years!!

try rinigng up again

WindowLicker76

I'm currently paying full whack for my 10meg Broadband at the moment(£34.99), obviosly thats way too much in comparison to what others are getting and what other providers are offering (Im guessing).
So what should I be looking for, all I have at the moment is broadband, Ive looked at most of this thread and it seems to be mainly about 'packages'.

What should I say to the retentions lady/man person when I eventually[/i] get through? (I hate talking on the phone and would like to be prepared before i speak ) Threaten to leave? Should I quote what other providers are offering? I wouldnt mind going down to 4 meg to be honest as well as Im not getting 10 meg speeds and 4meg by the sounds of it is going to 8meg soon anyway and that is more than enough for me.

Anyway thanks for reading and any help would be much appreciated!

Skint1

Hi Windowlicker
Yes threaten to leave push your luck as far as you can .
I have TV Large, 2 Mb BB, Skysports1,2,3 And extra I pay £48 a month. I'm also thinking about threatening to leave them again because they lost some of the Sky channels to see if I can get more off.

Also have phone with them but I use Voip.

Sponge

I was on 3 for £30 and paying between £10 and £20 pm for call charges. I also had free caller ID.

I've just got off the phone with Virgin and it was somewhat of a battle. They seemed very reluctant to negotiate. I have a feeling it's due to to volume of calls they're getting from people seeking offers.

The CSR told us Virgin are still negotiating with Sky over the next 30 days and then will consider legal action. (Sounds fishy to me.) So he advised us to wait before cancelling any services.

I mentioned other Sky/BT packages and he went into his speech about distance from exchanges, etc. Even after telling him I'm only 400 metres away (I've checked), he still quoted the competition is only 'up to ...' He seemed to forget all Virgin's quoted speeds are 'up to ...' as well. (We used to be on 10mb, but it was slower than 4mb, so we dropped it.)

He then tried to put me off cancelling the TV saying phone and broadband would be £29. I asked about 2 for £20, but he said this was only for new customers and existing customers taking out a new service. (I seem to remember being told this when I asked for 3 for £30, but it didn't stop them doing it when I pushed them.)

He offered an upgrade to the TV package, but what good is this if Sky One still isn't there? (We were primarily arguing this point.) We asked him to upgrade the phone instead. All he would offer was Talk Unlimited for an extra £5.50 pm.

There was a lot of chat on both sides, confirming details, etc, then we pushed a little more...

I asked for an upgrade to the broadband, which he agreed to for one month (woop-dee-doo!), free. But it will revert to 2mb at the end.

He's left the TV service going, but refunded us for this month while we await news on Sky v Virgin.

So all in, we got:

One month free upgrade from 2mb to 4mb
One month free TV.
Talk unlimited for £5.50 (no time limit mentioned)

I'm not very happy with the deal, especially with some of the deals others have got. I think another call in a few days is in order. No matter what, I'll be calling back before the month is out.

I'm really tempted to tell them to shove the whole lot. My Post Code is good for up to 24mb broadband with 'BE'. I could move to Freeview, use VOIP for my phone and I'd be happy. But I'm not sure I'd better financially any better off (probably worse), plus we don't appear to have a BT phone line and they want £125 to install a new line!

CharleneUK

I called back today and spoke to a lovely lady who was explaining the latest with Sky.

She went off and tried to get my nan a deal but explained all the best deals were for customers with broadband

I did ask if they could waive the £5 non direct debit fee which she did, so on top of the £8.50 my nan currently gets, that's £13.50 all together which isn't half bad!! Hoped she'd throw in talk unlimited but didn't want to push it too much.

peter999

Sponge wrote: »

I was on 3 for £30 and paying between £10 and £20 pm for call charges. I also had free caller ID.

I've just got off the phone with Virgin and it was somewhat of a battle. They seemed very reluctant to negotiate. I have a feeling it's due to to volume of calls they're getting from people seeking offers.....

I'm not very happy with the deal, especially with some of the deals others have got. I think another call in a few days is in order. No matter what, I'll be calling back before the month is out.

I think they are probably tightening up on giving out the deals people got earlier before they lost the Sky channels & so many more people started complaining/asking for reductions. Some people have got amazing throw away deals before things kicked off with Sky.

I got my deal soon after NTL was rebranded as Virgin Media on 8th Feb.
This was before Virgin kicked off with Sky & they lost the Sky channels in last week.

Bingo: £16.50/month discount on NTL/Virgin Media
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=372436

Although I now think I could have done better:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=4446971#post4446971

peter999