Haggle with Virgin - our new guide

naldo58

samal said:

Hi, so I am currently paying £53, been with them for 20+ years (Telewest), comming to end on 7th Aug
M100 Fibre Broadband
Mix TV
Talk More Anytime

Been offered £67 for another 18 months - does not sound a good deal to me
What do you thing?

I would wait until you're out of contract (7th Aug) then call them again, making the point that your contract with VM has ended. You're in a much stronger position when 'out-of-contract'.
I have also been a 'loyal' TW/VM customer for over 20 years (another point to make).

naldo58

samal said:

Hi, question to those who instruction a another company and cancelled when VM retention called

Do you actually sign up to another provider, if so do they charge straight away to only once service starts?
Wondering if there is any cancellation etc. 
thanks

You have a 'cooling off' period when you sign for another ISP...  90 days I believe (?)
*I stand to be corrected.

realcountryman

Haggling with Virgin Media via its chat system takes much patience. First you have to negotiate past the bot - which will try to force you into other methods of contact - and then past the first customer service human who will put you though onerous security questions. Then when advisor 1 has stopped trying to sign you to a contract at much more than the existing you eventually get a retentions advisor who repeats the process including security.
You have to convince the retentions person you can't afford the high monthly charges, and resist the urge to take the first, second or even third offer. My bills were £48/month (because I'd let my contract elapse) and I eventually talked it down to £19. Virgin won't tell you there's a 'Fibre 50' tariff until all hope is gone for getting your agreement to a slightly reduced cost higher speed tariff. (It's worth checking your actual speed with Ookla. My previous download speed was only ever around 12 mbps so whether on a 50 or 100 speed tariff the reality is far short)
My whole experience (not counting two previous failed attempts) was just short of 2 hours, despite the advisor seeking a resolution so he could go on his break. Often 5 minutes elapse before you see the advisor is typing again. I imagine many will run out of time and patience, so be prepared for a long and frustrating battle.
Keep it polite and throw in some personal friendliness for good measure. In the daytime at least you'll be talking to an overseas call centre. After 6 it seems to switch to UK but you only have until 8 to seal the deal.
Good luck. 

whattochoose

A member posted this, details of the contract he'd negotiated.....
I'm currently paying £51 (under contract) for the same services. I'm looking forward to my contract expiring so I can engage some in some serious renegotiation.

Romeo5793

I was pleasantly surprised today by my latest VM haggling attempt, that I've been putting off for months. I am on Broadband Only M350 and the price has slowly crept up to £60.50 per month. New customers are being offered this for £32 per month (incl. £95 Amazon voucher). Today, the rage overtook me so I settled down to dedicate an hour to part 1 of the complaining and threatening to leave process. I was sorely tempted. Surprisingly after pressing option 4 I was put through to off-shore retentions department after only 3/4 minutes. I explained that charging loyal customers (12+ years) nearly double what new customers were offered was too much and I wanted to cancel. They immediately offered me the same package on a new 18m contract for £39 which I thought was surprisingly ok for a first pass. I then said ok if I now took the opportunity to upgrade to the package above for less than I am paying now what would that be? And they offered me the M500 package for the same price of £39 per month, which I went for (heavy users, multiple people working from home on video calls, gaming etc) - best introductory offer I can see for M500 is £36 per month so I think that is pretty good. Am I too easily pleased?

SaverRate

I Currently pay £38.25 for Talk weekends, M350 broadband and Maxit TV. Contract due to end 11th Aug. Called today and was offered £58. Have put in for cancellation 

bignred05

got my call back earlier today, after giving my 30 days cancelation notice on Friday.

was paying £23 for 100 Mg Broadband only (200 Mg with O2 Volt) was offered to stay on £23 on Friday but declined.

Retentions called earlier today, after the usual spiel they offered to renew at £20 for 18 months.

happy enough with that.

SaverRate

SaverRate said:

I Currently pay £38.25 for Talk weekends, M350 broadband and Maxit TV. Contract due to end 11th Aug. Called today and was offered £58. Have put in for cancellation 

I got a call back today after giving my cancellation notice yesterday.

£50 for the same package (Considering my original contract price was £47 before they loaded extra discounts when the price was due to go up in April I didn't think this was too bad)

Was also offered M200, MAXIT TV and talk weekends for £44.00 per month. I went with this package in the end. 

wrong

I just wanted to share my experience today, after using the guidance and seeing recent comments from others. My 18 month contract is coming to an end. Am paying £24 a month, and contract end reminder email said this would go up to £47.25, for M100 Fibre Broadband (broadband only, no phone line). 

Called up Virgin Media, and after waiting about 35 minutes on hold eventually got through to, I felt, a really nice and helpful guy. I said I got the contract ending email, and he immediately said he would look to see what offer he could do for me. His first offer was £27 a month, or £33 a month if I wanted to upgrade to the M200 package. He thought my usage was at the point where the increased speed might be of interest, so we had a bit of a chat, but I'm okay with the speed.

I mentioned about rising cost of living, and that I was looking at other providers. The best deal I could see for me using the compare deal tool was Sky Ultrafast Broadband, £27 a month 'effective cost' after claiming a voucher - while that does also include a phone line, though no minutes, I don't really care about that. Vodaphone and EE was just a little bit more than that.  So £27 was the kind of baseline in my head. 

He said he'd look again to see if he could offer anything better and put me on hold. He came back within 2 minutes with a 'special deal' as his line manager had a couple of discounts available. £24 a month for M100 Fibre - so what I'm currently paying. I am happy with that and took it.

From reading recent comments, if I'd have held out or given my cancellation notice, maybe I could have got a slightly better offer? But I'm happy with keeping my price the same, and after spending an hour on the phone I don't really want to spend more time sorting this out! 

artyboy

wrong said:

I just wanted to share my experience today, after using the guidance and seeing recent comments from others. My 18 month contract is coming to an end. Am paying £24 a month, and contract end reminder email said this would go up to £47.25, for M100 Fibre Broadband (broadband only, no phone line). 

Called up Virgin Media, and after waiting about 35 minutes on hold eventually got through to, I felt, a really nice and helpful guy. I said I got the contract ending email, and he immediately said he would look to see what offer he could do for me. His first offer was £27 a month, or £33 a month if I wanted to upgrade to the M200 package. He thought my usage was at the point where the increased speed might be of interest, so we had a bit of a chat, but I'm okay with the speed.

I mentioned about rising cost of living, and that I was looking at other providers. The best deal I could see for me using the compare deal tool was Sky Ultrafast Broadband, £27 a month 'effective cost' after claiming a voucher - while that does also include a phone line, though no minutes, I don't really care about that. Vodaphone and EE was just a little bit more than that.  So £27 was the kind of baseline in my head. 

He said he'd look again to see if he could offer anything better and put me on hold. He came back within 2 minutes with a 'special deal' as his line manager had a couple of discounts available. £24 a month for M100 Fibre - so what I'm currently paying. I am happy with that and took it.

From reading recent comments, if I'd have held out or given my cancellation notice, maybe I could have got a slightly better offer? But I'm happy with keeping my price the same, and after spending an hour on the phone I don't really want to spend more time sorting this out! 

I noticed your comment - assuming you are within a cooling off period for your new contract, you really might want to rethink the deal you agreed. For the sake of actually giving your notice, then either calling their retentions number or waiting for them to call you, you SHOULD be able to get the monthly cost down to £18, and possibly with an upgrade to M200 included.

Because that's exactly what I managed to do last week (see the other 'Virgin retentions' thread on here for details) - just be clear on what the cheapest deals around are (i.e. look at the MSE tables), and this shouldn't take you more than an hour's actual effort.

Of course it's up to you whether you consider it worth it or or not -  but that would be £90 saved over the contract term with hopefully a faster speed included...