Virgin Media Retention thread

cashless_2

I have 1 MB broadband, no telephone, no TV. Called Customer Services (not retentions) yesterday and asked for another 6 months @ £9.99 (normally £17.99) or I would leave. After a few seconds on hold I was given what I asked for. Another £48 in the bag.

rumpole69

Following advice from the forums and a recent money programme broadband segment, I have saved about £25 a month.

I rang NTL, explained costs were too high and that I would leave to save money. I paid around £81 a month and connected to the highest broadband. I will now pay £56 for the next ONE to THREE years or so. Unless of course the price is LOWERED again. I receive all packages except sport.

I receive broadband through a cable box as my exchange is only about 80% effective if changed to a landline provider. I have both an NTL and BT line although I do not use the NTL line. I also pay for calls through another provider who is cheaper and the minimum connection charge is a couple of pence cheaper per call also.

It would be worth ringing NTL again in three or four months time.
:j

Lady_K

Cashless what argument did you give? I have all 3 services but my daughter has just the broadband at her student house and we want to be prepared for when shes out of her first 12 months to try and get hers down, they are charging her the £17.99 at the moment

cashless_2

Lady_K wrote:

Cashless what argument did you give? I have all 3 services but my daughter has just the broadband at her student house and we want to be prepared for when shes out of her first 12 months to try and get hers down, they are charging her the £17.99 at the moment

When I rang for the first time back in Feb I said that I was phoning to cancel and quoted the Tiscali offer of £14.99 (then for 1mb). They then offered me 6 months at £9.99 to stay. They told me to phone back when the offer ended. I did so a few days ago and said that they told me to ring back to renew the offer. No problem, they reinstated it for another six months.

Lady_K

We asked about that and they said you need a phoneline for the tiscali offer but I guess she could say shes on bt if they question it or they may say swap the phone to ntl but i suppose its who you speak to but she will give it a try anyway when shes ouit of contract

bbb_uk

Lady_K wrote:

Cashless what argument did you give? I have all 3 services but my daughter has just the broadband at her student house and we want to be prepared for when shes out of her first 12 months to try and get hers down, they are charging her the £17.99 at the moment

I have just got our broadband down to £10 per month for the next 6months for exactly the same speed (2mb) although they did try and offer 512k for £10 but I said I couldn't go down to that speed now that I'm used to 2mb. I did this by stating that I can choose numberous other suppliers like Sky, TalkTalk, etc.

Our landline is with BT which increases our choice of broadband providers and also TW/NTL know that our choice is greater. For those with their linerental, etc with TW/NTL, then unless you move to BT then your choice is limited to NTL/TW and they (in most cases) will realise this.

Like you said, you could threaten to move linerental, etc from them but have the competitors prices to hand.

Also, don't go through normal customer services - instead choose the option to Cancel a service from the menus because you then get someone from their retentions department (it may not be referred to as retentions though) but they have more power than those ordinary customer service representatives.

bj-sailaway

I'd like to cut my Broadband costs, we pay £17.99 a month, no idea what MB that is for! We only use e-mail.

If I swap supplier, what happens about the cable to my computer, do I have to have a new cable? Ours comes in from the front of the house and runs under the floorboards then is embedded in the plaster on the walls, as we were decorating when it was installed. The PC isn't too near our phone line either, so that could be a bit tricky.

Any suggestions on how to swap, or what to say to Telewest to get them to cut the cost would be great.

I rang Telewest a while ago and they basically said tough, we offer far better service than any of the other offers around. I must say, we have never had any trouble with our broadband, and if things start going wrong my hubby would go mad!

cashless_2

I do have a BT phone line. If you don't have one you don't have an option but to use NTL. I suppose you could lie about having a BT line.

cashless_2

bj-sailaway wrote:

I'd like to cut my Broadband costs, we pay £17.99 a month, no idea what MB that is for! We only use e-mail.

MB stands for Mega Byte. It just means the amount of information that can be carried by your internet connection every second. 1MB broadband should really be called 1MB/s broadband.

cashless_2

bj-sailaway wrote:

If I swap supplier, what happens about the cable to my computer, do I have to have a new cable? Ours comes in from the front of the house and runs under the floorboards then is embedded in the plaster on the walls, as we were decorating when it was installed. The PC isn't too near our phone line either, so that could be a bit tricky.

If you swap to another (non-cable) supplier you will need to connect a modem to your phone line (must be a BT or other non-cable line). To get round the wiring problem you could connect a wireless router (by cable) to the phone line and connect this wirelessly to your computer. Many broadband providers now offer cheap wireless packages.

This would also help to protect your PC from viruses etc and allow you to share your connection with new PCs in future.