Virgin Media: Haggle down your costs.

poundsaver

Following the examples quoted here I phoned VM today requesting disconnection. I was put through to a lady who dealt with my enquiry. I pointed out that my 2mb broadband was currently on offer at a quarter of what I pay (£18) to new customers and that this was unfair. I also pointed out that I could get all my services from Talk Talk for £15 per month. Immediately she came back with an offer of Line Rental, Talk Unlimited, Talk Mobile and Talk international + 2mb Broadband for £19.95 fixed for 12 months, saving me a whopping £204 over the next 12 months. Thanks!

titian10

just phoned virgin media. and told them that i had read that for phone and broad band should be £16per month. the lady spoke to her supervisor and said my contract finishes 13th august and will go down to £15.50 per month. i threatened to leave last year because my bill for the month was £70. the chap put me on freeview and with phone and broad band was £20 a month. great saving. Even more now. {i did quote to her the price of talk talk2}.:D

Richie_Rich_3

Hi

Have been an avid follower of this site for a long time. Due to this site I was able to claim back bank charges of over £600. Decided to follow suit and try my luck with Virgin after paying £65/month for all three services (phone/broadband/T.V) for the last few months. Tried as suggested asking for disconnection dept said my partner was unhappy at the charges and was considering going over to Talk Talk. Man I spoke to was very helpful and courteous. After a bit of negotiation I was able to get all three for a year at £33.45!! and he also upgraded the package to excel? and included all Setanta channels!!!:j :T

ukp3t3

I was currently paying £29.99pm for 20 meg broadband. (The most I could recieve was about 8meg)
I was also paying approx £40.00pm for my line rental and calls which included some calls to mobiles.

I phoned Virgin up and basically said before I switch is there anything you can offer me. I dropped to the floor.

I now pay 26.95pm. a saving of approx £40.00pm or £500 py.

I get Free weekday and weekend calls nationally.
I also get 25% discount on Mobile and international calls.

On this same day, I phoned my car insurance company CIS and haggled them to save £3.00 pm but im now Fully comp instead of 3rd party.


Woooooo, IM rich I tell you Rich.

:money: :money:

FunkyFeet

i am currently speaking with a really helpful chap named Andrew, he is try his best for me to stay, has offered the above for £20/- a month i quoted talk talk 2, possibly incorrectly at £15 and the best he can do the above for is £20/- anyone think its reasonable?

i may try and get him down to £16/- i will have to sign up for 12 months but now im thinking i should try and push for the 20 meg and pay £10 extra??

any advice on whats a better deal is greatly appreciated!

Heinz

You have to factor in the price rises Virgin have announced.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=832119

iwontpaytoomuch

I'm not going to threaten to leave as I'm mostly happy with NTL (VM) and as Im not the most pushy person but I called up 150 and quoted the deal on offer on this page;
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/product.do?id=227

The girl offered me a discount without any questions and although my saving is only £8 per month for 6 months, it's the easiest £48 I've ever saved.

My existing costs on the bill were as follows;

Line Rental .............................£11.00
Talk Unlimited........................... £7.95
Talk E&W local BB M saving........ -£5.50
ATV Base Pack .........................£5.50
Broadband Size: M ...................£18.00

I have no idea how the evening & weekend is a negative and cancels out the Analogue tv at the same price but a positive. If anyone knows what this means please tell me !

Now my broadband will be £10 instead of £18.
The girl on the phone said that I will have to call up again two days before six months is up and just ask again for the dicounted rate before it ends.

Quiffster

After reading the tips on staying with Virgin, I thought I'd give them a call. I am tired of companies abusing my loyalty (a customer of Diamond cable then NTL and now Vigin - circa 10 years), by letting me get worse and worse deals as the years go by, on account that I usually cant be bothered to call up do anything about it ... (home insurance with Halifax was a culprit for that game...).

Anyway - we cancelled our TV with VM a while back when they dropped Sky One. We bought a Humax PVR and have never looked back...

I just read in these forums about the deals people were doing, so I thought I'd give it a go.
I have paid £18 pcm for my 2Mb broadband, and £11 line rental.
Total £29 pcm before I make any calls (of which we hardly make any).

On the whole I'm happy with the service VM provide. Unlike some providers - the broadband is reliable (not always a great performer - but always reliable).

I called up, and by explaining that i didnt think the broadband was good value anymore - the chap offered to cut the whole bill to £20 pcm. i said that was good - but my buddies in the South West (Bristol) were getting 4 or 10 mb broadband for less than I was paying etc etc.

The deal we finished on was size (M) broadband 4Mb - being upgraded to 10Mb, and my line rental too for £27.

The saving was only £2 pcm, and I suspect I could have pushed further - *but* i have got a much faster BB service, and I don't take the TV service so I have less leverage.

Happy with that though. Cheers Martin! :T

Rob_Wills

I am paying VM £10 / month for 2mg broadband (the actual download speed is 1897kbs) this is the maximum the local network can handle.

My home phone costs with Toucan are £8.99 / month which is for line rental and FREE weekend calls.

How am I doing?

The minimum cost if I bundled these two things together is £15 / month but I would be tied to cable with all the hassle when / if I wanted to come back to normal land line.

The whole home technology supply industry is now so confusing I wish I didn't have any of it. The two things I hope to never need are a mobile phone and satellite TV so at least the waters will not be further muddied. :question:

belfastmoneysaver_2

belfastmoneysaver wrote: »

Just to update you, the bill arrived yesterday. As I suspected, the monthly charge had gone up to £23.45 so I rang to complain. I was told that I had been getting a monthly discount of £4.50 on my old package and that I now wasn't entitled to it as I've gone for the free TV. I was really annoyed and made the point that the TV is not free if my bill goes up by £4.50 after adding it.

They again gave me this nonsense about how the TV is free but I'm no longer entitled to my extra discount on the phone. I told them I didn't care where they applied the extra charge, the fact was that I added a service that was supposed to be free and my monthly bill went up and that wasn't acceptable. The girl put me on hold and came back 10 minutes later to say that the extra £4.50 discount had been deleted from my account in error and it will be re-applied from next month, along with a £4.50 credit for the overpayment this month. We'll wait and see what the next bill says!

It's very improtant that you check your bills carefully with VM and keep on at them until you get what you're entitled to.

So, the new bill arrived last week and I was charged £23.45 again for the 3 services. I had also received a £10 credit (not £4.50 as had been arranged). I rang up to complain and to say that they can take back the £5.50 overcredited to me but i wanted the bundle of 3 for £18.95 as agreed. I could not get them to budge. they said that my old discount had expired and that the sales team who "sold" me the "free" tv would have to ring me back.

I left it a week and there was no call back so i rang up again, only to be told that the price would be £23.45 and there's nothing they can do about it. I was told that even if they did apply a new discount, the system would automatically delete it. I asked why they had a system that forces them to go back on their agreements with customers.

I said I'd have to lodge a formal complaint. the guy asked if he could ring me back in 5 minutes. He rang back, said he'd spoken to his colleagues and they've agreed to provide me with the 3 services for £17.95 per month, which is £1 less than originally agreed. He assured me this would be the amount on my next bill and all future bills.

Again, I'll believe it when I see it on the next bill!