Haggle with Virgin - our new guide

Pluto88888

RobEW wrote: »

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...

wow,£55 A month you have the worst deal ever.
I just got my brother yesterday's £17 50mb for 12 months with £20 credit/or 100mb for £21 with £20 credit. (Took the 50meg package).

I did try to bargain it down to £16 with Customer relations he was having non of it.

Pluto88888

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?

You can always make up a story
mentioning you have taken out a 4g/5g sim only deal from 3uk/Vodafone and planning using this sim for home broadband £20 getting speeds of 100mb peak and offpeak so on.


Guaranteed she/he will start dropping your prices to £25 - £30 range at the end of the call ask for some Cheeky credit saying the hassle and inconvenient you have caused me now need to cancel this sim using the 14 days cooling period.

rallycurve

RobEW wrote: »

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

Sure! You can always stop the cancellation before the disconnection date so worth trying!
Someone even said they called again to ask for a new deal during the 30 days notice and agreed to a new contract that way...

Declan1992

Perhaps Virgin could read this forum and realise how rubbish they actually are

In the last 2 weeks I’ve probably spent 200 minutes on the phone to them trying to sort there poor service.

I wouldn’t recommend my worst enemy to change or stay with them. There technical team is about as useful as me on a treadmill

JJ_Egan

So what did you manage to haggle with them ??

buglawton

Pluto88888 wrote: »

You can always make up a story
mentioning you have taken out a 4g/5g sim only deal from 3uk/Vodafone and planning using this sim for home broadband £20 getting speeds of 100mb peak and offpeak so on.

Guaranteed she/he will start dropping your prices to £25 - £30 range at the end of the call ask for some Cheeky credit saying the hassle and inconvenient you have caused me now need to cancel this sim using the 14 days cooling period.

I didn't make a story like that, I actually invested £17.50 in 1 months unlimited data from Smarty, disconnected Virgin and connected 4G to my house router. Didn't tell the family then awaited for the reaction while doing speed tests from time to time (never below 40 mbps at any time). Family happily continued streaming 1080 video and social media-ing, no one noticed any difference. I continued working at the home office and using VOIP phone on my laptop for long calls. At that point I called Virgin to firmly cancel. Only then, for the first time ever, did I get a decent offer.

buglawton

RobEW wrote: »

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

Maybe the MSE techs could kindly have a peek at their IP address visitor stats and let us know how many hits to this thread are coming from Virgin's office intranet

ads_uk

Currently pay£88 for Full TV + 200mb (no Sport or Movies) the 200mb was a free upgrade from 100mb at no further cost....

1hr 24mins on the phone to try and reduce the bill but have agreed to cancel.

It's clear Retentions do not know their market.

The CS guy said I was incorrect when I told him BT do a guaranteed 100mb fibre line, told him to google BT (Ultrafast) also told him that I could also get Sky + 75mb Fiber = £50pcm. he had to apologise after he googled and went onto Sky shop to actually check my postcode options.

Then insisted that he could so me a great deal.
The great deal from Retention reduce the Broadband back to 100mb and reduce the bill by £11 - this also includes the £2 discount for the bill increase!

So I ask him, that's take off the Free Upgrade and reduce bill?
Why not just reduced the bill?
How does that make any sense?
I had to explain to treat the BB as 100mb as it was a no extra cost upgrade so no reduction in speed - eventually agreed that it didn't make sense what they were trying to do.
I asked him what's his best offer he could do - we can't beat sky. All I can do is level reductions £2, £5 and max £10 - pointed out that he originally offered £11 the silence was the moment he knew that I knew he was reading from a script.

Said the £11 and speed reduction was best - so I said sadly after 28yrs of C&W/NTL/VM I have no alternative to cancel.
Put me on hold - told me 13/09/19 is my cancellation date & I will receive a box to send the equipment back our be charged upto £175 per item. (Still have 3 broken boxes that engineers have left over the years - I should charge them)

Oh well, they now have 28days to renegotiate - might ring them see if they can do anything else every 10days 😊

Not being unreasonable am I?

JJ_Egan

<
The CS guy said I was incorrect when I told him BT do a guaranteed 100mb fibre line, told him to google BT (Ultrafast)>


You have OpenReach fibre to the premises then .

ads_uk

Update.
Not even 24hrs - loyalty team contact.
£58pcm with keeping everything as is PLUS premier sports for 6mths free.