Virgin Media: Haggle down your costs.

chicko

how keen are virgin to give free/discounted sky sports on retention deals?

ive just compared my bill (which already has a discount) to the cost of a new contract at sky and realised that for an extra £5 a month i can move to sky and will also be able to add sky sports to my package. (with everything else staying the same, plus ill get a free sky + box) Obviously it means sacrificing getting free setanta, so i'm quite keen to try and stay with virgin and possibly pay them up to £5 per month extra in order to get sky sports.

abzie87

hi
we currently have the most basic phone and broadband package, which keeps going up in price - its now £22.50 a month i think (and we actually only really need the broadband anyway). i saw a cashback deal on the weekly martins money tips email, which was £25.00 a month for phone broadband and tv but you got £115 cashback + £30.00 instalation works out at £17.91 a month but its only available to new customers. was thinking of getting my partner to sign up for it (its currently in my name). do you think i still need to cancel my current package first to get the cashback?

toothe

we need cheap tv internet and phone. ideally we want free evening and weekend calls, looking at freeview if the arial is in good enough condition.
this should allow us to go with BT and bethere for inet and phone. however looking at virgin to maybe give us a good deal. worth phoning them you think?

rob5ta

chicko wrote: »

how keen are virgin to give free/discounted sky sports on retention deals?

In a word not very. Retentions will only apply discounts to their tiered packages (M/L/XL), the Sports and Movie channels are "premium". Apparently Virgin don't make any money on Sports and Movies, and sell them to us at the same price they get them from Sky. I guess the reason why Sky can offer reduced prices in their retention deals is because they own them.

The only way you can seemingly get them cheaper is to haggle down your base packages so that having the premium channels wont seem as expensive.

Example, I have a total of £31 worth of discounts on my account, which pays for my Sports and Movies.

dominiquereynolds

hansi wrote: »

Sorry, can't agree with you about the BB. I have used it for years and I think it's really good:T

I agree as well. I am on the 20mb package.

Just had a free modem upgrade and what a difference that made. I AM NOW getting a 20mb service (was getting about 12 on the old modem)

We have 3 computers sharing the speed and its brilliant.

dominiquereynolds

ing wrote: »

This is what I currently pay

Telephone line rental: £11.00
Talk unlimited: £ 7.95
TV ( L) : £11.50
Broadband ( M ) : £18.00
Loyalty pack BB/Phone/TV A £-13.50
E bill £-1.00
___________________________

Total : £ 33.95
___________________________

Anyone on a similar package? How much do you pay? Am i paying too much?

18 months ago requested a life time deal with retentions rather than phoning every 12 months. The deal got better when Itemised billing came in as I have 2 accounts and get two e bill discounts :-)

TELEPHONE ACCOUNT: (Total £1.49)
Line Rental £11.00
E Bill Discount £-1.00
Talk International £1.50
Talk Mobile £1.50
Talk Unlimited £7.95

Loyalty Pack: B B / Phone £-19.46

BROADBAND ACCOUNT: Total £36.00)

Broadband Size XL: £37.00

E Bill Discount 30 April £-1.00

(I do not get any Tv from them. I can have a free box but have Sky+)

TOTAL per month £37.49

before_hollywood

is the £14 per month package any good for the phone/bb and tv?

i currently live with family and have bt phone/o2 broadband and sky+ but am moving out.

i dont use landlines apart from for the net

also can the same house get sky?

toothe

well i just rang,
sky are offering for £26 per month, tv, phone and broadband (the broadband is 2mb). this include line rental through sky. Rang virgin and the guy was rude and very unhelpful, said closest they could do was £30. not very happy with them, he didnt even say sorry cant match it.

dont see why he cant tbh. but atm looking at going with sky.

Ben_V11

Hi All,

I recently called Virgin to cancel as I was considering switching to Sky. They offered me:

TV: XL Package (All channels except Sky Sports and Movies)
Broadband: L (10MB)
Phone M: (Free weekend calls)
Caller Display: So that our phone will tell us who is calling. Or more importantly, the phone keeps a log of all our missed calls when we were out. Virgin 1471 only remembers the last call!

All for £43 per month.

This was a £10 saving on what I was currently paying and included an increase in my broadband speed. It was still slightly more expensive than Sky, but I would have to pay an installation fee and buy the Sky+ box for £99 so I decided to stay with Virgin.

However. A couple of days later a flyer came through the door from Sky. Free installation and free Sky+ box. As I was still in my 7 day cooling off period from Virgin I gave Sky a call to see what I could get. The offered me:

Free installation
Free Sky+ Box
Talk Evening and Weekends: (Virgin only gave me weekends)
Broadband Mid: 8 MB 40 GB limit
Sky+ with entertainment and music mixes: Less channels than Virgin were offering, but all the channels we watch were included.
Caller Display: Free

The price for all of this £33

Now £10 is £10. It can go a long way. Sure, we are dropping some channels, but we never really watched other channels anyway. Also the broadband on Sky will not be as fast and will be limited, but it should still give us what we need.

When I called Virgin to tell them I had changed my mind and I was going to switch to Sky they offered me nothing in addition to what they had already offered.

Virgin is very good service provider. I have only had one problem with my service and an engineer came the next day to fix it. I don't think I would even say Virgin are that expensive compared to Sky. If you want to have unlimited, faster broadband and all of the TV channels, then Virgin is probably cheaper. The problem is their packages are not flexible enough. With Sky I was able to build a TV package with the channels I wanted, and select a broadband package with a slower speed and a usage limit as I don't require unlimited broadband. As a result, for my needs, Sky is cheaper. When looking at possible alternatives with Virgin I was angry when reading their packages. Channels like E4+1 which are free view channels are only available on the XL package. With Sky, all free view channels are included as standard.

I hope I have not made a bad choice. Virgin's service has been excellent, if only they provided the flexibility for people like me to choose what I want to pay for so I can try to save some money.

I will post back in a couple of months to give a review of Sky and how I feel with my decision.

Wish me luck!

bbtest

Ive been acustomer for 5 years (back to when they were telewest) I wanted to change my package as i noticed that the new tarrifs are much lower (after reading on the forum) but as a loyal customer I cant do thart unless i sign up for a new deal.. Fair enough i guess but we rent and i dont want to comit to another 12months as I'm looking for a new job and if i move I don't know if Virgin cable will be available at the next place.