Virgin Media international calls has scam rates!

paulguk

I recently made the foolish mistake of making a call to a Norweigan landline using my Virgin Media landline.... I had assumed that this would be cheaper than calling on my mobile, however this wasn't the case. The call to Norway was actually costing me around 50p per minute (quite a lot of money for a two hour call!!)

When I complained to Virgin Media, they explained that the calls charges were on their website and therefore they could not (or more accurately would not) refund. They rather insensitively suggested I upgrade my phone package to avoid this happening again.

I struggle to understand why connecting a landline in the UK to a landline in Norway would cost this amount of money... or why virgin media could not offer some money back as a goodwill gesture. I can only conclude that Virgin Media have set up their pricing schemes to deliberately catch out ill-informed users.... It seems having (literally) found their prize fool they were not going to give any of the hard-earned (or scammed?) money back!

Suffice to say I will be trying to avoid using my Virgin Media landline and will be using VOIP (sipgate, skype etc) for calls! I simply don't trust them to price their calls in a fair manner....

Heinz

That call would have cost you 4p connection and then 2p/minute using 18185's freephone gateway number 0808 1 703 703.

http://18185.co.uk/mobilerates.php

Stuart_W

or 2p/minute with no connection fee using telesave via 0800 066 2266

https://www.telesave.co.uk (£10 top up required first)

or 1p/minute with 5p connection fee with topupnow via 0808 170 0123

https://www.topupnow.co.uk (£1.50 top up required first)


I have used both of these services from a cable line.

Heinz

I've never been a fan of prepay services.

In any case, now that the MSE International Callchecker allows you to input your originating line type, that's always the place to go for immediate advice.

From a Virgin line, 18185 and 18866 (via their respective freephone gateway numbers) are the top two recommendations. As with all freephone numbers, they too have the added advantage of avoiding Virgin's 12.24p connection charge.

http://callchecker.moneysavingexpert.com/intcallchecker/norway/virgin/easy

jaygomez

I don't understand. If the rate says 50p per minute call to Norway and you make a the call, I don't think you can call Virgin a scam.

It's like eating in a restaurant and ordering something without checking out their prices first even if its in their menu. Then complained why you got charged £100 on your Filet Mignon meal.