Virgin Media: Haggle down your costs.

gmcintyre

Hi everyone, another newbie!

I currently have the following:

Telephone Line Rental 23 July - 22 August £11.00
Talk Evening And Weekends 23 July - 22 August £3.45
Phone, TV & BB Bundle Saving 23 July - 22 August £-9.50
TV Size: X L 23 July - 22 August
£22.00
V+ Box 23 July - 22 August £10
Broadband Size: M
23 July - 22 August £18.00

I have had this contract for about 12 months now and a you can see am paying close to £60 a month but obviously I am looking to make some savings and willing to go elsewhere. For now i am going to have a chat with Virgin and try to get the cost down - any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
Gra:beer: ham

VM_JessopVTS

Face-it wrote: »

My bill has averaged £50 per month. For this I got L TV, M Broadband, Phone + voicemail and Talk Evening & Weekends. My 12 month contract since last review had expired and so I made the 150 call today.

The new deal is: L TV, Phone plus Talk Unlimited, Talk International, Talk Mobile, Voicemail and M Broadband for £22.24 (nice round figure!).

I then enquired about the V+ box. We have wanted this for a while, especially since we lost our remote for the standard V box about 3 months ago (didnt want to pay for a replacement - almost wore V box buttons out!). I had to pay £75 there and then for the installation charge - apparently discounted from £150 for me. They also threw in a modem as the V+ box doesnt contain the network card necessary for broadband. This increased by monthly charge by £5.

New monthly charge £27.24 -nearly halved.

Thanks to all you posters for the useful info that tooled me up for the call.

hmm, i would most defiantley give VM a call back regarding this offer my friend. Chances are that you, or the agent has misquoted you as the said package, with the voicemail included etc comes with the M size TV package, definatley not the large package.

I wont post up my sources but this is most definatley the case

Package you will have is called bundle 3+ voicemail plus for the said price.

And with regards to speaking to different agents, i can hoenstly say that if a package cannot be offered at at certain price, it cannot be offered =[
However an agent can, or cannot be as helpful and polite as they may want to be.. but then again that wont have much effect on the set prices that VM have set out to offer customers wishing to leave the company =]

.. if that makes sense, lol

VM_JessopVTS

gmcintyre - > you can pay £100 for the box and reduce your overall monthly service charge by that £10, so after 12 months for example you've saved £20, and then £10 for each month after that.

might be worth a shot =]
bare in mind that the v+ box itself is generally far better than the sky+ box, and virgin offer free servicing for it

gmcintyre

VM_JessopVTS wrote: »

gmcintyre - > you can pay £100 for the box and reduce your overall monthly service charge by that £10, so after 12 months for example you've saved £20, and then £10 for each month after that.

might be worth a shot =]
bare in mind that the v+ box itself is generally far better than the sky+ box, and virgin offer free servicing for it

Thank you - I was thinking of that - but being really cheeky and trying to get them to let me keep the one I have being paying for for the the last year! Need to haggle well £70 a month is too much!!
Thanks again :beer:

BexTech

The V+ box has three tuners compared to Sky+ 2 tuners, that's about the only thing that is better about the V+ box compared to the Sky+ box, unless you add in that the V+ box is actually meant to be the same as a Sky HD box, however VM have only BBC HD and a couple of HD VOD.

V+ is too buggy, and is too clunky in use compared to Sky+ / Sky HD.

I do have a V+ but I'm always swearing at it as it is a right pain.

If VM could rewrite the software and fix all the issues and stopped it being so slow at times, it would be excellent, however VM have great ideas just always poorly executed.

At least with Sky and Freeview the EPG is dynamically updated, so as long as the broadcaster (the main ones do) update their EPG on-the-fly even if a programme over runs by 30 seconds or minutes or hours the box will record it, same if the programmes start early. With V+ you have to rely on padding as at best cable only update the EPG 4 times per day, no good when a programme is live and is running late, you'll lose the end.

sumeet

As anyone had any success on negotiating down the £85 (XL everything) VIP bundle?

BexTech

sumeet wrote: »

As anyone had any success on negotiating down the £85 (XL everything) VIP bundle?

I think it would be extremely difficult if not impossible as it's already quite a heavily discounted package.

loco_2

Phoned today, curently on Talk Unlimited and BB (M) was paying £33.45 offered £20.49 with no hassle.
Make that call today!

cheekyweegit

Can anyone tell me what they think of this....

Currently with Virgin Media (funnily enough) and have:-

2MB broadband and the phone line which gives me free weekend calls also call waiting for £20 a month plus £1 for paper billing.

I've been offered:-

Upgrade to 10MB broadband plus free wireless router (netgear) but I've got a linksys running just now. (The upgrade in speed would be handy for when I'm on the laptop and the kids go onto their xbox live as it lags a bit when they log on.)

Talk unlimited

Medium TV with free installation (I've never had the TV installed and am not particularly bothered about this as I don't watch too much TV. Mmmm due to MSE?)

Talk international and talk mobile.

This is all for £23.49 a month and I've to change to paperless billing too.

What do you think? Although I wanted to actually reduce my bill not increase it, do you think this is a good deal? Or do you think I should try again as I'm not really bothered about the TV or the talk mobile or international?

I'd love to get the talk unlimited and increased broadband for the same price I'm paying now. Oh and call waiting too if possible as it is handy.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

hpuse

I was thinking for leaving Virgin Media, and was offered the following and I signed up a 12 month contract

TV package : M ( Vbox with just 30 odd channels )
Broadband : M (2Mbps )
Line rental
Talk unlimited +cheap intl and mobile calls

£30.00 pm

Pls adv!