Virgin Media Talk Anywhere - hidden cross subsidy?

woodhouseian

Hi All

I have Virgin Talk Anywhere and I've discovered this seems to mean they charge extra for other services. Presumably Virgin use that extra money to cross-subsidise Talk Anywhere.

Ignoring line rental (I have paid for a year's line rental upfront), these are the monthly numbers:

Currently £68.65:
Talk Anywhere 800
20 MB Broadband
TV L

I got an email from Virgin which offered, without Talk Anywhere, £37 a month (plus line rental) for these:
30 MB Broadband
TV XL

Talk Anywhere by itself costs £32.20.

So I assumed I could pay £69.20 and get everything.

But no - if I want everything it will be £72.20 instead - because I have Talk Anywhere. In other words I'd get 'fined' £3 a month for being a Talk Anywhere customer.

(That's after negotiating them down to £72.20 from their opening gambit of £81.35 - which would have meant they were giving me no 'deal' at all, just charging me £12.50 to upgrade the TV.)

Also of course by having Talk Anywhere I already lose out on Talk Weekend, which would otherwise be free with my line rental.

My solution is simple - I'm leaving Virgin Media TV, but keeping Talk Anywhere and Broadband (total £47.70) and getting the equivalent Sky TV deal for half price (ie £16 pm) for 12 months.

JSR

The thing to understand about Virgin's highly dubious pricing policy is that it is based on bundles not individual products. The deal they offered you is for that 30 MB/TV XL bundle only - no other. You can't just mix and match products with them. Every combination is an individually priced bundle. So you get anomalies like this when one bundle has an offer on it but a similar bundle with just with one other product added doesn't.

[Deleted User]

What will you do when Sky's half price offer ends? Then you'll be paying more surely than you currently do…
Are you sure Sky's offer lasts for an entire year? Normally only six months..