MSE News: Virgin Media customers face 6.7% price hike

Stooby2

Ring them up and get through to retentions, I think it's under the "You're thinking of leaving us" option on the answering service. It's a UK call centre with staff who have quite a bit of latitude and common sense. It helps if you've checked Sky offers as well and can point out that you could swap to Sky and get a much better deal even for a year - even if you have no intention of doing so. Be a bit bold and ask them to make it worth your while to stay with them.

blinkbox

All ,

Some 6 months back , i received a letter stating that virgin media is going to increase the monthly broadband cost. I reduced the price of broadband after calling them . My contract got extended to 24 months deal from original 12 months time period. Now again i received an email (not letter) stating that virgin media is going to increase the price of the broadband . Not sure what is happening ?

2 price hikes within 6 months ?

Anyways i reduced the price last time...now can i call them up and say that i want to retain with the same price or reduced price ?

Please share in your thoughts.

Buzby

No - your only option is to cancel the service as provided under the terms of their early termination waiver.

That said, the price increase also brings with it a speed increase, so I'm happy at the increased value from a robust supplier of a 120Mb connection.

kwikbreaks

You might be waiting til the end of next year for that speed increase. The last round of speed increases seemed to take forever.

I agreed a price with them in late October and took a sizeable discount in return for a new 12 month minimum term. I then got another price increase email on 2nd December. I gave them a call and they didn't seem interested in dropping that increase so I ordered Plusnet FTTC. When I called in last Thursday to cancel because of the increase I was told that the email was an error and as there was not increase I'd have to pay £130 early termination charges. I got that nullified by emailing the CEO office. I also got let off the 30 day notice period and they disconnected immediately.

Even with the new price it would have been marginally cheaper than FTTC but I get sick of playing their stupid games on pricing and speed upgrades promised a year before delivery so I've now left never to return.

Buzby

Their track record of speed announcements and implementation in my area are good, ranging from immediate to 3months. As FTTC is still inferior to cable for both capacity, contention and speeds it is hardly an 'equal' option, especially as you have to pay for a phone line on top.

Your December price increase was advance notice for the hike in January - however a look at the BT complaints reveal they've similarly gone up - so as they're all playing leapfrog, it's worth remember when dropping speed and usability.

kwikbreaks

The dates for my area were from July to December. Add to that my area has been suffering increasing congestion for the past year although ironically they may have sorted that out just after I ordered FTTC.

The only advantage cable offers over xDSL is headline speed. The skinny local pipes make it susceptible to congestion and VM take an absolute age to sort that out. High jitter is inherent in the way cable works making it less than ideal for VOIP and gaming. The other problem with VM is the way they let their peering links run at virtually 100%. In 10 years of ADSL I could count outages on the fingers of one hand. On cable in three years I had innumerable short term outages - many of these I'm sure were due to installation engineers disturbing existing connections when adding new. Certainly some were as I had to call VM out twice to correct signal levels which had gone way out of spec after such outages.

I have no regrets about moving away from cable and certainly doubt I'll ever be tempted back unless I once again suffer from line problems which Openreach fail to fix - the reason I went to cable 3 years ago.

victor2

I've also got the notice about a broadband price increase in February - and the speed increase late next year free of charge.
Like the last speed increase which was free, but they increase the fees many months before the speed increase. After all, they can't be seen to be charging us for something before we've got it, can they now? :rotfl:

The broadband is good, even if their "Smarthub" is anything but smart when it comes to Wifi. If I could get the same performance for the same price, I'd switch away, but I can't beat the discounted rate I now pay, having been through their "retentions" department.

alchemista

I have BB+phone. I wanted to just cancel phone and downgrade BB to 30mbps (which becomes 50mbps sometime next year). VM says you cannot get out of the contract unless you cancel everything. If you drop phone-only, your BB stays at your original contract date.

Any experts here know if that is true? Seems to me like if you were sold a bundle, then by breaking the contract you should be able to switch to whatever other plan there is and no longer have a contract.

If I cancel the service altogether, can I then call to have it re-activated at full price (25 pounds/month) without another installation fee?

btw - the retention department is at 0800 0528310

stagey_2

Stooby2 wrote: »

I rang and complained as the only reason for this increase (in my view) is to pay for BT sport which I don't watch or need.

I got the increase waived for 6 months and upgraded to a Tivo Box for nothing. I have been with the company since they were Cableinet and find they can be quite generous with long time customers.

I've been with them since telewest days, have XL package, the lot, hubby has enjoyed having BT Sports - but seems we'll have to pay the extra £5 to continue to receive it. Need to get act together and have a go at V now to see if I can get a better deal. Gird one's loins - am not always too clever at these things as don't altogether understand the why's and wherefors - ah well.

visidigi

alchemista wrote: »

I have BB+phone. I wanted to just cancel phone and downgrade BB to 30mbps (which becomes 50mbps sometime next year). VM says you cannot get out of the contract unless you cancel everything. If you drop phone-only, your BB stays at your original contract date.

Any experts here know if that is true? Seems to me like if you were sold a bundle, then by breaking the contract you should be able to switch to whatever other plan there is and no longer have a contract.

If I cancel the service altogether, can I then call to have it re-activated at full price (25 pounds/month) without another installation fee?

btw - the retention department is at 0800 0528310

The deal is contract all or nothing when the price increases come round.

You cannot pick which parts you want, its better this way, otherwise they could say you can only cancel the parts which are increasing in price and that would affect the bundle discounts...