Virgin Media Retention thread

jem16

haveagoade wrote: »

Therfore broadband deals which do not require conventional landlines are particularly attractive to me.

You missed my point.

I don't use my Virgin phone line - I only keep it as it gives me a better BB deal.

I also have a BT phone line at £11.54pm plus 6Mb O2 BB for £7.50pm ( as I have an O2 mobile) - total £19.04. from March you can get O2 home phone and 8Mb BB for £17.

So even with a phone and not using it you can get same/better deals than you currently pay for 2Mb.

Jem16........£11.45pm including an XL phone.....seems good to me, surely this is not achievable for most customers, you have to have a substantial leverage to get that!!!!

I merely cancelled my BB and phone - they chased me. I have no idea if being a customer of 13 years helped or not. I was quite prepared to leave and had done my homework.

Scrounger

I have VM cable 10Mb BB only and gave notice to cancel about two weeks' ago (because of the cost has steadily increased to over £20/month). During that call they offered to reduce it to £18/month but I refused this at it was still too expensive. I mentioned about the BT/O2/Quidco deal but they wouldn't budge from the £18/month so I arranged to cancel. They said that they would want their modem back and, sure enough, about a week ago they sent a pre-paid bag in which to return it so I thought that was the end.

I already have a BT (unbundled) line and an O2 PUFFL contract so was intending to migrate to the O2 basic deal through Quidco. I was already thinking about where to site the adsl modem as my BT NTE5 master is quite a way from my office and I have loads of wired BT secondary sockets which maybe would impact on the speed if I wasn't careful. I've been reading up on BT accelerators, i-plates and disconnecting the ringing wire on pin 3 etc in readiness for the changes.:eek:

Anyway, tonight retentions call me back and offer me £15/month to which I again refuse stating that I can only afford to pay £10;
"We can only go down to £11 a month sir"
"No, it has to be £10"
slight pause....
"OK, then, we'll do it for £10, you'll see a discount on your monthly bill"
"How long will the discount last for?"
"12 months sir"
A this point I agreed to the deal (though I am still feeling slightly uneasy in that I could have done the BT/O2/Quidco deal for nothing for the year!). However, I have no problems with my current Virgin internet service, the speeds are what they should be and I am happy with it.

So there you have it: don't pay more than £10/month for your Virgin cable 10Mb BB -that's my advice.:beer:

Scrounger

jem16

Scrounger wrote: »

A this point I agreed to the deal (though I am still feeling slightly uneasy in that I could have done the BT/O2/Quidco deal for nothing for the year!).

Much the same as me.

I decided to go ahead with O2 just after the new year when they brought back the free months and Quidco was at £75. Total cost £0. I wanted to see how it would work in practice - would I get the quoted speeds etc. I also have extensions which I knew would cause problems. I also have Sky multiroom and they were connected to my Virgin line so needed to change them over.

Anyway first go with O2 saw me with 3.7Mb sync speed. Put into the master socket gave me 5.7Mb so I knew it was the wiring. The I found out my extension socket wasn't wired correctly and it worked until I attached a micro filter then it didn't so I had to sort that. After that I removed the bell wire as recommended. This saw me jump to 5.7Mb on my extension so all well and good.

Over the first week and after a resync speed rose to around 6.4Mb and I was getting speed tests of around 5.5Mb so I was happy with that. Last weekend saw problems with around 5 disconnections over 36 hours. I changed the wirelsss settings to a specific channel on Monday and it's been fine since.

Last Monday I cancelled - as with you wasn't offered anything less than £18 for 10Mb BB. Since Wednesday they have been phoning me. Finally agreed a deal last night which works out at £11.45 but includes the XL phone.

I thought I may as well keep both Virgin and O2 and run them side by side for the year - will give me a better picture for a decision next year. I was happy to go with the phone with the daytime calls as my BT line doesn't have this. Plus it also gives me a chance to check all is well with the Sky boxes on the BT line as they can be notorious for noise.

Scrounger

Thanks for the update jem16.

jem16 wrote: »

I don't use my Virgin phone line - I only keep it as it gives me a better BB deal - total £11.45

I also have a BT phone line (at £11.54pm plus 6Mb O2 BB for £7.50pm) - total £19.04

I also have Sky multiroom ..... - more £££

My, you have the lot (including two BB internet services and two phone lines) !!!

I am curious why you just didn't go for Sky BB over BT instead of O2 (I thought it was either free or an extra £5/month)?

Also, how are you finding O2 BB compared to VM? Can you tell much difference?

Scrounger

jem16

Scrounger wrote: »

Thanks for the update jem16.



My, you have the lot (including two BB internet services and two phone lines) !!!

Does seem a lttle daft doesn't it?

Basically I kept my Virgin phone which I had from way back in the days of free NTL dial up and I didn't have a BT line. Over the years NTL/Virgin phone prices went up and up and I reverted back to BT for my phone. Although I never used the Virgin phone I kept it on as the price with the phone and without the phone never varied by much more than £1. For about a year I also got free daytime calls from Virgin as part of a matching deal with TalkTalk.

I am curious why you just didn't go for Sky BB over BT instead of O2 (I thought it was either free or an extra £5/month)?

2 reasons;

1. Sky could only give me around 4Mb and O2 could give me almost 7Mb as O2 use ADSL2+

2. To get the reduced price with Sky you had to take Sky Talk. Sky Talk now prohibit the use of low cost carriers such as Call1899, Call 18185 and even the hop back to BT for their inclusive 0845/0870 at the weekend and to allow me to make at least 2 calls with BT to keep Caller Display free. Without Sky Talk the packages would cost £5 for 2Mb and £10 for 8Mb.

Also, how are you finding O2 BB compared to VM? Can you tell much difference?

For what I mainly use it for these days which is browsing and emailing I can't tell any difference and I had the 20Mb BB with Virgin.

ADSL has been a new experience for me and I'm learning that the time of connection is important to the speed. At one point my sync speed had dropped to 4.9Mb because of frequent disconnections so I wasn't happy with that. It is now back to 5.7Mb and stable for over 4 days so I'm hoping it will stay that way. With Virgin it didn't matter if it dropped or when it reconnected - not that I had many problems with that happening. I will resync the O2 router at the best time and hopefully should get it back to over 6Mb. So far I would say I was happy with O2 BB.

I am now on Virgin 10MB although I haven't changed my PC back to using it yet so haven't tested it yet. I need to see how this compares.

dominiquereynolds

Peter_L wrote: »

If it helps anybody - latest call to retentions got me for £39 pm:-

Phone line rental (don't use phone much if at all !)
Large TV
50MB Broadband
Free new modem
Free 'N' router & USB dongle

Did they give you a price on Phone XL?

lacla1966

Currently paying

• Line Rental £11.00
• Additional Line £11.00
• Talk Unlimited £ 7.95
• -Phone & BB Bundle Saving -£ 8.00
• Call Divert/Display/Wait £ 3.50
• Broadband XL £37.00
• -BB XL for Price of BB L Bonus -£12.00

Then any call charges to 0870 or 0845 numbers I can't find an alternative number for means usually paying about £55 a month. :mad:

Have Sky+ and DON'T want to change to Virgin TV

Been on this "contract" since April 2007 with no change

I COULD get rid of one of the lines at a push (hubbys business dictates)

I'm afraid to call retentions incase they tell me to go to BT - I don't really want to go to BT as happy with Virgin service, BUT NOT their charges

What's best option/strategy?

Thanks in advance

hothothot_3

Hi, was paying 2 for £25 with VM......... this was BB [L {10mb}] and phone [M]

Called up to cancel, and was offered same package, for £20 [£5pm saving]

which seemed quite good because it amounts to the same that a new customer would get, but I obviously dont have to pay installation charges.

Still, I hardly use the phone and only want the internet, how difficult can that be. 2 years back, I had BB for £10 per month, on its own, and quite happy....so I know it should be possible, but they have this fetish that they want everyone to have their phone line too.@ £11 per month.

Said im just going to cancel and wait for a BT free installation offer, then go with 02 BB.

and that was that, disconnected in a month.

jem16

hothothot wrote: »

and that was that, disconnected in a month.

Wait for the phone calls to tempt you back.

I cancelled on a Monday - Wednesday they started phoning. Friday I agreed a deal of 10Mb BB, XL phone for £11.45pm.

That said I would still choose BT/O2 as my Virgin 10Mb BB slows down to around 2Mb in the evening. My O2 BB stays constant at 5.3Mb.

Scrounger

hothothot wrote: »

Said im just going to cancel and wait for a BT free installation offer, then go with 02 BB.

Good move!

hothothot wrote: »

... and that was that, disconnected in a month.

They'll be back on the phone to you before the month is up begging for you to stay. If you do want to stay then just have a monthly figure in mind and stick to it.:rotfl:

I doubt if you'll manage to negotiate BB and phone line for £10 though (but no harm in trying).

Let us know how you get on.

Scrounger