Virgin Media: Haggle down your costs.

dominiquereynolds

In may last year I phoned for a better deal and got:
Line Rental
10mb Broadband
Talk 24

for £30.99 a month. The billing got messey as the manual credit was not being added every month. It took 2 phone calls and a letter to get billing sorted. I got the whole years saving credited to my account.

Both sky and Talk Talk, with their broadband, offer free internationl calls (limited countries) for a slight extra charge.

This would make Sky £21 (Bt Rental £11, 8mb BB £5, Sky Talk Unlimited £5)
TalkTalk £ 20.99 (BT Rental £11, 8mb BB £0, Talk 3 Interna £9.99)

Of course you need to have a Sky package (they also do a 16mb BB for £10).

I will be needing free calls to Spain and France. HAs any one got Virginmedia/NTL to give unlimited foreign europe/usa/aussie calls

Thanks

Dom

crispy2_2

My NTL contract had been, for some time:

• Broadband 2MB
• Phone M

Total of £29 pm, with all landline calls going via a bypass number.

I just phoned, on the 150 number, at around 7:30pm. I followed the 'I want to leave Virgin' menu options:

Customer Services: "How can I help you?"
Me: "I have the Phone and Broadband service. I pay £31 a month. I've been really happy with NTL, but other companies are more competitive. I was wondering if you had any better deals."
Customer Services: "What other deals have you seen?"
Me: "Talk Talk offers Phone, Unlimited Calls, and Broadband for £20. Sky offer similar"
Customer Services: "You know that Sky require you to have TV service. What speed broadband are TalkTalk offering?"
Me: "8MB"
Customer Service: "That's up to 8MB. Checks Something Did you know they do not offer service in your area?"
Me: Cross fingers "No, I didn't realise that"
Customer Services: "I don't think either of those services would really work for you. Besides, they aren't competitive any more. We have much better deals now."
Customer Services: "Starts talking me through his £19.95 deal that he is going to offer me"

So, despite Talk Talk and Sky not really competing for my custom, I now have:

• Broadband 2MB
• Phone
• Unlimited Landline calls, 24x7
• Talk Mobile (discounted mobile calls)
• Talk International (discounted international calls)

All for £19.95!
And this deal is for life, with no 12 month tie in!

The guy was very nice, and before I hung up he gave me his name and office location. I'm very impressed!

shupa

Nice one Crispy, I am tempted to call them back and try and better the offer I got a few weeks ago!

suranjith

Hi All,
I am glad to hear all the success stories.
I have tried 3 time. They have refused to change my package and been extremely rude !!!
Was wondering whether there is a email complaint procedure against Virgin Media ?
Cheers,

BTW, This is a bundled package with
4Mb broadband
basic Tv
line rental with weekend package.

gelato_cat

How much are you paying at the moment?

Suze

suranjith wrote:

Hi All,
I am glad to hear all the success stories.
I have tried 3 time. They have refused to change my package and been extremely rude !!!
Was wondering whether there is a email complaint procedure against Virgin Media ?
Cheers,

BTW, This is a bundled package with
4Mb broadband
basic Tv
line rental with weekend package.

Higgsy

I have just contacted virgin media and informed them i was considering the switch to talk talk and they reduced my bill from £39.25 to £30.20 a saving of £9.05 per month. Well done Martin (punches fist in air) more money saved. I had the phone ATV mid Pack and 2 Mg broadband. Tried to upgrade broadband but the lad said in my area it was not possible.

Nick

madmax69

Aww shucks. I had seen those "4 for £40" flyers in the post and thrown them in the bin as I'm only really interested in internet (okay I used to have phone but I ditched it to save money)

Out of interest I thought I'd check the Virgin website and all those offers are already there online for existing customers - duh!!

http://www.virginmedia.co.uk -> Offers and Bundles
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/service.do?id=4

Lots of stuff like...

2 for £20 Phone & Broadband
* Broadband Size: M
* Phone Size: M
only £20.00 a mont

2 for £20 TV & Phone
* TV Size: L
* Phone Size: M
only £20.00 a month

etc...

Maybe they're trying hard to push the x4 bundle and forgetting about haemohrraging low-demand customers to the extent of not bothering to widely advertise??

Already paying £17.99 for 2mb boredband with NO phone or TV (unfortunately also with the rip off £5 no-direct-debit fee) + VAT = £23 pcm

Might as well have BB and phone for about the same money. I still don't trust NTL/Virgin billing admin enough to DD the account tho (and never will).

I'm off to convert my account online!!!

madmax69

Aww shucks. I had seen those "4 for £40" flyers in the post and thrown them in the bin as I'm only really interested in internet (okay I used to have phone but I ditched it to save money)

Out of interest I thought I'd check the Virgin website and all those offers are already there online for existing customers - duh!!

http://www.virginmedia.co.uk -> Offers and Bundles
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/service.do?id=4

Lots of stuff like...

2 for £20 Phone & Broadband
* Broadband Size: M
* Phone Size: M
only £20.00 a mont

2 for £20 TV & Phone
* TV Size: L
* Phone Size: M
only £20.00 a month

etc...

Maybe they're trying hard to push the x4 bundle and forgetting about haemohrraging low-demand customers to the extent of not bothering to widely advertise??

Already paying £17.99 for 2mb boredband with NO phone or TV (unfortunately also with the rip off £5 no-direct-debit fee) + VAT = £23 pcm

Might as well have BB and phone for about the same money. I still don't trust NTL/Virgin billing admin enough to DD the account tho (and never will).

I'm off to convert my account online!!!

PS

---

Online conversion seemed to go okay. Should now have phone with Talk Weekend (free weekend call) tariff for only £2 more than I was paying before (includes £5 non-bank-monopoly-DD fine according to the website). It's not that easy for current customers to find the right link to click and the offer layour is confusingly different with different pages depending on which link you click to enter (2 versus 4 offer page layout - just make DOUBLY sure you clicked the right offer if you surf in and out of a page!). Some of the offers are expired (28/02/07) and cash back etc. are for "brand new customers only". There also looks to be a 12 month lock-in on new additional services for current customers so it might be as good to ring the NTL disconnect line?

I will undoubtedly save money by using my PAYG mobile less (average call costs about £1 min to I have to talk really fast!) The weekend offer says its free unlimited weekend local and national calls but I remain to be convinced after previous NTL experiences.

All Richard Branson needs to do now is fix the loose bolts in the railway tracks and bin this direct debit fine malarky!

Wombat124

First post - spent the past few months looking but couldn't resist posting.

I have 2MB broadband, talk evenings and weekend and talk mobile with Telewest. Should be £35.99, but I rang 6 months ago and got a deal at £23.00 which I was pleased with.

However when they changed to Virgin Media, my deal seemed to have lapsed, so I rang again last week prepared for an arguement, but without any haggling, I was offered:

Broadband M (2mb)
Phone XL (anytime calls)
Talk Mobile
Talk International

All for £19.95 for life (should be £42.99), so I'm well pleased. Only problem is that now they seem to charge £1.00 per month for an itemised call list, but I may try and get that waived as well.

All I can say is make that call - you can't lose

AJC19

Called Virgin

Was on:

2 phone lines (£22)
call display/call waiting (£3.50)
Supreme/XL TV (£20.50)
4 MB broadband (£25)
Sky sports and movies (£23.50)

total £94.50

ended up adding talk unlimited 24/7 and paying £75.45/month - saving £19.05 plus the cost of calls (est £15-20) which therefore probably totals ~£40/month.

When I get my HD TV the starting offer was the VIP bundle at £85 including upgraded BB (will be 20 MB), V+ box and extra box - but said there could be downgraded broadband to lessen the price.

I was considering switching to SKY, which would have been about the same cost with: 2 BT lines (£21), TV package (£43.50), unlimited calls (£5) and mid-range ADSL BB (£5) - total £74.50 (not sure re cost of call waiting/caller ID with BT).