Virgin Media Retention thread

Keen_Saver

christie_m wrote: »

Keen_Saver

Have you served them your 30 days notice (i.e. followed the menu options on 150 that say "You want to leave Virgin")?

Depending on the package you're currently on, if you serve them notice to terminate you'll get a call from the Outbound Retentions Team that may save you more than a fiver. But you do need to serve notice to potentially access the deals on offer.

Make sure you read some of the other posts on this thread to get some tips and tricks to up your savings.

Best of luck.

Cheers, decided to go with Sky in end as were offering a good deal (£50 Quidco, £25 M&S Vouchers + 6 months free Broadband).

caz2003uk

christie_m wrote: »

Caz2003uk

If you're on cable Broadband with Virgin Media you don't need a MAC number to migrate to Sky ADSL - the services are radically different. (If you're on VM's ADSL product however, you will need a MAC number to transfer).

I know for a fact if you phone up VM and serve them your thirty days notice, you'll get a call from the outbound Retentions team offering you a better deal. To get a call from the outbound Retentions Team (they're different from the 150 team you speak to when you call up) you have to serve your thirty days notice. Other posters on here have explained exactly how to do it, but you need call VM on 150 and then follow the menu system to the option that says "You want to leave Virgin" (or something similar). Refuse the deal that the 150 call operator offers you, and insist on serving your 30 days notice....I reckon you'll get a call from the outbound team a few days later.

Make sure you've know the deals being offered by BT and Sky so you can barter with VM for a deal that suits you. Read the other posts on here to get some tips/ideas on what to look for.

Best of luck.

Thanks for your reply Christie!

I started my 30 day notice yesterday! I didn't have to refuse the deal offered cos I didn't get a deal! He told me there n then there is nothing he can offer and its upto me what I do! So I told him, I want my MAC code and Ill be leaving! I need the MAC code as unfortunately its ADSL here I wish it was cable, I wish I could have faster speeds, virgin have been giving me average 4mb download speeds! But constant problems, including one instance where I was on the phone for a duration of 10 hours over 3 days with their 'so called' tech support team, who even advised me to use google's servers to run my internet!! I was gobsmacked and made a complaint! Even now I have the router set up to search manually for the details and not automatically as if it searches automatically I have no connection!(The router was changed too to rule that out!)But I made sure that the address entered manually was virgins servers! Incompetent is the word for Virgin!

I will give them a while to offer me something but Im not holding my breath!

DrHackenbush

Hi everyone, great thread.
I have been with VM for about 6 years and by reading this thread realised I was paying way over the odds. Loyalty to VM seems to give you the worse deal.
I am on
10m BB( soon doubling)
M phone ( rarely use as I have good mobile deal)
L TV
Old V+ box.
Recently I had a fault on my router they changed that for Superhub but other than fixing the fault there seems to be no difference in its operation.
I pay £55.65 inc line rent.
I rang them a couple of times and they did not seem interested- first time offering same deal with £5 off and last time.
BB 10 m,
L TV, Tivo
M Phone
for £37.40.
I told them I was annoyed at the way they did business giving better deals to new customers and not rewarding loyalty (despite what another poster said when I first joined Virgin there was no special deal on offer) so I put 30 days notice in on 28th May.
I have just had a call from retentions this morning and first he offered me the same £37.40 deal and when I said I had already refused that he said I could have it for £28.40 with V hd box or £32.40 with Tivo for 12 month then that would increase by £5.00 after that. He also offered me the same deal without any TV services( I said I am considering just using freeview) for £17.90 rising to £22.90 after 12 months.
I told him I would have to think about it and he is going to ring me back later today.
Can anyone give me their thoughts on if I am likely to do any better . I would prefer not to change providers but will go to Primus or similar for BB and Phone and not bother with TV.
Thanks.

christie_m

DrHackenbush wrote: »

Hi everyone, great thread.
I have been with VM for about 6 years and by reading this thread realised I was paying way over the odds. Loyalty to VM seems to give you the worse deal.
I am on
10m BB( soon doubling)
M phone ( rarely use as I have good mobile deal)
L TV
Old V+ box.
Recently I had a fault on my router they changed that for Superhub but other than fixing the fault there seems to be no difference in its operation.
I pay £55.65 inc line rent.
I rang them a couple of times and they did not seem interested- first time offering same deal with £5 off and last time.
BB 10 m,
L TV, Tivo
M Phone
for £37.40.
I told them I was annoyed at the way they did business giving better deals to new customers and not rewarding loyalty (despite what another poster said when I first joined Virgin there was no special deal on offer) so I put 30 days notice in on 28th May.
I have just had a call from retentions this morning and first he offered me the same £37.40 deal and when I said I had already refused that he said I could have it for £28.40 with V hd box or £32.40 with Tivo for 12 month then that would increase by £5.00 after that. He also offered me the same deal without any TV services( I said I am considering just using freeview) for £17.90 rising to £22.90 after 12 months.
I told him I would have to think about it and he is going to ring me back later today.
Can anyone give me their thoughts on if I am likely to do any better . I would prefer not to change providers but will go to Primus or similar for BB and Phone and not bother with TV.
Thanks.

DrHackenbush

You need to do some research quickly into the bundle offers currently being touted by Sky and BT at the moment. You want to be able to quote back to the Virgin Retentions team these deals, as that indicates to them that you might actually be serious in leaving.

Does either of the deals that they've offered include phone line rental? If not, they don't look like being very attractive deals to me.

Ultimately you need to know what services are important to you, so you can tell them exactly what you want and stick to your guns in the negotiation.

A few folks have held out for better deals from VM during their 30 day notice period, and had a few calls offering different deals. You could play that strategy and see if they call you again. If you do, make sure you make a note of the 30 day notice period deadline so they don't cut your services off. If it's getting close to the deadline point, phone up 150 and cancel your notice...you can always serve notice again in a month or two.

boobbby

DrHackenbush wrote: »

Hi everyone, great thread.
I have been with VM for about 6 years and by reading this thread realised I was paying way over the odds. Loyalty to VM seems to give you the worse deal.
I am on
10m BB( soon doubling)
M phone ( rarely use as I have good mobile deal)
L TV
Old V+ box.
Recently I had a fault on my router they changed that for Superhub but other than fixing the fault there seems to be no difference in its operation.
I pay £55.65 inc line rent.
I rang them a couple of times and they did not seem interested- first time offering same deal with £5 off and last time.
BB 10 m,
L TV, Tivo
M Phone
for £37.40.
I told them I was annoyed at the way they did business giving better deals to new customers and not rewarding loyalty (despite what another poster said when I first joined Virgin there was no special deal on offer) so I put 30 days notice in on 28th May.
I have just had a call from retentions this morning and first he offered me the same £37.40 deal and when I said I had already refused that he said I could have it for £28.40 with V hd box or £32.40 with Tivo for 12 month then that would increase by £5.00 after that. He also offered me the same deal without any TV services( I said I am considering just using freeview) for £17.90 rising to £22.90 after 12 months.
I told him I would have to think about it and he is going to ring me back later today.
Can anyone give me their thoughts on if I am likely to do any better . I would prefer not to change providers but will go to Primus or similar for BB and Phone and not bother with TV.
Thanks.

Seems you only need the 10mb broadband which I also have and pay £15.50 a month. My BB was down for about 12 hours last week so after I complained they compensated me with £10. So always worth complaing if you lose your connection

christie_m

boobbby wrote: »

Seems you only need the 10mb broadband which I also have and pay £15.50 a month. My BB was down for about 12 hours last week so after I complained they compensated me with £10. So always worth complaing if you lose your connection

Boobbby

You're right - you can take only the BB service from VM.

However, if you can negotiate a decent bundled deal with them you can save even more when compared with taking services individually from BT and Sky. The bundled deal I'm on with VM means I don't have to pay Line Rental to BT. It saved me £25-30 per month overall by knocking some money off the BB price and reducing the Line Rental charge right down to a couple of quid per month.

DrHackenbush

christie_m wrote: »

DrHackenbush

You need to do some research quickly into the bundle offers currently being touted by Sky and BT at the moment. You want to be able to quote back to the Virgin Retentions team these deals, as that indicates to them that you might actually be serious in leaving.

Does either of the deals that they've offered include phone line rental? If not, they don't look like being very attractive deals to me.

Ultimately you need to know what services are important to you, so you can tell them exactly what you want and stick to your guns in the negotiation.

A few folks have held out for better deals from VM during their 30 day notice period, and had a few calls offering different deals. You could play that strategy and see if they call you again. If you do, make sure you make a note of the 30 day notice period deadline so they don't cut your services off. If it's getting close to the deadline point, phone up 150 and cancel your notice...you can always serve notice again in a month or two.

Thanks christie_m . yes the deals did include line rental. They did ring back and asked if I had decided to accept any of the offers and when I said no he said "Oh I made a mistake the deal for BB and phone was not £17.90 it was £15.90" and then he said he had made a mistake with the tv quote as well and that was £2 cheaper. I said I needed to discuss it with OH and wanted to check out other suppliers ( I quoted Primus working out cheaper but he said they could not match them- and he never mentioned that Primus was a limited BB). He then asked if it was ok to ring me back next week. To be honest I will probably just accept the BB and phone @ £15.90 as VM BB is very good, I would like Tivo and more channels but times are tough and I need to cut down on my outgoings.

DrHackenbush

boobbby wrote: »

Seems you only need the 10mb broadband which I also have and pay £15.50 a month. My BB was down for about 12 hours last week so after I complained they compensated me with £10. So always worth complaing if you lose your connection

Thanks boobbby, I will keep the phone as I get quite a few incoming calls. As I said in last post i will probably take the BB and phone offer as that seems a good deal with the BB doubling soon. I just wish I had sorted this out earlier. This thread proves it doesn't pay to sit back and do nothing.
Cheers,

christie_m

DrHackenbush wrote: »

Thanks christie_m . yes the deals did include line rental. They did ring back and asked if I had decided to accept any of the offers and when I said no he said "Oh I made a mistake the deal for BB and phone was not £17.90 it was £15.90" and then he said he had made a mistake with the tv quote as well and that was £2 cheaper. I said I needed to discuss it with OH and wanted to check out other suppliers ( I quoted Primus working out cheaper but he said they could not match them- and he never mentioned that Primus was a limited BB). He then asked if it was ok to ring me back next week. To be honest I will probably just accept the BB and phone @ £15.90 as VM BB is very good, I would like Tivo and more channels but times are tough and I need to cut down on my outgoings.

Good to see your stalling tactics have potentially saved some more cash on the monthly bill - well played

Given that the line rental IS bundled in, that BB and Phone deal starts to look attractive. Bear in mind that the line rental if you transferred to BT would be £13+ alone, before you added any services on top.

You can try and enhance the deal by squeezing out any additional services you might want for nowt (e.g. callerID), and some folks on here have managed to get their BB speed uprated as the final offer for a sign-up from VM.

Make sure you ask to see a copy of the contract details. VM were shirty about supplying the paperwork to me when I was negotiating, but it's worthwhile so you can challenge any problems with your bill, or to see if the line rental jumps after 12 months, or if you're being tied in for 18 months, etc.

Don't kick yourself for not sorting this out sooner....you've done it now which is more than many VM customers do!

caz2003uk

Im quite annoyed with virgin!

Is it standard procedure to give you your mac code, tell you that you have 30 days with that mac code, but if i decide not to leave that I don't need to do anything as everything will still run as normal if i don't pass the mac code on to anyone else.

anyway...I received a letter on Saturday saying sorry your leaving us and giving me a date in July where they will be coming to collect the modem! I've had no phone calls from outbound retentions and now this against their word of no cancellation unless I use the mac code....

confused.com!! Can anyone shed any light please?