Virgin Media: Haggle down your costs.

russellc_2

OK, here's some tips ...

Visit https://www.talktalk.co.uk and get the tarriff up. You need to be able to quote the details. Also, get your NTL customer account

Go to https://www.ntl.com and look at the new customer links. Make a note of the 0800 number as NTL now charge you for customer services! Call this number and work your way through the options.

Ask for Customer Services. Explain to them that you have seen the talk talk offer and want to speak to Customer Retention to see if they can offer you anything to make you stay.

Quote the talk talk £21 for 8 megs, line rental and unlimited land line calls offer to Customer Retention. They will tell you some stories about TalkTalk being investigated and they might put their prices up after three months and the contract was for 18 months and you had to pay £70 to leave. To counter this, point out that you are spending £50 a month and after 3 months you would have saved £90, so even if they did this, you could cancel and still have £20 - so you will go ahead if you don;t get a better deal as £20 is always worth having.

I was offered for £19.49 an upgrade from 1 meg to 10 meg and line rental and unlimited calls to landlines 24 hours a day. This offer is valid for 3 months, but they will extend it after 3 months. Some excuse about waiting to see if the talktalk price bundling is actually legal as OFCOM are investigating and they want to see the outcome.

I currently use SKYPE and https://www.1899.com for mobile and international calls - so those aspects were catered for anyway. 1899 is worth doing as there's no monthly.

Now the next issue I discovered was, because I have a Terayon modem TJ210 which is a few years old, it couldn't support 10megs - only 4 megs. Back on the phone to customer services, then back to customer retention. Dear sirs - you have upgraded me to 10megs to stop me leaving and your modem won't even run at half that speed. Ohh Mr Customer you will have to buy a new modem. That's insane - you need to send me a free modem. Blah Blah - alright - we will give you a £50 credit on your account and then sell you a modem. Whatever! So I now have a new modem too. The other option if your modem is damaged - for example if the cable plug is cracked/loose etc is to call customer services and they will send you out a replacement.

Hope this helps ...

Duncan_Millard

Incredible - I just went through to the customer services department via the 0800 number, told them that I was thinking of switching to Talk Talk.

For the previous 3 months I'd been on £11/mo line rental and half price broadband (£12.49 after discount) after ringing up for a better deal.

This time the woman was very curt and saying she couldn't give me _any_ discount at all since I'd already had one, and I ended up with an agreed disconnection date in 30 days time!

The best "deal" she would offer me was a £32.99 'value' pack for 4 meg broadband and evening and weekend calls... Atrocious considering that's £11 with talk talk for the first 3 months and £15 after those first 3 months.

I've successfully bartered all sorts of deals from sky et al, and this is the first time I've ever had my 'bluff' called. But to be honest I'm quite happy to leave to go to Talk Talk if that's the best NTL can do for me! :eek:

Lady_K

Anyone know the talk talk number or bt numbers?

I'm phoning to ask about moving over to them after NTL have screwed up my offer deal they gave me on 22nd last month I've recieved my bills full price and all call chages yet I should have been put on talk unlimited 24 and a package for all for £20.49. I want to move now I just dont like being decieved

Heinz

BT is 0800 800 150 - but don't tell them you won't be using them for many calls!

Duncan_Millard

OK an update to my post above (quoted below) - I wasn't happy with the disconnection so rang back again on the 0800 number for new customers and explained what had happened. The guy said "You should have been offered a price match, I'll put you through to retentions". Ended up at the same department, said I was disappointed not to get offered a deal and that the guy I spoke to said I should get a price match.

So the woman said "Oh - well would you like half price broadband for another 3 months?" - I said "Well... I see that TT let you have unlimited calls too for £20 total" and without any further prompting she said "OK Well I can give you talk unlimited 24 free for 3 months too". She also cancelled my disconnection ;-)

So I guess the first lady I spoke to wasn't too well trained but after the call I ended up with:

Line Rental: £11
Talk Unlimited 24: Free (3 months)
4 meg BB: £12.49 (3 months)

Sounds good to me.

Interestingly, she said they only had a limited number of each offer that they can give away, and she currently didn't have any 6 or 12 months free for talk unlimited or she'd have offered me that!

RESULT :T

Duncan_Millard wrote:

The best "deal" she would offer me was a £32.99 'value' pack for 4 meg broadband and evening and weekend calls... Atrocious considering that's £11 with talk talk for the first 3 months and £15 after those first 3 months.

Lady_K

I'm ringing them back again too even though they said give them 24 hours. I dont see why they need 24 hours. I'm waiting on the retentions line again as he said he can see that they did offer me that so its them I need to talk to to get it sorted out.

I cant wait 24 hours, they may not ring back anyway so I just want to know what they are going to do if anything and if they don't do anything I'm putting my 30 days cancellation in and then in the mean time look for bb and phone suitable for me elsewhere and just use my sky downstairs to link upstairs rather than keep the ntl tv up there

Its a long waiting time

Lady_K

An absolute dissaster. I called back and asked for the girl by name. After a lot of faffing about she did come through to me.

I cant tell you how bad it was. Basically I had been told by disconnections that she hadnt broken the offer down into tel, bb and tv, but just put the total £20.49 without the breakdown the offer cant be put on. I asked her how she had worked it out and her answer was 'I cant remember I take about 60 calls a day why should I rem what deals I give out' but surely a change to an account should be put down clearly so you get billed properly and avoid the problem I have now. All mine are on separate bills so even more so.

It was horrendous after that. She didnt know why my broadband had been billed as full price and she told me that talk 24 had definitely been put on but I knew it hadnt and pressed her to recheck and she said 'how many times do I have to tell you!' and 'I am trying to keep my temper here and not get angry with you!' I was actually shocked by her attitude. I was just asking politely questions I should know about my account. Obviously I'm going to be concerned when the offer hasnt gone through I just wanted the details. After trying to convince her again that talk 24 wasnt on and to please check again I thought she was going to expode but then she said 'Oh yes, no it hasnt been put on... I don't know why' no apology or anything. She said there is an IT problem on my account and its being looked into so she cant do anything till thats sorted. I said ok when will that be and does this mean I lose the offer? disconnections had said I would not lose the offer but she had to put the breakdown on my account though. She went barmy saying she couldnt rem how it was worked out so the only thing she can do is set another offer. I said please don't do that then till tomorrow because I dont want to lose the offer you gave me but she just went ahead and wiped it off!!! I just think she wanted it wiped off as soon as possible because she had got herself into a mess and wanted it off my account. She has now done me a differnt offer and I'm not happy.

£11.00 TV fam pack for 2 months (that has now gone up, the offer was £9.75 per month for 6 months)

£9.99 Broadband for 2 months (The offer was supposed to have been free for 3 months to match talk talk then call back to extend)

Phone £3.00 for 2 months (offer before was 3 months, I really dont understand this total but suspect its another error from her)

And talk 24 is still not on

That comes to £23.99 before was £20.49 and longer but I'm not happy as the way shes done it now wont make it easy for a follow on when they have ended

I've been billed for all my calls and full price broadband

Heinz

As they say, "I refer my honourable friend to the reply I gave earlier" (Post #305).

Lady_K

Thanx I'll see what BT and Talk Talk say coz to be honest its got to today and I'm supposed to ring the same girl this morning to see what she has done now the IT error should be fixed but I just cant face talking to her its that bad.

When I rang customer services to see if they could see whats happened to my account last night to try and explain things to me more clearly they couldnt believe the mess of the account. I don't know if shes put me on talk24 now or got any offers on but I just dont want to talk to her today and I'll just take the risk for now till I can face it. Its been the worst customer services experience I've ever had, really. But I do know that she is definitely one on her own and a bif mistake on NTLs part and I'd be amazed if they havent had huge lots of complaints about her before. I havent complained about her yet but I was going to see what the deal she was going to come up with would be first

In the meantime I'll get some approx times from bt for change over.

mopezone

OK I'm with Telewest and have phone (£11pm) 10mb broadband (£35pm) and Supreme TV with Sky Sports add on (£39pm)
I got through to their disconnections team via the automated system, and spent about 10 mins bantering the woman.
In the end I got a monthly reduction of £8-50 on the total package, which isn't bad I suppose - £102 over the year for 10 mins work!
The reduction applies immediately and is guaranteed for a year.
She was very dismissive of Talk Talk, saying that they only gave 'up to' 8mb broadband, more often 512k, and that Telewest guaranteed 10mb, which was why the subscription was higher; she also seemed to have quite a lot of information about competitors speeds and costs, which I'm afraid I didn't, so probably lost out there!
My advice would be 'do your homework before phoning them' to get maximum effect (and money!)
I certainly wish I had, even though I did get a reasonable result!