Virgin Media Retention thread

visidigi

I was due to upgrade to tivo today with VM - and enter into new contracts of 18/12 months - I've decided not to go there right now, instead I am going to wait a little while and see what comes of it - I see a pile of on demand has hit VM, including Sky Anytime - but its all recordings and not enough live - especially not enough live HD - VM are streets behind on this and its only getting worse.

Someone needs to do something about Sky holding back channels - only giving two sports channels in HD is an absolute farce when viewers are paying £40 a month for it...

craigm0408

chrissyxx wrote: »

Craig, I got my call about 4 days after cancelling, not that they tried very hard to 'retain' me! I agree with you about the inconsistencies with deals. My bills are about the same as yours, around the £80-£90 mark (and I only have one basic Virgin box, no V+, or HD!) My Virgin mobile bill averages about £25 too, so thats quite a hefty sum they get out of me each month. I just cant see the logic in them apparently being happy to lose customers generating that sort of money and yet offer hefty discounts to customers on far smaller tariffs and to new customers. That doesnt seem to make much business sense to me! I think my main gripe is the broadband cost. I'm on the smallest Broadband package, and pay £21-25 a month. New customers pay £6-75 for 6 months, Sky Unlimited is £7-50. I'm beginning to get really cross now..maybe this is a good time to ring them again! I did wonder about sending a strongly worded letter, anyone tried that?

Chrissy
Thanks for your response
Having found the Retentions Team number on this forum and doing 1471 I have now discovered that they are calling me - though they are doing so in the middle of the day when i'm at work so i might not ever speak to them anyway!

When i was giving my 30 days notice I quoted the half price deals on offers to new customers as I had received a flyer for this literally days before, but I was told that based on the discounts I have (news to me) and the £7 further discount I was offered on offer my bills would be the same as if i were a new half price customer.
Which is rubbish because the figure I was then quoted month to month was high £80's and when i joined Virign last year on a similar half price deal my bills were around the £60 mark.

I suppose in a sense there is little to complain about as we signed contracts we were happy with and have received the service we paid for.
That said, it is becoming increasingly frustrating to see on forums such as these that people are getting great deals when some others such as Chrissy and myself are left hanging.
I would simply like the same effort to be put into retaining my custom that is into attracting new customers.

visidigi

be careful - all those on the 20-40 quid a month do not have sky sports or movies - that instantly adds around £25 to a deal, £32+ if you have it in HD.

Thats why your offerings are not the same - i am in the same boat as you...

spud17

If everyone keeps cancelling their cancellations, it's fairly obvious that Virgin are going to wise up and call your bluff.

The retention offers do vary through the month, exactly the same as supermarket deals. Also I suspect that at times the VM bosses will allow flexibility for some retention deals to stimulate demand for certain services.

I cancelled, they rang back offered me the same deal some days later, I left.

chrissyxx

visidigi wrote: »

be careful - all those on the 20-40 quid a month do not have sky sports or movies - that instantly adds around £25 to a deal, £32+ if you have it in HD.

Thats why your offerings are not the same - i am in the same boat as you...

I have actually taken the cost of Skysports into consideration when comparing deals, and I do realise thats why my monthly cost is higher than some. I'm not a greedy person, I would just like some recognition for being a loyal and long standing ( reasonably high spending) customer. I notice that some people are being offered v+ boxes, additional boxes, routers etc , and often in conjuction with a reduction in their monthly bills. I queried the fact that my tariff says I have an HD box..I dont... I mentioned that my daughter has to buy a pay as you go dongle to use her laptop, and that my broadband costs 4 times that of a new customer. All I got in response was ' I sympathise with you'.. all I guess I want is some consistency with the deals they offer.

Anon

Virgin billing is set up to confuse - there seems to be an inflated rrp and then any price you see is "discounted" (using the term loosely). So L bb rrp on its own is, if I recall, £25. New customers pay £16 for 3 months, then £21. You would therefore assume £21 is the rrp and appear as such on a bill - from memory, it doesn't, it appears as £25 with a £4 loyalty discount (may he called something different. As a result, it is very difficult to compare prices as old and new customers/old and new deals as you think you have, for example, a £7 loyalty discount which would mean £14 for L BB (£21 advertised minus £7) but get offered £18 (£25-£7 loyalty). It gets more complicated with larger packages but the same principle.

It also means that when prices go up, they still affect you as the top price goes up and they can claim your discount has remained the same (sometimes they msg increase the discount to offset the rise).

That said, some people do appear to hit lucky with getting a member of staff offering a fantastic deal and others get told there aren't any deals available (and both staff are probably being honest from what they are being told on their computer screens).

Anon

lestergun

...with it.

12 month contract for all.

20MB Broadband
XL TV with V+
XL Phone
250 minutes of international calls

£46.55 per month

Thanks

Lester

Grumpyswife

I am a Virgin Media National Customer in Milton Keynes.

The unusual thing about Milton Keynes is that at one time a local by law dictated that you couldn't have a TV aerial (which included satellite dishes as well, but no-one took much notice of this). Consequently we had an analogue cable TV service originally owned by BT, that Virgin Media later bought. It's not being upgraded to digital, and no other cable service operates in this area. So whatever broadband service we have, it has to be through our BT line.

They tried to put us on the M, L, XL etc. type deal, but our max broadband speed at best is 1MB and is really unreliable. We are about 6 miles from the exchange. For this reason I rang them and said I wasn't prepared to pay all that money for a rubbish service. I've ended up with unlimited (up to 8MB, actually 1MB) broadband and anytime phone calls for £12.50 per month. Every 12 months I ring them up again and they agree to extend this for another 12 months.

Problem I have now is, BT have launched their Infinity Broadband, but do I trust their claims that I will get 30MB download speeds? My experiences of BT previously have been mixed. I don't want to sign up to a 18 month contract and not get anything like the speed promised, especially seeing as it will cost me more.

Anybody else have expeience of this?

Nessa56

Hi all

I called Virgin last night to close my account as I don't really watch the television and it was all too expensive at £40.00

I thought I might go over to talk talk for £20.00 a month although I would have had to pay £50.00 for connection as I only have the Virgin in my flat.

Anyhooooo the nice lady has given me the telephone and broadband for £21.40 incl VAT for 12 month contract so I a happy bunny today, saving myself nearly £20.00 per month which can go against a credit card bill :money:

v
x

visidigi

check your contract - phone contracts are usually 18 months, not 12, they may have done the offer for twelve months but tied you into 18 months.