Virgin Media's greedy price hike (1st April - no joke!)

Matt_T

Like all Virgin Media customers I'm about to have a price rise of about 20% (extortion) forced on me on 1st April.

I'm annoyed so decided to reduce my landline package from Talk Anytime to Talk Evenings & Weekends.

When I called to do this they tried to remove all my bundle discount from my current package and claimed it would now cost me £13/month MORE to have fewer free landline call periods.

Am shocked by this kind of cynical dishonesty which is effectively an attempt to blackmail customers into swallowing price rises way above inflation and denying us the chance to adjust our package to neutralise the price hike.

Lots of other MSE readers are about to get hit by these greedy price rises too. Can't we get together and make our voice heard?

Any ideas/experiences/advice welcome.

Cheers.

poshparrot

I am in agreement with you that it's absolutely disgusting & I too am effected by this price increase but have managed to come to a solution over the phone with them - I will still be paying the increased price but they have upgraded me to a free Tivo box and given me a v+hd box for another room (services I didn't have before).

In relation to doing something, if you want to leave then you can. At the end of the day, they want to keep you as a customer so by phoning up and picking the option to leave, you'll go through to a team of people who are trained to supposedly give you a better deal and to try and keep you. If you don't come to an agreement with them (which is what I managed to do) then you can ask to cancel and then you'll get calls with more deals to consider as they will hope you will cancel your cancellation.

Another alternative if you still aren't happy with the deal they've offered you is to just ditch and switch

Matt_T

Thanks for the advice PP ... I'll give it a try.

My price rise is 13% ... so about 4 times inflation. Disgusting greed.

Virgin Media made £48 million profit in the last 3 months of 2011.

I'm beginning to see how!

Cheers,
Matt

Buzby

You overlook their previous ears of losses. As they've only just made their first profit, there's a long way to go before the investors make back what they lost!

Matt_T

Just a quick update: contacted them about price rises and asked them to justify triple-inflation figure.

Got back a load of cut'n'pasted press release rubbish about the network upgrade work (which won't benefit even a city like London for possibly more than a year) followed by instructions on how to leave if I don't like the new prices. Clearly they really value loyal customers ...

Definitely won't be shedding any tears over their previous losses. £75.9m net income last year sounds good to me. Maybe efficiency savings should come first, like not wasting huge sums on billboards and direct mail telling us our broadband speed is going to double, when that's 12 months away.

Have suggested this as a story to Watchdog etc. Probably they'll be interested if a few other MSE people contact them to say how they've been personally affected too.

Cheers.

MrLiam_2

I was given a deal which cancelled out the price increase, I was told that if I did not accept this then I would still be liable to pay cancellation charges as they were willing to give me a discount. Is this true or am I able to walk away penalty free (as the letter posted out suggested), regardless of what deal they offer me later on?

Phones4Chris

Did you accept the new deal? Has it been confirmed in a letter? If not, Check your Ts&Cs - This post gives more info

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=51962773&postcount=29