Virgin Media: Haggle down your costs.

BexTech

Alias_Omega wrote: »

inc free HDMI cable

Everyone who has a HDTV (or simply if you tell them you have or going to get one very soon) get the HDMI cable free.

HDMI cables only cost £4 or £5 quid for decent ones, prices a lot higher than that for cables is simply Snake Oil.

Look how many people were fooled into thinking gold-plated cables were important when connecting to devices that don't have gold plating themselves! How many people fooled into thinking oxygen free copper makes any difference, the amount of oxygen in standard cable is so minute it makes no difference.

BexTech

gerturdeanna wrote: »

I desperately need to get my bill down also - bill came today and this is what I'm being charged:
Telephone line rental: £11
Talk Unlimited: £7.95
Loyalty Pack bb/phone/tv c: -£23.00
free voicemail: £0.00
TV size XL: £22.00
Broadband size M: £18.00
Payment handling charge: £5.00
Total service charge: £40.95
Calls for this month total £34.45!!!
Toal bill: £75.40!!!
No way I can afford this any longer - am now a single parent on IS!!
What can I do?

You are on Talk Unlimited, yet still manage to amass call charges of £34.45 - I think you might be on the wrong package as it seems you are making way too many calls to either mobiles, international and numbers like 0845, 08970, 0871 etc.

VM if you phone up to cancel and tell them its just costing too much now and there are better deals elsewhere (though be prepared to have to tell them - they want to make sure you have been thinking of leaving) they MIGHT lower the cost down - they might suggest a calling plan that allows several hundred minutes to most numbers and not just landlines. They probably won't shift much as you are already on a good retentions deal.

In the last 12 months I have only had around 20p in total shown on my bill in call charges, I only call freephone numbers any time or as I get inclusive evening and weekend calls only call landlines regular numbers beginning 01 or 02 (and now 03 included) and never any 0844, 0845, 0870 etc numbers - I look on SayNoTo0870 site to see if I can find an alternative - if I can't then I don't phone them and try another means of contacting them, if I can't then I do no business with them.

I can only see you making savings by making sure you don't call numbers outside your package. Also switching to paying by Direct Debit will save you £5 per month. However you need to make sure you have brushed up on your budgeting and money management skills as I know when people suddendly find themselves in different circustances can let things slide. It may mean cutting right back until you can get yourself several hudred pounds clear in a bank acount (if this is an issue) problem is if you cut back from your retention deal - you won't get that again for a while, plus as it's a good deal do you want to do without broadband and TV etc etc - depends on how much you need to sort your finances out. When I was first made redundant we had to cancel various 'luxeries' inclduing the phone line until we got ourselves financially sorted out, as we didn't want to live where by the end of the week you had no money, we wanted to stay comfortable - even if it meant going without for a while to do so - we didn't want to use up all what we had saved just to keep living as we were acustomed to, just in case I was out of work for quite sometime before getting another job.

As said above the deal you are currently on is good - it's the extra call charges that are a killer (cable is one of the most exspensive call providers, when not using inclusive minutes) and the £5 non-DD fee - reduce those and you should be fine - the worrying thing I see is if you do call landlines a lot during the day then you don't want to be reducing the phone down, plus it might alter some of the discounts and you end up paying more for less of a service.

I do call mobiles myself, but only ones really on my Vodafone family list, this means calls between us are free (each call up to 60 mins) we share the cost of this service - so that costs me £1.17 per month, which I persoanlly pay to the 'owener' of the list which is a family member. It's £7 per month for 6 people on the list (£1.17 each) or £5 for 4 people (£1.25 each).

Alias_Omega

gerturdeanna wrote: »

So did you actually cancel or did you threaten to cancel? What if I'm not up for renewal on the contract at the moment?
Cheers

I cancelled the account as i was getting no where with the upgrade, was told 'it will cost £xxx sir' when clearly i knew it was free.

Had enough, and cancelled. Then the phone started to ring.

Had another issue today, woke up to find no channels on the tv, BB turned off. As its a new account, has a limit of £100 on it, and apparently we exceeded that today.

Rang them, and they put the installation fee of £75 on the account. Soon pointed out that this was free, and the only outstanding should be the £29 for the rental. We argued for abit, and i clearly pointed out that they record calls. 10 mins later, oh '£75 credit coming to your account now Sir..'

Alias_Omega

BexTech wrote: »

Everyone who has a HDTV (or simply if you tell them you have or going to get one very soon) get the HDMI cable free.

HDMI cables only cost £4 or £5 quid for decent ones, prices a lot higher than that for cables is simply Snake Oil.

Look how many people were fooled into thinking gold-plated cables were important when connecting to devices that don't have gold plating themselves! How many people fooled into thinking oxygen free copper makes any difference, the amount of oxygen in standard cable is so minute it makes no difference.

Yes, i agree. If it looks pretty, people will pay it.

I think the money comes when joints are soldered cleanly, no dry joints, and the cables are screened from the power supplies.

Its like the routing of cable on the aircraft, HF cables are routed away from any sensitive flight control cables.

gerturdeanna

The calls weren't made by me, I use saynoto0870 etc. The mobile calls were to his 'fancy woman' so they will stop now seen as he won't be here to make the calls!! The TV is for the kids mainly, they love Nick Jnr etc. And the broadband I have to have!! Its my lifeline - I couldn't do without it!!
Thanks for the advice anyway - I'll give them a call tomorrow after I've scouted out a few other deals etc

BexTech

Alias_Omega wrote: »

Yes, i agree. If it looks pretty, people will pay it.

I think the money comes when joints are soldered cleanly, no dry joints, and the cables are screened from the power supplies.

Its like the routing of cable on the aircraft, HF cables are routed away from any sensitive flight control cables.

Yeah, having a screened cable - especially individually screened is very important. Build quality too you need to check - both can be had without spending much more than a £5 or £6. Asda were selling some excellent quality leads not that long back for around £3.50.

BexTech

gerturdeanna wrote: »

The calls weren't made by me, I use saynoto0870 etc. The mobile calls were to his 'fancy woman' so they will stop now seen as he won't be here to make the calls!! The TV is for the kids mainly, they love Nick Jnr etc. And the broadband I have to have!! Its my lifeline - I couldn't do without it!!
Thanks for the advice anyway - I'll give them a call tomorrow after I've scouted out a few other deals etc

No worries. It was really just those calls that was making the bill so high, with the £5 non-DD charge too, the offer you are on is good and still a current offer, so might be difficult to reduce it further without altering the package - though can't say impossible.

Sorry to hear about the reason why you had high calls, it's not nice being cheated on - happened to me a few times, I've never cheated on anyone in my life (which maybe hard for some people to believe as some think all males cheat!).

I think it would be difficult for me to give up the internet now - though would have to if needed - saying that VM will often offer 2Mbit broadband on its own for £10 and I have a VoIP adapter so I can make calls over the internet using regular phones (corded & cordless) connected to it. The only reason why after 3 years of having no landline and using VoIP (with local number, so no one new it wasn't a regular phone line) was because of the retentions offer by Virgin Media and they installed the line for free too. We have satellite TV too (though now only the 200+ free channels) so when we had to cut back on TV and then only had satellite the subscription TV went and we just watched the 200+ free channels - some of the kids channels are on there, so they had to watch the free ones or videos (didn't have any kids DVDs at the time) though they rarely watched TV.

Natan358

AlanUdale wrote: »

I have had virgin from when it was first telewest and have never had cause for complaint.

I have also had Tiscali in the past which was poor.

I also now have TalkTalk which displays 4.6 however loads slower than my 2meg virgin.

I just complained about my cost and for TV and Broadband got a discount from £36 to £25 I made a further complaint per the repeats and said I was thinking of going over to Sky then was offered TV Broadband at 4meg free wireless router and free phone line with weekend calls free for £32.

You complained to Virgin? i phoned them a few days ago as i have finished the 12 months and told them that sky would be better for me, i currently pay around 35 a month, the adviser didnt offer anything and i think he would have been happy to cancel my contract right there and then, but i am going to ring again and try another adviser to see what happens.

chloecc

i've just spoken to the virgin media rep on the phone as was considering the move from bt to them to include the tv as well as home phone and broadband bundle for £20 a month, what hard sales people they are!!! very good technique - i crumbled and went for the deal!! still saving me £8 a month on what bt offered and thats inclusive of more free calls and the tv per month. Now to call bt and cancel my contract with them *gulp*

rwilts

rwilts wrote: »

I have had a letter from Virgin Media saying that on checking their accounts they have not been charging me for my telephone. It does not say for how long or if they mean the line rental or usage.

Ther further state that as its their problem they do not intend to claw back the monies just ensure that i pay from my next bill.

HOWEVER i have checked my last 4 months bills on line and i have been paying for both line rental and usage. I am on XL+ and it clearly shows both usage and rental as individual items on the bill.

Cannot face trying to talk this through with them so will wait until next months bill and see how badly they can mess it up!

Ok, new bill online today and its gone up by £10.00! currently on phone to call centre trying to sort, but they are telling me that a £6.50 discount for calls has expired!

I have explained twice that i signed up for xl+ for £65-00 all in about 4/5 months ago and so why the increase....Now on hold.....