Haggle with Virgin - our new guide

chrisfiss

Hello,

I have MixTv, M100 broadband and talk weekends and currently pay £57.49 (out of contract). I know received a note to say my price will go up by £4.01 to £61.5 which is way too much. for comparison new customers get this for £29 for 12 months.

I will try haggling the price down but does anyone know if I can cancel my subscription altogether and then get the missus to sign up as a new client? will they allow this you do you need to have a 6-month break for example? I appreciate I will lose connectivity for a while but happy to do so if I'm going to save 50%+ of my current bill.

mkaml

I call up virgin every year to negotiate a deal.
My current deal just ended so I called yesterday.
They would not budge, offered me £3 a month discount.
I asked for the cancellation department who told me I was 'using my services to the fullest' I called him on the fact that this was not true.
I pay for a phone line I've never plugged a phone in to, and I basically have freeview so am only using broadband. He offered me £6 a month discount which was still too high. I ended up calling his bluff and cancelling my services.

Not even 24hours later I was called and offered a £12 a month discount for another years contract. I'm happy with that so accepted.

ManiaMuse

Just rang up Virgin to cancel at the end of August. Worried that I might have been a bit too eager as they were only too happy to go through with the cancellation. Got through to India first and said I wanted to cancel so they put me through to someone in the UK. Simply said I wanted to cancel as could get a better deal with another provider and they were like 'sure, I can do that for you, let me put the disconnection through on our system'. Didn't ask me for my reasons for cancelling at all and didn't try to offer any other deals.

Was originally on M50 + Talk Weekends (so pretty basic) starting December 2015.

Negotiated a small saving with customer services when the new customer contract ran out (one of those 12 + 6 month contracts that wasn't much of a saving really, should have been more pushy).

Didn't bother negotiating after that but purchased a line rental saver contract for 12 months which worked out to a saving of about £2.50/month. Runs out next week and apparently this option is no longer available.

£3/month inflation busting increase a month after I purchased the line rental saver in September 2018.

Just had a notification of another inflation busting £3.50/month rise from September 2019. Will be paying £47.45/month from September for M100 + Talk Weekends (which I never use because I don't use my home phone) and from reading around here sounds like I could be getting a better deal.

Got a 'free' speedboost to M100 in December 2017. Still got the email which says it was totally free, no catches, no hidden costs etc. Could cope with a speed drop to get a discount as M50 was the package I originally bought although it would be a bit annoying given that they gave it to me for 'free'.


What do you think my chances are of getting a call from Outbound Retentions? I just was a bit struck at how nonplussed they were to lose my custom. Not sure if calling on a Saturday makes any difference? I have changed my preferences on my broadband/phone and mobile accounts to allow Virgin to contact me about marketing etc.



I guess maybe this isn't the best time of year to negotiate a discount given the recently announced price increases might be blowing a hole in the retentions team's budget...

N8_08

Hello,
I would like to haggle with virgin media over my broadband (£48/m 100Mb/s) but no other provides offer high speed broadband in my area (all others are 7Mb/s or less) so I don't feel I have any bargaining power. This feels wrong that they have a monopoly and don't share their fibre/infrastructure in the road, whereas I think Open Reach are required by law to not favour BT. What can be done?

buglawton

N8_08 wrote: »

Hello,
I would like to haggle with virgin media over my broadband (£48/m 100Mb/s) but no other provides offer high speed broadband in my area (all others are 7Mb/s or less) so I don't feel I have any bargaining power. This feels wrong that they have a monopoly and don't share their fibre/infrastructure in the road, whereas I think Open Reach are required by law to not favour BT. What can be done?

Do what I did and test a 4G router. With an Asus I was able to connect whole household to 4G. Result was so excellent (and cheap unlimited rolling 4G contracts exist) that I called Virgin and cancelled. Got a callback with a deal that made me stay, almost reluctantly, with Virgin for another year at least.

ManiaMuse

N8_08 wrote: »

Hello,
I would like to haggle with virgin media over my broadband (£48/m 100Mb/s) but no other provides offer high speed broadband in my area (all others are 7Mb/s or less) so I don't feel I have any bargaining power. This feels wrong that they have a monopoly and don't share their fibre/infrastructure in the road, whereas I think Open Reach are required by law to not favour BT. What can be done?

This was me the other week, on Virgin 100M + talk weekends (originally 50M but got a 'free' upgrade a couple of years ago. I was checking offers from other providers but the cabinet was full so I could only get slow broadband.

I would suggest calling up to cancel saying you are moving to another provider and wait for a call from outbound retentions (change your marketing preferences in your Virgin account to allow calls about offers etc. first). You probably have more bargaining power than you think, they hate losing customers to rivals.


Don't bother trying to haggle with inbound retentions, they can only offer small discounts. Just be polite and say you want to cancel.

I ended up with £26/month for 12 months and a bit of a discount for the following 6 months as well. Judging by this thread I could probably have done even better if I had haggled harder with outbound retentions but I was happy with that as it is better than their current new customer offer.

Only downside is having to repeat the process again in 12 months time. But for a saving of £260+ over a year it's worth it.

GTR_King

I Pay £78 a month (£129 Now as year has ended)

I got
300MBS (Broadband)
Talk anytime (Mobiles included)
Sky Sports/Movies
£100 gift voucher

I can't afford to pay £129 but don't wanna give up on sky sports F1 Can live without movies

gonna ring them up and see what they say

best they can offer me is £99 a month with £50 cash back.... Did try to get better deal but same price as sky

Gizmo70

Recently out of contract and on Full House (XL) with M70 and Talk Weekend which was costing £89.80 due to go up by £4.50 per month from September. I phoned them up and initially they offered to keep it at the same price for the next 12 months. I said I was looking to reduce costs not keep them at the same, and they offered to reduce it to £83 but needed to put me through to the UK team as they couldn't make the changes themselves (partly as they needed to upgrade me from M70 to M100). When the UK person looked at it they managed to knock another £15 off, so I am now paying £58 per month for the next 12 months
I make that £435 saving over the year against what the price would have been after the increase plus I have had my broadband upgraded from 70 to 100.
:money::T:j

RobEW

I'm paying c. £55 per month for phone line, M100 broadband ("free" upgrade from M50 some while back) and no TV deal. (Freeview is more than enough channels for us).

Phoned to say I'm looking at switching as I can get far better offers (half the price) from others for an adequate (i.e. M50 speed) service. She kept me on hold for a while so she could find better offers and eventually came back with a derisory saving of about three pounds a month to downgrade to M50.


Sounds like I have to call their bluff and actually initiiate cancellation before they'll play ball. Problem is that they might call my bluff. Changing our email addresses (ntlworld.com) and getting all our email history off their servers would be a bit of a pain. But worth it to save the money. USwitch has offers to save us £25 - £30 a month for 50Mbps + phone line from 8 providers (Vodaphone, talktalk, onsstream, Plusnet, SSSE, Post Office, Now broadband, EE). I'm also beginning to despise Virgin for overcharging us for so long. We've been with them since it was Diamond Cable, then NTLWORLD, now Virgin.


Did someone say that even if you initiate cancellation you can change your mind later?


I have a feeling their retentions dept probably read this forum and onstantly think up new tricks and tactics...

JJ_Egan

Move your email to a non ISP now .