MSE News: Virgin Media broadband customers face price rise from October

Pincher

CitySlicker wrote: »

This has got to be one of the most odd ways of doing business. Why can't everyone pay say £22 all the time instead of some (like me) getting a discount when they moan and others paying full whack and accepting it? It's like I'm doing business at some shady foreign market haggling for a flying carpet or some magic beans.

Alas, if only people will tell me how low they will go when selling their house, car; or anything at all.

4$£&*(£$&*(!

Pincher wrote: »

Alas, if only people will tell me how low they will go when selling their house, car; or anything at all.

With respect, that analogy makes no sense in this scenario. Go back 15 years and I don't remember the cable companies doing this, or BT, or my water company for that matter.

This trend of haggling whenever a price rise comes up seems to be a more recent trend to see how many people will put up with it, pay the complainers off so they don't go around telling everyone they were told where to go, then see what they get away with.

On this board the name's in the title, money saving. That's the game with pretty much everyone on here one way or another. We're looking for a deal and chances are a good number of us know how to present our case. Take a busy single parent who may not have time to haggle, or a person who would get fobbed off on the phone (or even might not want to pick up the phone in the first place in case they're picked off). Isn't it unfair that the modern haggling way of VM doing business they may be penalised when really a fair price for a fair service is what everyone should be charged?

seaviewing

Just for discussions sake, I have a thought on this, in 10 years time when a loaf of bread could be say £5, are we to expect the cost of TV/phone etc to never rise?
The people they employ have houses to pay for and food etc. Its probable that they might enjoy a pay rise every now and then too.

If they charge the same forever, the real profit they make will go down and the wages their staff get might also never rise...

In the case of Virgin, with their offshore cheap call centre i'm not so sure but just thinking out loud about the price rises really.

if they just increase them often by a silly amount then that's a different matter!

1socrates1

What gets me is that fairly recently Virgin increased the price by the same amount with the same advert about the speed increase. Does anyone remember exactly when they last increased the price? - I want to use it as ammunition if I phone. At the moment I am paying £37.50 for XXL broadband on its own.

Pincher

CitySlicker wrote: »

With respect, that analogy makes no sense in this scenario. Go back 15 years and I don't remember the cable companies doing this, or BT, or my water company for that matter.

This trend of haggling whenever a price rise comes up seems to be a more recent trend to see how many people will put up with it, pay the complainers off so they don't go around telling everyone they were told where to go, then see what they get away with.

On this board the name's in the title, money saving. That's the game with pretty much everyone on here one way or another. We're looking for a deal and chances are a good number of us know how to present our case. Take a busy single parent who may not have time to haggle, or a person who would get fobbed off on the phone (or even might not want to pick up the phone in the first place in case they're picked off). Isn't it unfair that the modern haggling way of VM doing business they may be penalised when really a fair price for a fair service is what everyone should be charged?

Interesting , how long has Martin been egging us to haggle?
Shall we say 10 years?


A "price taker", is somebody who looks at the price, and walks away if it's too expensive, no haggling.


Let us say you sell a car every five years or so.
The first time you ask for what you want for it, and if you get price takers only to see your car, the car either sells or it doesn't. If it doesn't sell, you advertise again at a lower price. You will keep doing this the next time you sell as well.


If you get all these tyre kickers trying to beat you down in price, whatever you set the price, you will eventually learn to mark the price up, to leave haggle room.


Martin has turned us all from price takers into hagglers.
The retailers are simply adapting to the consumer behaviour as it is now.

Popppet

Wow, this is the second price hike in 2014, and when I contacted them about leaving, they said I have to pay nearly a £100 exit fee. Email sent to the higher-ups, hopefully customer service staff will be retrained.

fiendishlyclever

I phone about my £1.50 rise as I'm six months into an internet only contract (I dropped the other services in Jan when they last put up prices -12% in my case)

I had three options:
Cancel contract - they would release me
Get a discount to cover the cost of the increase until the end of my contract
Start a new contract to get the current deals on offer.

I chose the last option and my bill actually went down ~£5 a month and got a new Superhub thrown in too.

Agree they have you over a barrel when it comes to decent broadband, but two increases in one year sucks!

kwikbreaks

CitySlicker wrote: »

If they applied the £1.50 increase this would have taken my bill to £26. But - bizarrely - they reduced my bill to £19.50 as 'you've been with us almost a year'.

It was quite an unusual statement - I moved house last year, so I reminded them I've been with them for a year at this address but also over 10 years at my last address.

So oddly the £22.50 my price was reduced to has now gone DOWN to £19.50 as a result of my complaining about the extra £1.50.

Told you so back in post#2

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Unless they call in and say they are cancelling of course. In which case it will probably be a price reduction.

VM run their business like a car boot stall so haggle.

derekyau

I just called about my price-rise e-mail (having previously called up back in February 2014 for that price rise).
End result was a reduction from the current £19/month (which would have gone up to £20.50) to a £15/month (which will still rise up to £16.50) and a broadband line speed bump from 30MB to 50MB.
This ties me in for another 12 months, but I am free to leave if they put prices up again during this period.

I wonder how many people don't bother call/complain about these regular price rises?
It's not like £1.50 is a huge amount, but it's the principle that i've signed up for a X month contract at £yy/month - it should stay this price until the end of contract.

John_Gray

Four [STRIKE]Two[/STRIKE] days more before the ability-to-cancel period ends!

I rang this morning and had a pleasant chat with the "If you are thinking of leaving us" lady (0345 454 1111 / 1 / ... / 5 / 3) and pointed out that I was a very long-standing broadband-only customer. She was able to give a Customer Loyalty Discount which brought the price down from the price-risen £27.65 to £19 for 18 months, at the cost of a new 12-month contract. "Ring again after the 18 months to find if we have a new Loyalty Scheme".